Simple Home and Happiness

I am a New Years girl. I love goals and check lists and I love the feeling of a fresh start, but resolutions have never been my thing. A few year ago I began picking a word for the year and I found that it works really well for me.  Setting a word for the year has helped me to focus on a quality that I want to grow in myself. Last years word was ‘ intentional ’. It was a full year and in a lot of ways a really hard year. Being intentional with my words, thoughts and actions helped me to really lean into the relationships in my life. The past year felt somber though. It was good and I grew more than I could have imagined, but it also felt serious and deep. I need some relief. This year after praying over it and considering what I would like more of in the coming year, I knew that my word for 2019 had to be 'happiness'. I want more laughter, more spontaneity, more fun in 2019 and none of those things come naturally to me. I thought about words like joy and contentment b

This time of year naturally lends itself to reflecting on holidays past, so I decided to read back through some of my holiday posts I have written over the years. I wrote some of these from a place of exhaustion and looking back I can see the pain clearly woven in every word; others I wrote out of a desperation to see life from the perspective of having lived through it. A few I wrote from a place of deep satisfaction and happiness. Life is often a balance of holding pain and joy at the same time. We don't have to choose one or the other, we can choose to accept life has both. It is where we put our focus that can make all the difference. The holidays aren't a time for rushing or preparing or forcing our way through. This season is meant to be a time to reflect, a time to love, a time to believe. This season holds so much hope and light if only we lean in close to find it. Love a Little More Holiday Hush   Holiday Juggling  Christmas Exhaustion Unexpected Inte

I was cleaning today, which gave me time to think, and thinking always leads me here. The house is 'weekend messy', so decided to clean my floors, because The Nester says if your floors are clean the rest of the house feels clean too, even if it isn’t.  I have found that it is pretty good advice, so when everything else feels chaotic, I clean the floors. Of course for me, cleaning the floors also means picking up the toys, shoes, clothes, etc. so that I can even begin to vacuum, which naturally leads to a cleaner home as well.  While cleaning up I began to think about how this blog has evolved over the years, from a desire to write like The Nester about home, into what it is now.  I started writing this blog when I was dreaming of building a new home. Then plans changed, life took turns, and we ended up in a home so different than I expected and so perfect for our family. Somewhere along the way I realized that home wasn’t in the walls that went up or in the co

Want to know the one thing we all have in common? Single, married, kids, no kids, male, female, whatever… We all need to eat. One of the questions I get asked most from you guys is, what is the best way is to get meals on the table for dinner? Here is what I know. What works for one persons schedule and personality may not work for the next. So rather than give you a tutorial on what works for me, I am going to give you all the tips and ideas I have for making meal time a little easier. These are some of my favorite links, blogs, recipes, meals planning subscriptions, cookbooks, all of it. You pick what works for you. Try it out, if it doesn't work for you, try something different. Take a little of this and a little of that and mix it together till it feels right for you. The goal is to make life more simple, not add one more thing to your plate (ha, sorry). In the end, what you feed yourself and the people you love is not what matters. What matters is that they leave the t

Making our house feel like home in the summer feels more chaotic to me than the slower months. November through March, when its dark early and bedtimes come swiftly, meals are slow cooked all day long, and warm light comes from houses in the evening hours, just naturally lends itself to an aesthetic of quiet and calm. At least for me. Summer lends itself to late nights out, days where we are only home long enough to drop piles by the door, eat and leave a mess on the table, dirty more clothes than a small country in a matter of days, and the chaos of home just seems unsettled and rushed. I am going in circles most days, feeling like I am not accomplishing anything and yet spinning and spinning and trying to not tip over.  And yet... And yet, a couple times a month someone asks me “How do you do it all?”  I feel like I am that analogy of a duck on the pond, I look calm on the surface, but underneath my feet are kicking like crazy. And really that is just on a good

Alright ladies, Mothers Day is over! Another day of fallen expectations and sorrow and hurt, that is covered up with smiles and cards and flowers, it done. Now we can breathe again. Yes, it’s a day meant to celebrate how beautiful, hard working, and selfless mothers are, but how many of us have spent this day hiding in a room and crying? Last night I crawled into bed and I said to my husband, “Thank you for a decent Mother’s Day.” I know that doesn’t exactly sound like a compliment, but given that more than once this holiday has ended in a screaming fight, where I feel under appreciated for all my efforts, I’d say a decent Mother’s Day is satisfactory.  The truth is, Mother’s Day is hard for a lot of us. Whether it’s because you have lost a mother, desperately want to be a mother and aren’t, resent motherhood, feel unappreciated, feel like a failure, or your experiences are nothing like you expected. Whatever you reason, it is valid.  A day meant to celebrate women for