The Ways of Her Home

Embracing the homeward call

Hall Closet Turned Butler’s Pantry

I love getting creative with spaces and thinking outside of the box to make my house work for me. If I see a need for a new kind of space, a different arrangement, or additional storage, I put on my thinking cap and play around with a few ideas until I come up with a solution. Such was the case with my lack of table setting storage in my dining room. I had half of my table linens crammed in a kitchen cabinet and the rest in a laundry room cabinet. Chargers and vases were tucked in other various areas throughout the house. Having everything in so many different areas not only made it difficult to set a table quickly, but also created a challenge in really knowing my inventory. Now I'm ... Read more

School Day Breakfast and Beverage

I mentioned in a post about our first week of school that, because we didn't have as much as much expense in curriculum and other materials this year, we got our two homeschoolers a back-to-school gift. Each gift cost $25 at Target, and both gifts make the work of our hands a little lighter when it comes to school morning breakfasts! Our son loves a good breakfast sandwich! My husband bought him a breakfast sandwich at a drive thru one morning on their way to the city dump, which is a total guy thing! Ever since then, he's enjoyed making them at home. So when my husband and I were on a date at Target (because our dates are either to Target or Dollar General these days), and he spotted ... Read more

Ten Reasons to Love Fall!

HAPPY FIRST DAY OF FALL! I could not be any more excited about autumn's arrival! When I started jotting down my favorite things about fall, I quickly came up with 20 things on my list, and I wasn't even finished! There's just so much to love about this glorious season! For this post, I'm going to cut my list short and stop with 10 favorite things which means I'm still leaving out some fun ones like football and travel, but I have to stop somewhere. So, here goes! 1- Fall Flowers 2- Warm Drinks 3-Baking! 4-Soups 5- Scenic Routes 6- Fall Scents 7-Fall Decor 8- The Great Outdoors 9-Chilly Evenings 10- ... Read more

Healthy Fall Fare

Fall season really ignites my cravings for so many delicious foods! If I'm not careful, I can easily lose control. So, lately I've been experimenting with recipes that offer some much-anticipated flavors of fall, but with the health benefits my family needs going into cold and flu season! I love apples with pork chops and have made them in the oven, but wanted a healthy recipe that would work in the crockpot while we were at church, and then be ready to serve when we got home. I found several on the internet so I combined ideas of each of them. Crockpot Apple Pork Chops Ingredients: ~6 bone-in pork chops, rinsed, patted dry, and lightly salted ~4 large apples of any kind ... Read more

Putting the “Labor” in Labor Day!

Labor Day is a low key holiday for us. My husband always has the day off, so the kids and I take the day off from school, but we don’t plan anything big. It's kind of become a thing for us to work part of the day outside--cleaning up the yard to get it ready for fall--and then chilling for the remainder of the day. Our bodies were made to work and rest! REST just feels so much better after the WORK! So here's what we did! My husband cut the grass, edged, helped our son with his pumpkin patch maintenance, and replaced some rotting wood on a post at our front door. I trimmed bushes, weeded the front flower beds, fluffed the pine straw, and cleaned up the front ... Read more

Teach Them Tuesday: Homeschool Highlights of the First Week

We had a fun first week of school here at our little home academy! As with every year, I prayed all summer about our upcoming school year. And, as always, God resolved every question, concern, and decision I took before Him, and got us off to a great start. I love homeschooling my kids and am so thankful for the journey we've experienced together, and, because of that, I can easily get excited for the start of a new year. Here are a few highlights of our first week: We always have a "Pre-First Day of School" on the Friday before our first whole week. This is just a fun day when we take first day photos, hand out school surprises, set up new notebooks, go over the year's plan, and have ... Read more

Happy Almost Fall!

Lately we have caught the fever--the fall fever! We are still more than a month away from the first day of fall and even then, here in the deep south, it'll be a while before those crisp, cool days make their appearance. So yesterday we had a "Let's-Pretend-It's-Fall" day! Nothing extravagant, just a few autumnal pleasures to tide us over for the rest of summer. We lit a deliciously-scented apple candle and whipped up some pumpkin muffins with butterscotch chips. I found some fall cupcake liners left from last year. I've been on a detox diet this summer so, sadly, no muffins for this mama. BUT, I did stir some pureed pumpkin and maple syrup into my steel cut oats and it was ... Read more

Tropical Fruit Salad with Honey Ginger Syrup

I don't know about you but I just can't get enough fruit in the summer! I buy so much fresh fruit every week and we gobble it up. We eat it all year long but love the summer's seasonal fruits the most. Fruit is delicious enough without having to do anything fancy with it--I usually just wash and eat it on the spot--but occasionally I like to make it into a salad, tossed in a lite and healthy syrup. Today I'm sharing one of my favorite ways to do that! Tropical Fruit Salad with Honey Ginger Syrup (This makes a huge fruit salad for a crowd. If you want to cut the recipe in half, you can still use the whole pineapple.) Ingredients: 1 fresh pineapple, peeled and cut up 4 ... Read more