The Ways of Her Home

Embracing the homeward call

Snapshot Saturday: First Week of School ’24

This week began a new school year for my son in homeschooling and my daughter with her online classes and the preschool where she works. There are always a few things to iron out the first week, but all in all, it was a good first week of school! Smoothies and banana muffins have been the popular breakfast for all so far! We got back to our study routine, sometimes at the kitchen table and sometimes lounging on the couch, but always a candle burning and a cat sleeping close by. I think the pets are happy that we're back to homeschooling. Guitar lessons and tennis lessons will continue this year, and we have great instructors for both! A friend to teach guitar and my nephew to ... Read more

A Restful Sunday

I love Sundays! We rest our bodies, we enjoy good food, and we ground ourselves spiritually through worship before starting a new week. I thought I'd show what an average Sunday looks like for our family. This is our most restful day of the week so it's pretty low key. Some Sundays are different than what I show here but this is pretty much our typical Sunday. After I shower and get ready, I head to the kitchen to put muffins in the oven and do a little lunch prep while everyone else is getting up and going. Simple muffins and fruit have been our Sunday breakfast for years. It's easy for mom and fills us for the morning. I switch up the muffin flavors each week and some of my family's ... Read more

Midwinter Table Setting

Happy 2024, everyone! On Christmas Eve Eve when everyone was home, Joel and I prepared a steak dinner for the six of us. On a whim, I set the table with blues, browns, cream, and a bit of orange. The cream dinner plates are Pioneer Woman and are getting old and chipped, but I still love them. The blue floral salad plates are from T.J.Maxx (4-ish years ago), the flatware is from Walmart, and the napkins are from Home Goods (2 years ago). The brown glasses are from Hobby Lobby's fall line which I got for 50% off in November and they have been a nice new addition to our kitchen. Winter wreaths, a frosty tree, oranges, and a gingerbread candle finish off the table for a ... Read more

Christmas Advent ‘23

When my kids were little our Advent time was usually incorporated into our school day. Some years I worked with them on memorizing the account of Jesus’s birth in Luke 2 (tip: The Charlie Brown Christmas movie helped with that!) Some years I read through a children’s devotional book and we made a craft or did a service project to go along with that day’s message. Having older kids now ages 19 and 12 in the home, we’re enjoying a more mature type of Advent. I’ve mentioned before that our family has a Bible time after dinner. It’s nothing rigid and not even every night but just a few nights a week when everyone is home and we can read through a chapter of the Bible and discuss. So, during ... Read more

Fall Camping Weekend ’23

Good Monday morning! I'd planned to have a nice post out early this morning, but we came in from camping yesterday and I wasn't feeling my best. By last night I had a full-blown migraine and had to go to bed, so I wasn't able to work on this last night. I'm just going to quickly share a few photos and give a little detail about our weekend. So sorry for the lack of order in this post! We have a yearly tradition of camping with two other families each October. We love camping with our friends and have special memories from each year. They are all great campers and we've learned a lot of handy camping tips from them! We go to a local campground which is also a historic site by the ... Read more

Fall is Calling!

We had a fun fall weekend with a trip to the pumpkin patch Saturday afternoon! It had been very gloomy and overcast all morning at my son's soccer game, so we were thrilled to see the sun and the blue skies show up for a while that afternoon. It turned out to be a gorgeous day. This farm is a few miles down the road from us and has been such a blessing to our growing community. We've pretty much got the corn maze memorized after going there so many years but it's still fun. We walked behind a young family with a toddler who was so cute to watch. This farm also has a sunflower maze which is just beautiful! Look at the color! Blue skies and bright yellow ... Read more

Snapshot Saturday: Sweet Blessings (with a smile!)

Good morning, friends. We had a week that was a mixture of sad and sweet. My sister-in-law's mother passed away and she was so special to our family. Everyone called her Momma Gay, and she was like an aunt to my siblings and me and like a grandmother to all our children. I'll share more about her in another post because she deserves more than a mention, but today I'm going to share some simple blessings of the week. Why? Because all week we've remembered that Momma Gay believed in looking at the bright side and always recommended, "Just put a smile on your face and you'll feel better!" So that's what we're going to do! I was blessed with some baking time this week. I've been working on ... Read more

Mother’s Day Fancy

I'm continuing to catch up on my spring posts and today I'm covering Mother's Day. We hosted my husband's side of the family this year and while my sweet husband insisted that I not work too much on Mother's Day, I assured him that getting to set a feminine table for the ladies would not be work at all but, on the contrary, would bring me great pleasure! I set up the dining room for the ladies so we could have a frilly table and the men had the kitchen table set just for them so they wouldn't have to endure the pink and fluff, haha! I've had this April Cornell tablecloth for so many years and I've always called it my "Mother's Day tablecloth" because the floral pattern and soft ... Read more