The Ways of Her Home

Embracing the homeward call

Italian Cream Cake

One evening last week, the mothers and daughters from our small group got together to celebrate the upcoming arrival of the baby of our friend Rivers. This family has been such a blessing to our group so we ladies wanted to celebrate with Rivers and her two sweet girls. We planned a meal of salads, followed by a few desserts: Italian cream cake, raspberry white chocolate almond bars, brownies, and coffee. This Italian cream cake is my most requested cake by my family or when I'm asked to bring a dessert to a special occasion. It suits any holiday or celebration any time of the year! It's unique from most other Italian cream cakes in that it doesn't call for pecans or coconut, so ... Read more

Easy Crudité and Charcuterie Boards for New Year’s Snacking

Anyone else getting tired of eating? I think one of the best and worst things about the holidays is the food! We love it, until it's too much. After Christmas we're ready for some healthier eats, but there's still New Year's to go. Crudité and Charcuterie boards are a healthier option that still looks and feels all fancy-schmancy for New Year’s! A Crudités Board is typically veggies and dips only. I’ve been adding just a little fruit and nuts to ours lately, but the emphasis is still very much on the veggies.Veggies can include just about any you like and are usually served raw, but for the firmer veggies such as green beans, asparagus, carrots, snap peas, etc., I blanch them in ... Read more

Summer Farewell Tea

It seems so hard to believe that summer break is drawing to a close. My kids and I have been trying to get in all the last bits of summer fun with individual groups of our friends and family before school schedules start. We make a point to get together with my niece and sister-in-law, and another mother/daughter duo a few times a year to enjoy artsy teas, outings, and lessons for the purpose of indulging our inner hopeless romantics, haha. Realizing we'd not yet managed to work in a summer activity with them, we quickly pulled together a back-to-school tea. We all homeschool (except for my oldest daughter who is in college), and both my niece and our friend are beginning their senior ... Read more

Entertaining Guests During a Pandemic

Without a doubt, Covid-19 has changed much of our social life as we've known it. For the first couple of months we were in almost total isolation. After taking measures those first couple of months to safeguard our family's physical health by staying away from people, my husband and I began seeing the need to balance that with safeguarding our family's emotional health in being around people. So as it's become more apparent that the virus isn't going to pass on by too quickly and that we're in this for longer than originally anticipated, I'm exploring ways of having friends and family to our home in safe and responsible ways. I thought I'd share a few ideas I've come up with for ... Read more

Fourth of July 2020

I hope you all had a great Independence Day! We enjoyed some "safe" entertaining over the weekend which gave me a fun reason to decorate a little. Nothing too fussy--just flags, flowers, and chalkboards! White crepe myrtles and flags tucked in blue and white vases were just enough! I added flags and patriotic ribbon to old wreaths. Pretty simple! This one is in the front hall by my front door. I snatched the blue bow from my lemon wreath. And this one sits on my mantle. The night before the 4th, we had some friends over for hot dogs and fireworks! Most of our time was going to be spent outside so we cleaned up the backyard and put out a few festive ... Read more

Spring 2020: Counting Every Blessing

Spring 2020 was a doozy. These days just the mention of 2020 comes with sighs and eye-rolls. Covid-19 has brought hardships, stress, and loss to many. Our family has dealt with the heaviness as well in a number of ways, but the Lord has also showered blessing upon blessing on us. I love the song "Counting Every Blessing" by Rend Collective and have had that song in my head since The Rona hit. So today I'm counting every blessing of Spring 2020! And because there were so many, this is an incredibly long post, but mostly photos. Blessing 1: The Great Outdoors Not a single day passed during all of isolation where the sun did not rise! And with each sunrise came new mercies and ... Read more

Looking Back: Winter 2019/2020

Hello again! Yesterday I posted some highlights of FALL 2019. Today I'm moving on to WINTER 2019/2020! As soon as Thanksgiving was over and the fall decorations were packed away, we went straight into Christmas festivities. My tea ladies and I kicked off the season the last weekend in November with a tea lunch at a beautiful tea room, all decorated for the holidays! This leisurely tea time was our calm before the holiday storm. The first weekend in December, our family went to cut down our Christmas tree at a tree farm we've been going to since our oldest was a baby. I took a lot of family photos, and won't post those here, but it was a lovely, sunny day on the tree farm! It's ... Read more

Looking Back: Fall 2019

Hello, friends! This week I'm going to play a little catch up here on the blog. I'd like to begin with some highlights of our past school year, but even just the highlights would be too much for one post, so I'm going to do this in three posts: fall, winter, and spring. Today I'll share FALL 2019! We started our twelfth year of homeschooling in late August 2019. The chalkboard below was our photo prop for first-day-of-school pictures. One of our favorite ways to end the summer season and start a new school year is with an outdoor performance by our city’s symphony! My oldest daughter and her friend invited some of their college friends who were new to the area as a way of ... Read more