Jerusalem Jackson Greer's Blog, page 15
July 22, 2015
Introducing A Faith-Made Year
(photo, Judea Jackson)
Today I am so excited to introduce my latest project: A Faith-Made Year!
A Faith-Made Year is an eBook/PDF Download project that I have been working on for the past six months.
This little eBook is a curriculum based on my book A Homemade Year: The Blessings of Cooking, Crafting, and Coming Together, and was written expressly to help churches and other organizations (MOPS, Homeschool Groups, Book Clubs…) find ways to share the gifts of A Homemade Year with their members.
I am so proud of this little effort and excited to share this resource with those who are looking to find ways to help families connect to the Story of God in creative and meaningful ways!
A Faith-Made Year Includes:
12 lesson plans (see sample above,) each containing Prayers, Crafts, Reading Selections, Journaling Prompts, Bonus Activities, and Song Suggestions
Guides on how to use the curriculum in Family Ministry, Small Groups, Discipleship Groups, Sunday school programs, and in Church-wide or neighborhood-wide events.
Reproducible materials
Discussion and Reflection Guide that include Social Justice-focused Action Challenges for readers/participants
Discount Code when you order 5 or more copies of A Homemade Year
And more!
Currently A Faith-Made Year is available on Kindle and as a PDF Download. Click the Order Now button for more info or visit Amazon!
Make sure to tell your pastor, your priest, your Sunday School teacher, your kids preschool director, your MOPS group, your Homeschool friends and your book club all about A Faith-Made Year! It is a lot of fun for all ages!
XO
Filed under: Blog, Faith Tagged: A Homemade Year, featured
July 14, 2015
Down on the Farm – #HomespunSummer
I thought it was time to post a little farm & #HomespunSummer update for posterity’s sake if nothing else.
After 8 years of blogging, I depend on this blog as a sort of scrapbook for our life in between deep thoughts and recipes.
So here is what is new at Preservation Acres for July 2015:
1. We got a pig. His name is Winston Independence. He came to live with us on July 4. He is a mini-pig, but he will not be long-term house pig. Eventually he will be a helpful plow and fertilizer for our gardens and pastures, as well as our pet. He has one brown eye and one blue eye and is growing fast. We might be a little bit smitten, and it has been suggested that Winston needs his own YouTube channel. We shall see.
2. Happy Dogs. The puppies are happy and are becoming more “dog” and less “puppy” slowly. Currently their favorite thing besides being lazy is swimming in the pond. I am going to Periscope it one of these days… (PS – I am on Periscope under JerusalemGreer..)
3. Mowing. Mowing. Mowing. Our 8 acres is largely “yard” at the moment. Next year we hope to have it divided up into pastures and gardens and fields and pens, but for now it is a beautiful and massive lawn. This means lots and lots and lots of mowing. Luckily everyone in-house is big enough to help. Unfortunately it is now too hot to mow in the mid-day and it has to be done in smaller chunks in the evening.
4. Our fruit trees are blooming!
5. But. Most of them have brown root or some other ick. Tackling this issue is on our to-do list for the winter. I aspire to become a master prunner. But we are hoping to maybe get a few decent pieces this summer. Fingers crossed.
6. Meet Sister. We bought a boat for the pond. I named her Sister. I need Jeanetta to come and paint the name on her along with some Mexican embroidery flowers.
7. I love having big kids. Miles is an excellent boat captain and I like to sit back and relax while he charters me around. We haven’t used the boat as much this month as again it has been TOO HOT and we have been nutty busy. But I am hoping to talk Sweet Man into a late night fishing excursion under the stars soon.
8. Golden. Have I mentioned how much I love the pond?
9. Porch Life. Early morning and late late evening are lovely on the deck. But I do need a swing. Or a great lounge chair. Or both….
I am growing basil and sage out on the table and having fresh basil on hand is one of life’s little luxuries. I am putting it on everything and it just makes me so happy.
10. Jonathan. We sadly lost one of our cats in June. Jonathan was a lover and a dreamer and the sweetest cat I have ever met. We miss him daily.
11. The 4th of July. We celebrated our first 4th here on the farm! It was truly amazing even though it was small and simple. I had so much fun watching the boys set off fireworks for the first time over the pond. What a memory.
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Despite what the pictures might show, life here isn’t perfect. Our kids still fight. Money is tight. There is so much to do to the house and the land I often want to curl into the fetal position and wait there till the real grown-ups show up. Occasionally wonder if we did the right thing.
But then something small will happen. A smile, a laugh, an image. We will do something like set fireworks off over our pond, or chase Winston around the kitchen, and I will see the forest for the trees. And I know in those moments more than ever that this is right where we need to be. Even on the hard days. Maybe especially then.
Filed under: Blog, Farm Tagged: featured, Raising Greers
July 8, 2015
Give the Kids the Camera (Grand Canyon)
I have a new approach to vacation photos.
I give my kids the camera.
This new habit began a couple of years ago with our trip to Williamsburg, VA (my personal version of Disney World.) It was during that trip that I handed over the big expensive camera because 1) they wouldn’t stop asking and 2) I really was more interested in instagramming the whole trip on the whole. Occasionally I would take a turn with our fancy camera, snapping some shot of specific things I wanted to remember, but for the majority of the trip the kids were our official photographers.
Once we were home and I downloaded the pictures I loved what I saw. I saw the world from their perspective. I saw what they saw, at their level, through the lens of what mattered to them. Which when I thought about it, is really what I want my family vacation photos to show me.
Last week we had the opportunity to visit the Grand Canyon for a few hours, and again I handed over the cameras to the kids and stuck with my phone for most of the day.
Here is a bit of what they saw…
Good job fellas :)
Filed under: Blog, Family Tagged: featured, Raising Greers, Travels
June 30, 2015
Garlic Beef Curry Sliders – A Locally Sourced Dinner
Put in gardens and eat what grows in that country. – Jeremiah 29:5
Ever wondered if you could make a yummy, wholesome, family-friendly dinner from locally sourced foods that was something other than salad?
This is the challenge I gave myself when I visited Farm2Home15 at P. Allen Smith’s farm earlier this month and had the opportunity to shop at the Arkansas Grown and Made Market.
Here is what I ended up with:
A Variety of Squashes
Spanish Rice Mix made from locally grown rice
All-natural Angus beef, hormone and antibiotic-free
Garlic and Chive Fromage Blanc
and I picked up a bottle of sangria from an Arkansas vineyard (yep, we have those) at the grocery store.
Using those ingredients and very little else, I settled on the following menu:
Sautéed Veggies (made by Miles by the way)
Spanish Rice (using the mix I had purchased)
Garlic and Curry Beef Sliders (To make the meat patties for the sliders, I used this recipe as a guide and modified it a bit, using 2 tbsp. of grits instead of breadcrumbs, adding some diced garlic, along with 2 eggs to help bind the meat. I spread the fromage blanc on the curry rolls, added some arugula, and tomato and voila! An amazing sandwich was created.)
SIDENOTE: This was my first time using all natural ground beef and I couldn’t believe how much further it went. In the picture of the recipe I found, I noticed that the regular store-bought meat shrunk to half the size once cooked. Our beef on the other hand, only shrunk about 1/4″ around the perimeter if that. I used 1 1/2 lbs. and we had enough beef for twelve sliders, while the recipe called for 1 lb of beef for just four sliders. The difference was AMAZING. I know that all natural meat cost more per pound than store-bought, but the fact that it goes so much further means that it is actually the better deal – monetarily and health wise and environmentally.
To complete the “local and homespun” theme, I picked wildflowers from our yard for the table centerpiece and added them to a small milk pitcher.
I am pleased to report that EVERYONE loved the meal. Even my most finicky eater.
Eating local is important to our family for a variety of reasons, one of them being our faith. As a family we believe that one way we are to Glorify God is to invest in, support, take pride in, and enjoy the community that we live in. Eating local is one we can support and enjoy our community.
As it says in one of my favorite passages of the bible (Jeremiah 29:4-14) Put in gardens and eat what grows in that country.
Don’t mind if I do.
Cheers and Blessings friends!
Filed under: Blog, Farm, Feast Tagged: Cooking, featured, P. Allen Smith
June 22, 2015
Arkansas Made – A Day at Moss Mountain
“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe Arkansas is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.”
— John Donne (No Man Is An Island – Meditation XVII)
Recently I made my annual pilgrimage to one of my favorite places on earth, P. Allen Smith’s Moss Mountain Farm, with some of my favorite people, Arkansas Women (and a few Fellas) Bloggers, to celebrate and learn about one of my favorite topics – all things Arkansas Grown and Arkansas Made during the Farm2Home15 event. I love this event because it really is centered around the idea of community. The community of bloggers, the community of local agricultural, the community of growers and makers.
(a flock of geese and a flock of bloggers look oddly similar…)
I am so grateful for my community.
My blogging community, my agri community, the locally grown & made community….
I am proud to be an Arkansas Women Blogger
I love to buy Arkansas Made
I am raising Arkansas Grown kids
and
No one loves Arkansas’ agri community more than P. Allen Smith !
so a HUGE thanks to him and the Arkansas Departmart of Agriculture for bringing us all together.
Aldo Leopold
Where is your community?
Filed under: Blog, Farm Tagged: Arkansas Women Bloggers, featured
June 17, 2015
Three Questions to Ask at the Dinner Table
What if there were three questions you could ask around the dinner table that could change your families faith life? Would you ask them?
Faith @ Home is one my “things.” It is one of the things I write about, think about, muddle around with.
It is something I speak on, teach on, encourage others to try.
And as a Minister to Children, Youth, and Families, it is part of my job to figure out how to encourage families to share their faith at home.
But sometimes I feel like a complete failure and fraud.
Because sometimes – sometimes often – I am not sure if I am doing a good “faith @ home” job myself.
I am not sure if my kids are connecting to the Story of God in our home life as much as I would hope.
Maybe I am being too hard on myself, but maybe not.
The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.
You see, despite what my “thing” is, I am no different from anyone else.
I struggle with the same fears and questions you struggle with.
I fall off the Slow Living wagon and find that I am knee-deep in distractions and busyness.
Too often I find that I am too scattered, full of good intentions, and half-baked follow-thru.
I say yes to too many things, and I have too many ideas, I want to do too much, and instead, overwhelmed and worn out, I do nothing.
So, my excuses, my reasons, for not celebrating our faith at home more often are not exceptional.
They are ordinary. They are probably not that different from yours.
They sound like
No time. Who has time for one more “to do?” One more project to try? Craft to make? Book to read? I want to do all the things.. But. I. Just. Can’t.
Abundance of awkwardness. If you have teenagers you know what I am talking about. “Geez mom? Really? God stuff again?”
Lack of inspiration. Dinner prayers, the Advent wreath, maybe some Jesus music at bedtime or in the car, (unless, again – teenagers.) What other ways are there to share faith without going into Martha-Stewartesque overdrive?
Changing family dynamics. As kids grow and the family dynamics change so do the dynamics of incorporating faith at home. What a two-year old can relate to and what a fifteen year will connect with are both the same and different. Much like an infants feeding patterns, just when you think you have it figured out, it goes and changes when you aren’t looking.
Recently, during a 2:30 am panic attack about all of this, fresh out of can-do spirit, I hit upon an idea.
This summer, as part of our Homespun Summer, I am throwing out all the big faith@home plans and the spirit-killing to-do list and trying something a little simpler.
This summer,I am going to try a 3 Question Experiment, and I would love for you to try it with me.
This an experiment in practicing faith @ home without having to buy a single craft supply, or dinner ingredient, or reading a single passage out of a book. Did you hear that? NO SUPPLIES. NO PLANNING. NO STRESS.
All you will need is the ability to ask three questions of your family every day.
This summer, every day during lunch or dinner – be it around our table, in the car on the way to camp, or out in a restaurant, consider asking the following three questions of each other:
How did you glorify God today?
How did you enjoy God today?
How did you see God today?
The first two questions were inspired The Westminster Shorter Catechism which begins:
1. What is the chief end of man?
A. Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.
I have always loved this question and answer because so much is bound up in it.
In fact, when my kids ask me “What is the meaning of life?” This is always the answer I give them.
And I make sure to emphasis both parts. Because sometimes we get so caught up in the first half of the answer, that we miss the second half.
And the answer is the whole thing.
Glorifying God without enjoying Him is joyless, and smacks of legalism.
Enjoying God without glorifying Him seems full of selfishness and entitlement.
But to both glorify and enjoy God, is to live out one of the most beautiful images in scripture, that ‘In him we live and move and have our being’;
And at the end of the day – that is what I want for my children.
To be woven with God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, their identify as Beloved firmly secure.
Yes, I want them to know the heritage of their faith, yes, I want them to have both a corporate and personal relationship with scripture, yes, I want them to find ways to pray that mean something to them, but if you asked me to narrow it down to one wish above all others, I would have to say, that what I wish and pray for them is that they learn to live, and move, and have their being in the great merciful love of God.
And so this summer, as we travel, and do laundry, and register for new schools, and visit grandparents, and cook dinner, and spend too much time in front of screens, I am going to ask,
How did you glorify God today?
How did you enjoy God today?
How did you see God today?
And if first they do not understand my questions, I will go first, leading by example.
And if I have not glorified, or enjoyed, or seen God that day, I will ask for forgiveness for not paying better attention.
Because God is here. There is no excuse worthy of not noticing.
So, then, how do we live this way?
What are we looking for?
How do we learn to notice?
How do we glorify God?
By loving our neighbor
By taking care of creation
By taking care of each other
By giving ourselves, our talents, and our bounty to those in need
By obeying the call on our lives
By helping the widow reach the cereal on the top shelf at the grocery store
By being good stewards of our material possessions, and our gifts
By being honest
By gathering together
By sharing bread and wine
By enjoying God
The truth is that there are a million ways to glorify God – and most of them are offered to us everyday.
How do we enjoy God?
By enjoying our lives –
By living from a grateful heart
By enjoying our neighbor, our families,
By eating good, healthy, wholesome food
By playing baseball on a cool summer evening
By making cookies to share
By reading under warm blankets
By swinging on tire swings
By going fishing
By taking long walks with best friends
By working in the garden
By telling stories
By playing music
By looking at a piece of art that stops our breath
By seeing God
The truth is that there are a million ways to enjoy God set before us everyday.
How do we see God?
In the way the light hits the trees as the sun goes down.
In the way the baby curls up on the shoulder of his father
In the helping hand of the young man who helped the old man step off the curb without falling
In remembering to check the bank account before that check bounces
In the song that the child sings in the grocery store
In the teacher that helped a student be brave
In the way the lighting bugs flicker across an open pasture
In the smell of a garlic and onions cooking
In the words on the page or the tune on the radio
In the forgiveness for the mistakes we made
In the way the sun came up again
In the tears of the brokenhearted
In how we were loved today
In how other’s glorified him
The truth is that there are a million ways to see God, and they are set before us everyday.
Glorify. Enjoy. See.
What if this summer we put down all our Should’s and Could’s and If Only’s and just asked each other these three questions.
In the car, at the ball field, around the table, after work, while loading the dishwasher…
What we asked, and kept asking, until the questions are as natural to us as breathing?
How did we glorify God today?
How did we enjoy God today?
How did we see God today?
What if we lived, and moved, and had our being in God?
What if our children did too?
Now, that wouldn’t make a great “What I did this summer” essay.
So will you try this with me?
Will you find ways to ask just 3 little questions at the dinner table tonight?
I wonder what we will discover along the way?
Peace & Love my friends –
Filed under: Blog, Faith, Family Tagged: featured, HomespunSummer
June 14, 2015
Couscous “Library” Summer Salad
Original Post: 6/15/2012
Before we left for vacation I managed to get a few things ready so it wouldn’t be too lonesome around here. For a theme I thought I would post about some of my favorite summer indulgences. Today’s indulgence is all about summer salads…
First up is recipe from the archives for what I now call Library Salad because the salad was inspired by one I read about while working at the library.
This is hands down our favorite non-lettuce salad of the summer. It is somewhat similar to a tabbouleh salad, and anytime we have a summer gathering it is an easy and crowd pleasing dish to bring.
COUSCOUS “Library” SUMMER SALAD
Ingredients
1 1/2 Stock (chicken, beef or vegetable)
1 Cup Plain Couscous
1 Large Cucumber, peeled, seeded, and thinly sliced
2 cups sliced grape tomatoes
1 cup of Feta Cheese
1 Small Purple Onion, cut in half and thinly sliced
The Kernels off of 3 Fresh Ears of Corn, slightly boiled
Juice and Pulp of 1 large Lemon
2 Tablespoons of Sunflower Oil
2 teaspoons pf Sea Salt
Directions
Boil Stock
Pour over dry couscous
Set aside to cool
In a large bowl combine veggies and cheese
Add Couscous to mixture
Dress with lemon juice, oil, and salt.
Mix thoroughly, cover and set in fridge for 1-5 hours.
You can serve this right away, but it is better if it has some time to soak.
If it is too dry for your taste add 1 more Tablespoon of oil
I can eat a huge bowl of this for lunch and dinner for days on end. It is just too yummy.
Do you have a favorite summer salad? Let me know, I would love to try it!
Filed under: Blog, Feast Tagged: Cooking, featured
June 12, 2015
All The Things of the Interwebs 6-12-15
Fried Chicken, Gilmore Girls reunion, Pink Tractors, Backyard Studios, America’s Got Talent, hidden chalkboards, #SayHerName, and Sorta Awesome Podcast’.
It’s all here on Friday Favorites.
Are you ready for All The Things?
Let’s do it!
On Food
I am a Southern Gal with some wild Pacific Northwest streaks.
But mostly I am southern. Always have been, no matter where I have lived. Sweet tea is in my blood.
This means that I can eat some fried chicken. It means that I have opinions on fried chicken. It means I have all the thoughts about some fried chicken.
But I have to confess that I have never made fried chicken myself. Scandalous, I know.
But this summer – once our vent-a-hood is installed – I am tackling this challenge. Pinkie swear.
And this recipe from Handmade Home is going on the list of ones to try.
Plus, I just love the photo styling in this pic. It is very A Homemade Year, don’t you think?
On Family
I love, love, this shed-office that Jamie’s husband built for her. And more than that I love the story of how it was built.
It reminds me of the sort of things tha Sweet Man does for me.
On Faith
“You are made in the image of God, DaJerria, you are fearfully and wonderfully made. You are valuable. You are beloved.
Let her be a person, not a news story or a litany or a victim. We will learn from the marginalized and oppressed, we will believe their stories. We will incline our ears and amplify voices. We will become educated beyond our own narrow context. We will not become numb and we won’t mind our own business, we will let our hearts cry out alongside of our sisters.
Say a name today.
DaJerria Becton.”
On Farm
This week I stumbled upon this fun site called Pink Tractor. The site is female farmer and farmer-wife focused, but really anyone can use it.
So far my favorite feature are resources list, like the Ag Glossary and Equipment Database. You better believe I have bookmarked this site!
On Fluff
So if you have hung around here long you might have noticed that I have a thing for vintage chalkboards.
You might even say I have chalkboard obsession…
Which is why I am gaga over the recent discovery of preserved 100-year-old chalkboards, discovered in Oklahoma. Go read the whole article and see all the chalkboards. The amateur anthropologist in me is just giddy about these.
And now here are several category defying finds that I jut HAD to share!
First, have you seen the hour-long reunion interview with the cast and creator of Gilmore Girls??
If not, go watch it now!
If you haven’t discovered the Sorta Awesome podcast with the lovely Megan Tietz, go now and add it to your must-listens. You can also check out all the show notes on her tumbler site. Laura Tremaine (aka Hollywood Housewife) is one of her co-host and their shows are my favorites, primarily because I have personal connections with them both as they have both been great supporters of A Homemade Year, so listening to them is like listening to friends.I primarily listen to the podcast on my drives into town from the farm, but they are also good listens while cleaning house or on walks.
Kinda makes me wanna start my own podcast…
And finally I had to share this video of Sharon Irving. Sharon was one of the worship leaders at a conference I went to in April and she blew me away. Even though her talent is immense, what came through the most during that week, was her heart, and her love of God. She never stole the show or made what she was doing all about her. She led us with humility and gentleness. So it is particularly wonderful to see her step out and SHINE in this video. Just made my heart happy.
Additional Links:
Great Review of A Homemade Year
Order my book A Homemade Year: The Blessings of Cooking, Crafting, and Coming Together and have a #homespunsummer
The summer activities in this book are some of my personal favorites and some of the most fun for all ages!
Have a great weekend friends!
Filed under: Blog Tagged: featured, Friday Favorites
June 9, 2015
How to Have a Homespun Summer
Summer is here y’all!
Which means it is time to shift gears and slow our roll a bit. Time to kick back and embrace rest.
Time to make bucket list and eat popsicles and run through sprinklers.
In other words, the time has come to observe a Homespun Summer.
Here at Preservation Acres we try our best to order our days around the ancient rhythm of the Christian Calendar (aka The Liturgical Calender, aka The Church Calendar,) and it just so happens that in this system summertime is also known as Ordinary Time. Ordinary Time is a season that calls all of us to rest, to slow down a bit, to take our time, to invest in the earth, our communities, and each other. I love this season so much that I even wrote a whole chapter about in A Homemade Year (but I think I could have written a whole book instead!) Here is a little excerpt from the end of that chapter:
Embracing the ordinary is something that even the church honors. Built into the liturgical year are seasons called Ordinary Time, a series of slow, repetitive, highly under-scheduled days, that bridge the more robust seasons of the church year together. Our entire planet spins and turns according to the rhythm of the sun, creating in every living organism a pattern of rest and work. In Genesis, God himself goes to the trouble to give us a pattern for our seven-day week, providing one day fully dedicated to rest (and how many of us, myself included, have just turned that into another day of to-dos?). Just as our own individual lives take on daily patterns and just as we have created a year-round rhythm by the annual repetition of birthdays, anniversaries, memorials, and vacations, the church year also follows suit. The liturgical calendar has created a pattern within our twelve-month rotation that provides for seasons of rejoicing, mourning, work, and rest. Perhaps the church forefathers and foremothers knew what modern Westerners have a hard time admitting—that no one can sustain the intensity, activity, and emotion that Christmastide and Holy Week require for three hundred and sixty-five days of a year. Everyone needs a break from even the most extraordinary moments in life, even followers of Christ. And so, built into the church year’s rhythm is a time that calls us to stop, rest, and enjoy the everyday. A time to honor the simple and the ordinary, an open invitation to quiet, to stillness, to turn down the shouting of our busy modern lives, in order to once again hear our heartbeat and the heartbeat of God within us. – A Homemade Year; The Blessings of Cooking, Crafting, and Coming Together
I don’t know about anyone else, but right now I need to turn down the shouting more than ever, and hear the heartbeat of God within me.
It has almost reached critical mass.
This summer is going to be different for all of us because this is the first summer since Miles began kindergarten that the boys will have a full summer off (their previous school was year-round. ) It is also the first full summer where I am working, because of course, unlike a school year, the church life year carries on through the summer. This transition has made us all a little edgy, me more than anyone, since I have lost my much needed and appreciated alone-time at the house. So together we are all learning a whole new way of being this summer; Figuring out how to balance our days together and apart. It is important to me that we are intentional with the summer break, but without over-working and over-scheduling ourselves. The truth in the pudding is this: We are homebodies. And we are doing our best at giving our boys a Slow Childhood and living a Slow Home life. As a family we are trying to learn how to value and observe restorative rest (aka not just vegging out in front of screens,) as much as we value and love to go on exciting new adventures. So what better time to work on hushing the noise that fills up our days, than in the summer, when schedules are loser and the heat is often too stifling to move faster than a snail anyway?
I am calling our quest a Homespun Summer and I am inviting you to come along with us on this journey if you would like.
My goal is to post bi-weekly, here on the blog, one idea or challenge to help us all remember to rest and not go into our default Juggling All The Things mode. I will also be posting on Instagram using the hashtag #homespunsummer, and I would love to see you are living a #homespunsummer through post and updates as well, so feel free to join in the hastagging anytime.
I know this will not be a perfect experiment. In fact it will probably be one big beautimess. But that is okay. This is how we grow, this is how things take root in our hearts – slowly, intentionally, imperfectly.
The first thing any journey like this needs is a rough outline of an itinerary or a map. Something with a basic outline, but with room for fluidity.
So the first Homespun Summer challenge is to make a Summer Bucket List.
This is a great way to be intentional about your summer, to give a little bit of form to the season.
Make sure to include restful activities (such as naps, lazy walks, pool floating etc,) and not just busy activities like camps and vacations. If you have kids, let them contribute to the list too. Some things may be more doable than others, but it is always fun to see what everyone comes up with.
We made our list on our chalkboard, but you can make yours on a poster board, a piece paper, or make a collage “list” using old magazines pictures instead of words (I think I might put a collage craft on our list now!)
Use this list as an inspiration for things to do when the days drag on, as a reminder to give thanks for how bountiful your life is, and as a motivator to work towards creating space in your days for rest.
You can also find great inspiration and ready-made bucket list online. This is a printable I made a few years ago of one of our bucket list – feel free to pin, print, copy, and pass along if you would like.
And if you want to even go a step further, and incorporate some faith traditions into your Homespun Summer, consider ordering a copy of A Homemade Year: The Blessings of Cooking, Crafting, and Coming Together. The summer activities in this book are some of my personal favorites, and I am all ready scheming on how we can have a St. James Day inspired shrimp boil in July…
So, are you ready for a Homespun Summer?
Me too!
Happy Summertime Friends!
Filed under: Blog, Family Tagged: A Homemade Year, featured
May 26, 2015
Our Colorful Farmhouse Kitchen – a #SlowHome update
Oh, friends.
What a journey learning to live #SlowHome has been. For us this adventure of going slow with our remodeling efforts has been full of tears, small victories, big hurdles, great fun, deep bonding, second guessing, creative inspiration, and more decisions than you can shake a stick at. But after nine months, the little seeds we planted all those months ago are starting to produce beautiful, nourishing, healthy fruit. Like our lovely, inviting, happy, warm, and open kitchen.
This kitchen is really a creative collaborative effort between me and Sweet Man. Since he loves to cook even more than I do, I really wanted this space to reflect his taste and needs as well as my own. There are a still a few tweaks to make and as we use it we may change the location of a few things, but for now we are just so happy to be in the space and to have all our stuff back!
(Some people live without their stuff for a season and find that they don’t need or want as much as before. For better or worse this has not been our experience. Turns out we are stuff people through and through. We love our stuff and we have missed it. I would like to think that perhaps this affinity for our things is because everything we purchase is chosen not just for its functionality but for the joy it brings us, or the story it tells of when and where we came across it. Or maybe I am just romanticising things because I hate thinking that we are materialistic. The truth, as always, is probably somewhere in the middle! Ha!)
While we are not 100% done (more on that at the bottom of this post,) we are SO close that we are at long last able to enjoy our kitchen and I am just giddy. Last night we actually cooked dinner for friends, and while Sweet Man cooked, we were all able to visit in our kitchen area (that can actually accommodate more than one person!) and then we all ate at the dining table (instead of balancing our plates on our laps in the living room) and then we used real napkins instead of paper towels. While there is nothing morally superior about these things, to us they are important and worth celebrating , because to us they represent being home. They are familiar and comforting routines, routines that help us slow down and be present to each other, to the moment, and to our life. So while I will never advocate that tables and cloth napkins in and of themselves are intrinsically special, I will have to say that the feeling of stability and homeyness that they bring our family is. Which is why, last night I breathed a huge sigh of relief. After a year of constant changes, it was nice to feel like something was “normal” again.
As soon as I learn to use my “big” camera again (it’s been in accidental storage for 9 months – don’t even get me started,) I will post some detail and resource post, but for now here is a little look back at where we started, where we are, and where we are headed:
BEFORE
ALMOST AFTER
LEFT TO DO
So there you have it! A little glimpse into our colorful farmhouse kitchen. Thanks for all the love and encouragement from everyone during this process!
Happy Tuesday Friends!
Filed under: Blog, Fluff Tagged: featured, My Home, Preservation Acres
