31 days to making a house a home!

This has been a huge couple of years of change for me. I moved to the United States of America from Australia in late April 2014 and into a brand new house with my sweet husband, RM. It’s been quite the learning curve for both of us. It is a blank slate of a house — our first together, and first as homeowners — and we’ve been bumbling our way along together.

It is said that out of necessity is born creativity.

I’ve been thinking alot about what home means and how our house is being transformed into our home little by little.

I’ve always believed that the best way to learn is to learn in community!

It is exciting and daunting all at the same time. This will push me, my creativity, and our small house project budget.

This series is less about going from room to room — there are plenty of great blogs, websites, and books that deal with room by room decorating and projects — and more about the philosophical purpose of each space in your home, and how we might think about what makes a space where you live and sleep, a home. We will ask questions, think about what makes home a space for rest, relaxation and nourishment. We will seek to understand what is important for each of us and how we make spaces into places that matter to us. It’ll be one part creativity, one part theology, one part philosophy, one part literary, one part artistic, and one part intuition.

The German poet, Hermann Hesse, once wrote:

“One never reaches home,’ she said. ‘But where paths that have an affinity for each other intersect, the whole world looks like home, for a time.”

While, I agree that home can be a seasonal matter, it doesn’t change the need to make where you are at into home.

As a military family, we often think about how our belongings and lifestyle will weather another place and another time. We think about how furniture will fare in the hands of movers, and what emotional investment we might be making.

Indeed, we have already moved since this series commenced. We went from a small cottage type home, to a townhouse on two levels.

Making places is not for the faint of heart, but our hearts can take it! Joy is to be shared – all that we have is multiplied when it can be shared with those we care. I know that I have much to learn and this journey is a beginning…

Maybe you are thinking about these things too – let’s learn together.

So here is where we are heading:

Day 1. House v. Home

Day 2: You gotta know what you want to get what you want.

Day 3. Say “welcome” at the door.

Day 4. Warming the House: A liturgy for home

Day 5. Life is Messy

Day 6: What’s in a name?

Day 7. Merging Stuff & Styles

Day 8: “Be at home where you are”

Day 9: Textiles and Warmth

Day 10: State of the Union