Making Home “HOME SWEET HOME.”
I know FOR SURE we must have talked about this before, but it’s on my mind with this new old farmhouse I’ve got. How does one MAKE a home HOME? How do you take four walls and make them your own HOME SWEET HOME? How do you create a HOME that nourishes and nurtures your family?
I’ve come up with FIVE WAYS to do that.
I have to tell you. When I first saw this old farmhouse (a year ago now!) and stepped through the door for the first time…well….
is a certified farmgirl at heart. She’s happily married to her beach bum Yankee husband of 20 years. She went from career gal to being a creative homeschooling mom for two of her biggest blessings and hasn’t looked back since. Debbie left her lifelong home in the high desert of Northern Nevada 10 years ago and washed up on the shore of America’s hometown, Plymouth, MA, where she and her family are now firmly planted. They spend part of each summer in a tiny, off–grid beach cottage named “The Sea Horse.”
“I found a piece of my farmgirl heart when I discovered MaryJanesFarm. Suddenly, everything I loved just made more sense! I enjoy unwinding at the beach, writing, gardening, and turning yard-sale furniture into ‘Painted Ladies’ I’m passionate about living a creative life and encouraging others to ‘make each day their masterpiece.’”
is a “MaryJane Farmgirl” who lives in a large metropolitan area. She is a lawyer who has worked in both criminal defense and prosecution. She has been a judge, a business woman and a stay-at-home mom. In addition to her law degree, she has a Masters of Theological Studies.
“Mustering up the courage to do the things you dream about,” she says, “is the essence of being a MaryJane Farmgirl.” Learning to live more organically and closer to nature is Rebekah’s current pursuit. She finds strength and encouragement through MaryJane’s writings, life, and products. And MaryJane’s Farmgirl Connection provides her a wealth of knowledge from true-blue farmgirls.
an old-fashioned farmgirl with a pioneer spirit, lives in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. As a “lifelong learner” in the “Live-Free-or-Die” state, she fiercely values self-reliance, independence, freedom, and fresh mountain air. Married to her childhood sweetheart of 40+ years (a few of them “uphill climbs”), she’s had plenty of time to reinvent herself. From museum curator, restaurant owner, homeschool mom/conference speaker, to post-and-beam house builder and entrepreneur, she’s also a multi-media artist, with an obsession for off-grid living and alternative housing. Cathi owns and operates a 32-room mountain lodge. Her specialty has evolved to include “hermit hospitality” at her rustic cabin in the mountains, where she offers weekend workshops of special interest to women.
“Mountains speak to my soul, and farming is an important part of my heritage. I want to pass on my love of these things to others through my writing. Living in the mountains has its own particular challenges, but I delight in turning them into opportunities from which we can all learn and grow.”
Dori Troutman is the daughter of second generation cattle ranchers in New Mexico. She grew up working and playing on the ranch that her grandparents homesteaded in 1928. That ranch, with the old adobe home, is still in the family today. Dori and her husband always yearned for a ranch of their own. That dream came true when they retired to the beautiful green rolling hills of Tennessee. Truly a cattleman’s paradise!
Dori loves all things farmgirl and actually has known no other life but that. She loves to cook, craft, garden, and help with any and all things on their cattle farm.
describes herself as a goat charmer, chicken whisperer, bee maven, and farmers’ market baker renovating an 1864 farmhouse on an Ohio farm. With a degree in Design, Mary says small-town auctions and country road barn sales "always make my heart skip a beat thinking about what I could create or design out of what I’ve seen.”
Rooted in the countryside, she likes simple things and old ways … gardening, preserving the harvest, cooking, baking, and all things home. While you might find her selling baked goods from the farm’s milkhouse, teaching herself to play the fiddle, or sprucing up a vintage camper named Maizy, you will always find her in an apron!
Mary says, “I’m happiest with the simple country pleasures … an old farmhouse, too many animals, a crackling fire, books to read, and the sound of laughter … these make life just perfect.”
is a budding rural farmgirl living in Palmer, the agricultural seat of Alaska. Alex is a graduate student at Alaska Pacific University pursuing an M.S. in Outdoor and Environmental Education. She lives and works on the university’s 700 acre environmental education center, Spring Creek Farm. When Alex has time outside of school, she loves to rock climb, repurpose found objects, cross-country ski on the hay fields, travel, practice yoga, and cook with new-fangled ingredients.
Alex grew up near the Twin Cities and went to college in Madison, Wisconsin—both places where perfectly painted barns and rolling green farmland are just a short drive away. After college, she taught at a rural middle school in South Korea where she biked past verdant rice paddies and old women selling home-grown produce from sidewalk stoops. She was introduced to MaryJanesFarm after returning, and found in it what she’d been searching for—a group of incredible women living their lives in ways that benefit their families, their communities, and the greater environment. What an amazing group of farmgirls to be a part of!
Suburban Farmgirl Nicole Christensen calls herself a “vintage enthusiast”. Born and raised in Texas, she has lived most of her life in the picturesque New England suburbs of Connecticut, just a stone’s throw from New York State. An Advanced Master Gardener, she has gardened since childhood, in several states and across numerous planting zones. In addition, she teaches knitting classes, loves to preserve, and raises backyard chickens.
Married over thirty years to her Danish-born sweetheart, Nicole has worked in various fields, been a world-traveler, an entrepreneur and a homemaker, but considers being mom to her now-adult daughter her greatest accomplishment. Loving all things creative, Nicole considers her life’s motto to be “Bloom where you are planted”.
I am so happy for your and I couldn’t agree more! Home is where your heart is. I too made a big giant move last year; I took the leap and chased my dream. I hit a huge stumbling block last spring that almost sent me to the funny farm (really) and I almost put the for sale out! But I found a way through it and it is beginning to feel like home! My house and barn was in such bad shape that the day I took possession of the keys I was by myself and I was actually very afraid to even go into the house. I stood at the back door with my holy water and smudging stick and talked myself into it, I said to myself "this is your home now you can’t live in it by standing outside looking at it ….you have to go in" So in I went although very reluctantly. One year later I still have some minor things to do but I can’t believe how much work we did in such a very short time. Thanks to my son and all of his hard work. Good luck to you and I look forward to following your progress. Your words help inspire me as I live this dream out. Rene’
A huge AMEN to the first point. You made me tear up because this is exactly what I have told me family since my kids were small…love on each other here, in our home, in a safe environment because life will give you enough of it’s own beatings. First and foremost we need to bolster each other!
Your post is so touching! Indeed home is where we feel comfortable and loved with our family/pets around us. The personal touches of decor enhance all of this, but you have the core right now in all its simplicity. Mary Beth
Your blog is truly enjoyable and I love finding kindred spirits…(O:
But, I have to ask, what is a keeping room? Here in NW Florida, we have sun rooms, in-door porches, and up in Alaska we had a mud room. Yeah, it’s a total contrast…lol. The military does that to folks a lot.
But, I’ve managed to keep my little chickens and a small garden and work full-time as a paralegal in a criminal defense law firm.
Your home sounds wonderful, too. Thanks for sharing.
Debbie…(O:
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It is so great to hear your love of home. I also am a real homebody. I think that what makes home is what makes you happy. Our house is decorated in things that most would find out-dated or silly. I love boyd’s bears (remember them), country things, and just cozy house stuff. I also believe cookies made at home make a home, opening your home to family and friends, having things around that mean something to you rather than things that make you magazine perfect. But family is the top thing in your home. We live 400 miles away from our family but they visit often and that helps. We also have lots of things in NC that remind us of Pittsbugh and PA even though we’ve lived here for 35 years.
Someday we may go back up there but for now we try to bring as much family and home as we can into our much loved house.
We have left our home of 32 years in Colorado, and we are in temporary house living the "contract pending" ups and downs you describe so well. Our new home is in a small town in Texas, just outside of Austin. We are far from our kids, parents and extended family, the majority of whom live in Colorado,and it feel very "away from home." Your words were balm to my soul. Thank you. It was just what I needed to hear!
Wonderful, just wonderful. That’s wisdom right there. We have lived in our home as we built it…yeah, I mean the first time we laid our heads down to sleep in it, we could see moonlight through the roof:) It was beautiful. After 15 years, we still don’t have baseboards….I have come to believe they are really not that important:) As I was reading your sweet words, it made me miss those days of living like gypsies. (I have always been drawn to the gypsy life secretly..shhh) You have so much freedom right now with your husband and daughter and pets. We let our big, beautiful Golden Retriever have a litter of 13 puppies right in our dining area (future dining area) and they lived with us until they all had homes of their own. Yeah,I did that! And I am Miss Picky..lol My two adult children will never forget those memories of puppies running all over our home on plywood floors. I tear up just thinking about it. You will never be the same with this freedom from *things* and you and your family will be so much better for it. Oh, on the outside animals not being indoors? Good luck with that. We had a baby mini donkey snuggle right up to the fireplace. Well, it was our future fireplace, at that point it was just a freestanding propane heater with a duct tape square on the logs behind it of where our fireplace would be one day. We now have that fireplace of our dreams built by our own hands. It was so worth the wait. So, thanks so much for your update on your fireplaces. I’ve been waiting for the last guy’s opinion and I like his better;) Breathe in every moment, Rebekah…….Raynita
So love what you’ve written about living closer to nature, especially with animals and the wild beauty that teaches us brilliantly about elevating the human spirit with a constant sense of wonder and grace. I’m now in a tiny cottage in a seaside town, only renting (with dreams of a country farm of course)but there are a few things I do, especially in Fall, that make my little home magical to me. So love going to the forest and bringing back as many twisted bare branches as I can find on the ground, intertwining and then amassing them over the really ugly, resident hanging lamp. Then I heat up a pot of wax, dip some beautiful and large Autumn leaves in and hang on all the bare brances with tiny orange ribbon, although just plain leaves are wonderful too. Also, that arduous task of pulling ivy can be surprisingly rewarding if you strip off all the leaves, leaving the little side pieces and weaving them into wreaths. Adding pine cones, acorns and moss now looks so cozy and at Christmas you can just add berries, etc. Then, because I can’t paint the white walls (ugh, this is a hard one), I take a huge, deep rust king sized sheet and push pin it to a wall, hanging pictures and artifacts and this instantly warms the place up in a Fall way. Thrift stores are a treasure hunt of interesting little frames that can be painted and either filled with pictures of the seasons or pods and small ferns, etc. and can be changed out seasonally. All these things make it so homey, especially if accompanied by a friendly, simmering pot of cidery smells. My gargantuan cat Zorro completes the nest and his constant purring tells me it’s home to him too. Thanks for all the inspiration. Looking now for a farm! Cannot wait.
Oh, Rebekah, your five points are so spot on wonderful!!! I too am teary eyed. If only everybody could create a home environment like you describe. I already try my best. Thanks so much for putting it in words.
Home is where you exhale and breathe the relaxation of being where you want to be. Sit in a rocking chair in each room and let the walls speak to you. You’ll know what will make you comfortable. Check out paint or wallpaper samples and tape them to the walls until you find the one that’s best for each room. Do what’s necessary first (like the floor), then what’s needed as affordable (the fireplace), then what’s wanted (in a wish book). Invite your neighbors over and have them make suggestions while they sample your delicious baked goods. I received many ideas and gifts from mine when I lived in a log cabin. I kept hearing, "This would be perfect here" and it was. I also returned the favor and everyone got to know each other. Try it.
Rebekah: To me, home is where I feel loved, wanted and needed. A comfortable chair, a cup of tea, my kitties, my husband of 50 years and our favorite "stuff". We are lucky to own our home and that makes it special. It’s ours. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I’m really a home body too.
Your list is perfect. I would not change a things. Of coarse a few pretty things always can put a smile on your face also. Wizard of Oz, my favorite movie evveer! I have probably said it so many times, everyone in blog land that post about it must know. What a great spot to find. I do not like heights so I would probably have been on the bus also, not because of the rain though. I just posted a picture of a beautiful tree in the middle of the local cemetery last week, come by for a visit sometime. I am so glad you are sooo happy! P.S. A happy mommy makes a happy home.
I love that you’re still living out of boxes. July 31 I finished moving 15 miles to my "new" rental house. It used to be the old "old South Beach post office" that has been attached with more rooms to the postmistressed house next door, built in 1959, I think. I wind from one end of the house to the other because of the odd rooms and doors. But the winding is more so because I am still living out of boxes. As I gradually unpack, empties stack here and there. I too am living more simply, though I have all my clothes because they stayed in the chests of drawers.
And there is that smell. It’s damp here, and mildewy smelling and it used to have some other darker smell. Dogs? I struggle with that. It is getting better, but I don’t like it.
I’ve been trying to figure out how to make this house home, too. I moved back to the Central Oregon Coast four years ago, after my mother died. That was always the plan. But it has been a struggle to make anything feel like home, even though this is stunningly beautiful country, with ocean and spruce trees and beaches.
The house is fun, with slanting floors, and the sorting rooms of the old P.O. are still there, sort of the "garage". (No garage.) I’ve been spending most of my time building lasagna beds over the weedy, grassy and sandy yard. Also eating some of the edible weeds. My kale seeds from someon on Freecycle are sprouting. Also my garlic. I keep acquiring stuff for the beds, it’s wonderful. But my old cat and I spend a lot of time in our bedroom (the front office of the P.O., we think.)
I might inherit some pet chickens in a couple of weeks, and I’m trying to figure out how to bring my bees home from the farm they live on inland. I have a very complacent and calm landlord. He thinks urban farming is great.
I’m still not sure how to make this home, except by prayer and use.
I love reading about your adventures on the farm.
Nan
I love every single word of this post! I know you hear this a lot, but if you and I ever meet we would be great friends! Your concept of home is spot on! I instill these things in my children and to all who walk through my front door…..or the kitchen door, which is even better! Home is the dearest spot on earth. Your blog makes me smile. Thank you!
HOME??? I think you have IT for sure, you made me feel right at HOME and I loved being there. And thank you for ENJOYING – even that which isn’t quite so enjoyable.
God Bless y’all and LOVE!!!
sounds like you have found HOME. Enjoy the ups and downs of everything that comes life goes fast. I too live in a country home and the up keep can add up fast. But it sounds like in your heart you have decided that this is what you want so take it day by day, enjoy. keep us up dated love reading what is happening.
Rebekah,
I think you are home. I can tell from your posts how happy you are. Isn’t it strange how the feeling of home does not come from matching end tables or fancy curtains and perfect furniture arrangements. There is not one piece of new furniture in my home. My home is decorated in "Early Depression" and " Southern Wisconsin Landfill"! Some of the pieces I re-furbish and some I leave as is. I love that each one has a history and a story. I also have some heirlooms from my Husband’s family in the mix. I do have a ivory colored couch and dogs! Slipcovers are great and washed weekly.
I do believe you have found your tree, now you just have to feather your nest!
Love this post, you have made my day,
Diane
Hi,You can,t write it if u don,t feel it.I think u are a really nice girl.And would make a really good friend.have a good day carol B.
Hi Rebekah! Oh how I love reading about your exciting farm-living adventures! I love your zeal and delight around every corner! I love your answers to what makes a home! I wholeheartedly agree!! In fact in a project that I’ve been working on I wrote something similar: "A house can be magazine-gorgeous but if the folks and kids who live there are constantly complaining, ungrateful and emotionally unavailable, what good is it? As women, we set the tone in our homes. If we are griping, irritable and self centered…our family will follow suit. To the contrary, if we’re cheerfully encouraging, making the best of each situation and counting our blessings (Aloud so our families will hear!), not only will our family harvest the blessing of joy, we will too! Let’s intentionally talk about the goodness of the Lord to our family every day. A thankful heart is a happy heart. A mama with a happy heart makes a happy home." You are a mama with a happy heart and you’re creating a happy home! Yay!!
First of all I would like to say terrific blog!
I had a quick question in which I’d like to ask if you don’t mind.
I was interested to know how you center yourself and clear your thoughts before writing.
I’ve had a hard time clearing my thoughts in getting my thoughts out there. I truly do take pleasure in writing however it just seems like the first 10 to 15 minutes are lost just trying to figure out how to begin. Any ideas or tips? Appreciate it!