I’ve been extra sleepy and extra busy this week.

Sometimes my brain says crazy things to me like, “Hey, didn’t you have more energy and less mid-afternoon sleepiness when you were on Whole 30?”

And you know what I tell my brain when it says nonsense like that?

“Pass me that creme brûlée donut, will you?”

Kidding.  Kind of.  Not really.  But seriously, it might be true and that’s just annoying.  Sugar is delicious.  And saying no to it is dumb.

But that is not the point of this post at all.

Does this post have a point?

Eh.  That’s debatable.

But I do want to share with you a few pictures and stories about my kitchen and the tiny details and feeling like God sees me.

I grew up in a house with a big old farm kitchen.  I mean, it was a real farmhouse whose actual purpose was to house the people living and working on the farm.  But it was spacious – I think my mom had three tables in it.  (I guess I inherited my love of tables from her.)

When I grew up and got married and when babies were being added to the family by the armloads, we shopped and saved and purchased a beautiful table with two leaves you could add in, making the table capable of seating 12 people with no problem at all – and we’ve crammed 16 at it on special occasions.

For the two years I spent looking at homes to purchase with a realtor, I never found one house in my price range that could actually accommodate my kitchen table.  The homes that I made offers on (and there were several) were all going to be a tight fit,  And the home I ultimately bought, had the same dilemma.  Until the new dining room was completed a few weeks ago.

 

 

And suddenly – space for the table, at its full size, was no problem at all.  In fact, I fit in a tiny table for grandsons and a tall table for fun in the space too.  Three tables.  Like my momma.

My mother adored tea pots.  Which remains a mystery to me, really.  She loved coffee and maybe she drank tea, but I have zero mental images of her buying or drinking hot tea.  She was pretty obsessed with cold Lipton sweet tea.  (So very sweet, in fact.)  But she collected tea pots.  The top of her kitchen cabinets were lined with her collection.  I have a small number from her cabinet top collection and they’ve never been displayed well before.  (Maybe she just collected them as a means of hiding things.  I know she stashed m&ms and cash in some.  I later learned that my brother stashed more illegal substances in one.  I won’t name the brother or the substance.)

Anyway, my long suffering friend attached two shelves to my wall last week and out came the tea pot collection.

 

 

I thought this hall rack would never fit in our new house.  I actually placed it for sale.  No one made an offer.  Turns out it fits this little space perfectly.  Function and beauty.  My favorite combo.

 

 

When Piper was a toddler we often visited a children’s museum in Hendersonville.  They had a small metal grocery cart that Piper Finn was in love with.  For Christmas one year, she received a replica.  Unfortunately, she immediately became a bit of a bag lady.  It only encouraged her hoarding tendencies and the kid pushed everything of worth to her around our house all the time.  Eagle and blankets and dolls and trash.  You name it.  I have passed down loads of kids toys and clothing to friends and thrift stores.  I don’t save teeth and I don’t have boxes of cute clothes for my kids to give to their kids.  But I cannot part with this tiny grocery cart.  It’s too special to me – it holds too many memories, like it held too many of Piper’s stuffed animals.  (We’re both hoarders, I suppose.)  And I always told the kids, “One day, I might use that grocery cart in a kitchen.  It would be so cute.”

And you know what?  It is.

 

 

 

There’s a handful of other details that are special to me.

The red bench that’s been following me around for more than a decade from Virginia.  (It has a twin that lives at the farm in Virginia.)

 

 

The sweet bunting made by a kind friend who lives in Germany.  It was a gift when I turned 40 and it just makes me happy hanging across the entrance like a perpetual party is about to happen.  (And maybe it is.)

 

 

And then this.  

When we talked through ideas of how to merge the former kitchen with the carport turned dining room space, a lot of ideas were tossed around.  Some more costly than others.  And although I had some funds reserved for this, I did not have unlimited funds reserved.  And the lowest cost option was to leave a step from the one space to the new space.  Several different men who talked through the ideas with me stated their concerns.  They were sorry that the step might stop the flow from space to space, might make an island hard to add, might be an eyesore.

I smiled.  And disagreed.  Assured them I was quite satisfied with a step down from the kitchen into the dining room.

In fact, I hold a pleasant little affection for steps in kitchen spaces.  In my parents’ farmhouse, there were two wide steps that lead from the oversized hall into the kitchen.  Life often found us sitting on those steps and sharing conversations.

And then, in my second favorite kitchen in the world, the kitchen at the farm in Virginia, there is a long single step from the dining room to the kitchen.  A step that has known so many people and so much sitting and so much conversation.  Baby holding and toddler sitting.  Grown ups with their legs falling in the way of the kitchen’s busy action.  Sitting on the step late into the evening, the silence of children at long last asleep and the whispered kitchen talk as we pull out the leftover desserts and the hidden peach ice cream.

 

 

A step is a friendly space to me.  A comfortable welcome.

It’s the people who feel most at home in your house who settle in on the step.  Who linger after the dishes are cleaned and the party has been put to rest.

 

 

And I didn’t plan to have a step in my new home.  I didn’t know it would be such a welcome sight.  I didn’t know it would be, to me, a sign and a symbol of God providing for my heart’s smallest desires.

A hope and a welcome

and a coming home.

 

______________________________________