I have ALL of the words.  And NONE of the time.

That’s just the way it is right now, more than ever, it seems.

The list of blog post ideas fills a page – but the time to write here is increasingly harder to find.  And I miss that.  Writing out my thoughts, processing my life through this medium, is an important part of creating space in my head and heart to stay mostly sane despite the chaos of my days.

I’m working on healthy balance and all that jazz, but it’s just a hard time to be managing the show here for five distinctly different humans and to run a business and to teach a class and to educate my own five people.  I hope I’m not complaining.  I like to think I’m just rambling and these are the rambling thoughts.

I’ll keep piddling along, with spurts of productivity here and there and with making headway in one area just to fall behind in another area, but if you think about it and you feel like raising your hand in a virtual high five or a fist bump of the keep-at-it variety, well, I wouldn’t mind seeing a few of those.  In fact, I could use a couple and I’m not above asking for them, so there you go.

Something I do want to share is a rejoicing of so much good wrapping up at our house.  And it’s worth an entire long blog post of its own and when I find that window this week I’ll do my best to fill it with typing words here, but this week will be just about the first week since we moved here in late August that nothing is being built, refinished, torn apart or repaired.  It’s a dreamy sort of silence and cleanliness that I am absorbing with the kids and we couldn’t be more thrilled with the results.

Literally dozens of times a day one of us says out loud to no one in particular and to anyone who is listening, even if it’s only the dogs, “We love our house.”  

Because we do.

When I looked at this house I thought, wouldn’t it be great if the carport could become a dining room and my kitchen table could fit in it?

And guess what – late last week we moved the kitchen table out of the barn into its new home!  We ate breakfast there and dinner together and I set out my new pomegranate candle from The Grove on the table and yesterday during our Trader Joe’s run, I bought three beautiful hydrangeas as a gift to my table and to me because in this life I can’t wait around for someone to buy me flowers because that someone may never materialize so I’m buying my own flowers, thank you very much.

One wall of the carport was already brick and it would have cost a LOT of dolla bills to tear it down so I chose to leave it standing.  Also.  I think brick in a kitchen is fantastic.  Another little happy dream is that I have long desired a barn door.  I think they look cool.  And I love their utilitarian feature of sliding so they don’t take up precious decorating space.  (Functionality paired with beauty is my first choice every single time.  It explains my love/obsession of pottery.)

Last week the barn door made its appearance.

I rejoiced.  (No, really.  I did.  The talented man on this end of the building project, Mark, enjoyed many a good laugh at my enthusiasm over his work and the dining room taking shape.)

I dreamed of shelves.  On the brick wall.  With some sort of metal pipe thing holding them up.  I found pictures online, texted them to Mark, left my house and came home to shelving magic.

When London saw it, she proclaimed, “Mom – I think we live in a trendy house now.”  I don’t know if that’s true and I sincerely do not care.  But I love the house we are living in.

I had more fun than you might think possible adding mason jars and tin cans and pottery cups to the new shelves.  My mom’s bright red bean pot that I have toted to every home made its appearance. And her momma’s classic old cookbook that was more like a diary.  (Can I just say that standing in that kitchen, plotting this and that and rearranging and smiling and listening to music made me miss my momma, more than a decade gone from my daily life, more than I have in a good long while?)

When I stood in that kitchen, when I danced across the floor, when I showed the kids there was space to do a cartwheel (before the table moved in), when I laughed with my sons and sipped tea by candlelight, when I began this new phase of living in a home I own, I felt the weight of the overwhelming generosity of God to give good gifts.  The weight of the people who carried me and helped me, from the start of my new adventure to the hanging of a barn door and the painting of trim and the swinging a hammer on a deck and I know I am living in a house that love built.

I could not be more grateful.

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