I am so blessed to be busy with homemaking, homeschooling, and learning how to be an amateur homesteader. With all these titles I am far from bored! Our family lives down a dirt road in the small town of Boring in the scenic Pacific Northwest: thus the name of this blog.
I have been married to my kind, hard working husband for sixteen years. We have four kiddos who are busy, creative, and hilarious.
The kids and I spend a lot of our time at home: adventuring around our property, caring for our garden and ever-growing assortment of animals, reading good books, cooking tasty food from scratch, learning new crafts and hobbies, and enjoying every little moment of this joyful life!
This blog is centered on home and all the activities therein. However, we do get out quite a bit. My kids participate in 4H, our church’s youth group, home school co-op, horse back riding, music lessons, and a variety of sports. As a family, we love to go on camping and hunting trips.
Homeschooling…
My husband and I both attended public high school and a state university. Homeschooling our children was never in the plan, but I love it.
I feel that it is an enormous privilege to be able to choose my kids’ curriculum and to learn alongside them. Watching them grasp difficult concepts and seeing what subjects and activities light them up is so much fun.
Our system for school (meaning our schedule and curriculum), has been pretty fluid through the years. I base it on the individual needs of my very different four children, as well as our family needs depending on what we have going on during various seasons. In this blog, I will share with you what has worked for us, and what we are currently doing and enjoying.
Homesteading…
A little over a year ago, our family was blessed with the opportunity to buy our home on five acres from dear friends who were moving out of state. The whole story is nothing short of a miracle (perhaps I will post all about it one day).
We quickly accumulated a variety of animals and have been working to expand our little homestead one project at a time. I will be documenting our homesteading successes and failures (we have already had many of those!) here on the blog. Livestock and serious gardening are not for the faint of heart, and I hope that any wisdom I gain can benefit those who read this blog.
For the gardeners following along: we are in zone 8b. Our climate is fairly mild and soggy for a lot of the year. We get one or two cold snaps each winter and August through October are quite warm.
Homemaking…
“Homemaking” is such a huge word that encompasses so many avenues. But I believe the most important part of homemaking is the attitude behind it. My goal is to approach it with joy and to take homemaking, but not myself, seriously.
I love to cook and bake. We are a family of six good eaters, and I like to have leftovers around, so you can expect recipes that are large portions of homemade, hearty food. I try to buy as many ingredients locally as I can, as well as in bulk from Azure Standard. I despise very few things in life, but one of them is grocery shopping (and raisins in cookies).
Although I spend parts of my day jumping into pig pens, scraping chicken poop from the coop, and other homestead activities, I really enjoy aesthetics. Being “on trend” with the current styles is not important to me. However, I do believe that a large portion of my job as a homemaker is to make my home beautiful and comfortable. I would consider my home style to be rustic Pacific Northwest farmhouse.
My kids take after their mother and they each like to start approximately eleven different large projects around the house and property each day. So you can imagine the wild circus it is around here… But I wouldn’t trade it for anything!
…With Purpose
God has blessed me with these roles, and I strive to be purposefully living out His call to my life. This world often seems filled with lies and chaos. My desire is for my home, family, and even this tiny slice of the internet to be filled with beauty, truth, and goodness.
You can follow along and never miss a post by subscribing to the email list in the blue box to the right of this page (or the bottom of this page if you are on your phone).
For extra homemaking encouragement, check out the podcast I co-host with my incredible friend Marissa called Joyful Homemaking. We are also on Instagram @joyfulhomemakingpodcast
Thanks for stopping by my Boring home!