How to make my house into a home I love

How do we make our houses into places we never want to leave? Places we want to invite others into?

What if creating a home isn’t about the money or resources we have, but the love that is shared with each other?

We live in a day in age that is enamored with the newest, and best of the best, the larger the house the better.

In our society if you have the most updated house and pretty furnishings, this say’s “you’ve made it”.

I want to invite you to see from a different perspective. One that will not cost you very much. One that works alongside God. If He says, stay, we stay. When He say’s go, we go.

It is all about obedience to The Holy One.

Creating a home we love

How do we live in such a way that our homes become havens of refuge for our people? For us?

In my home I don’t only have little ones. I also have teenagers. The challenges, struggles and obstacles that these children face are very difficult.

My hope and prayer is to create a home my children want to be in, not flee from.

Sometimes the hardships we are facing are so difficult and loud we have to sit with The Lord and ask Him to quiet our minds, our racing hearts. To bring peace into our home.

I don’t know how life will turn out, but I know that Gods Word say’s, “He will use all things to work together for our good, for the good of those who love God and are called according to His purposes. (Romans 8:28)

That is us! His children.

Dinner time:

Dinner time is one of my most favorite times.

We love to play games like 20 questions, we each choose a character, our four year old usually chooses a tiger or elephant. I invite the older children to make sure they are asking lots of questions, because we already know what her character will be, but we want it to be fun for everyone.

For Christmas we bought “Do you really know your family“. I noticed that everyone wants to take a turn with the cards. Everyone wants to know, does my family really know me?

(PS: Always price check because sometimes Walmart has it for a better price, or the marketplace.

There are a lot of laughs and some awkward moments like when the card challenges you to smell your families feet to see whose feet are the most smelly. So many laughs. While playing at the dinner table we usually skip the challenges.

Always invite The Lord in. Your family is unique and Father knows exactly what we need to do to help us feel more connected with each other!

Games are always a big hit in our home. Scrabble has been a favorite of my older kids. I joined them recently and laughed so hard at all the words I kept trying to make up. Apparently Yukon is not spelled Yucan!

I cannot encourage you enough to give it a try. If this hasn’t been a practice it might be awkward at first and may only last a few minutes, but keep giving it a go.

Creating the home we want takes time, patience, and a whole lot of prayer.

Movie Night

We also love movie night! We usually make or order pizza, pop popcorn, open up bags of chips, share homemade cookies and pick a movie to watch.

It is fun to get to go to the movie theatre, but for a family our size it can run very high, with tickets and all the snacks and have I mentioned there’s a lot of us, some who are still potty training or in diapers, so usually my husband and I take turns in the middle of the movie to take the littles to the bathroom, again.

Plus we love subtitles and can turn it up louder or pause as we need to. Okay, I’ve made my case.

It doesn’t have to cost a lot

Who says making a beautiful home has to cost a lot of money? I don’t!

I am not a follow the trends type of person. I acknowledge some trends are fun and pretty, but I tend to choose vintage pieces that are classic. 

I love choosing pieces that I wont have to change out all the time depending the season.

Bringing beauty through flowers:

I love floral arrangement. The dry ones are my favorite but faux is beautiful too. The beautiful thing about flowers is that many of them can be dried so you can enjoy them year long.

Purchase the flowers once and enjoy them for a very long time. Drying them properly is a simple process. The short of it is, you want to find a quiet, dry, cool, dark room to hang them in upside down.

Leave them there for a few weeks to fully dry, and then arrange. This gift has been years in the making so I understand if you feel like you can’t do it, practice will help you to grow in this.

I am also working on my Pinterest page and I will share more of my floral arrangements there.

Creativity nurtured:

I have a dear friend who taught me to like what you like. She has a very fun eclectic style. She loves fun bold colors, flowers, curved furniture.

My love for beauty grew in those early years of our friendship. 

Her views on style were so helpful in my early 20s when we were first making our home, still learning my style.

The older I’ve gotten the more I’ve learned to appreciate different styles and also hone in on what I really love.

I absolutely love the Victorian era, the clothing, the architecture, the whole feel. It’s so romantic. It’s a huge part of what drew me to our new home. 

Before I share with you the vision of our next home I want you to know I was perfectly grateful and content in our 1300 sqft home in town.

We lived in our home for ten years. My husband and I truly believed we would live there forever.

Imagine our surprise when The Lord began to prompt my heart to dream with him for our next home.

At this point we had four children in that beautiful home I had loved so much. I had made it our very own.

I didn’t have envy of others and their larger homes. I was content. A gratitude that could only come from God.

I still remember some friends asking if we had plans to move as our family kept growing, where would the baby sleep? Our simple answer was no.

Sister, I have been to third world countries, where some of our brothers and sisters are living in structures made of simple cardboard, straw, cloth and other simple materials, they have dirt floors.

They are some of the most content and grateful people I’ve met.

Because having more space, more money, will never bring the satisfaction and peace that can only come from God.

Everything we seek to try to make us happy is truly at its purest form found in the person of Jesus.

Without Him, it does not matter how much money we have, how large or beautiful our houses are without Him we have nothing that is of lasting eternal value.

Write the vision down:

Begin with prayer. I’m sure you saw it coming. Always begin with prayer.

Our house was built in the mid 80s, and while many are excited to tear down this wall or that one, remove the wall paper, redo the old school bathroom aesthetic, keep up with the latest trends I declared her, “perfect”.

I don’t know what the house looked like when it was all wallpapered, but chances are, I would have loved it.

I love florals. I love swirls, soft soothing colors, colorful splashes.

The only remnants of the wallpaper are found in our laundry room.

Now let me be honest, this is the only wallpaper that at first I was not excited about it.

However, the more I looked at it, I giggled, The Lord left the wallpaper He knew would mean most to me, a picnic scene.

Yes, a picnic scene.

It’s the most quaint and makes me smile every time I see it.

The Bible speaks about having a vision. We are told that God’s people perish for lack of vision.

So in 2021 I began to write, Lord, this is what I would love:

Before we get to the physical things, I began with the spiritual, below is an example of a prayer I brought before The Lord when He first began to show us He had a larger place for us. 

I prayed,

“Lord would you allow love to abound in our home. Would you help us to build bonds and connections in such a large home, as you did in our smaller home. 

A garden I did not plant, food I did not grow to share and to eat of, we will sit under the MASSIVE trees to enjoy picnics and art sessions outdoors. The produce of the land will bless not only us but our family and friends too and those who may need a timely word, or meal. 

House of worship: A home where music and worship is heard all day. From the youngest to the oldest using the voice, the instruments God has given for His Glory and Honor.” 

These were the prayers I prayed. 

Because here’s the truth, we can have a beautifully decorated home, but if love does not abound of what benefit is that?

God has called us to grow in unity in love and this is first and foremost my greatest desire for our family, for your family!

Grab a pen and paper, the notes app on your phone and start writing, start praying. Start asking, He invites us into the process.

Ask Him, what do you have for our family? What do you long to see in our family???

I’m excited to see what He will show you!

Will He give you peace about your home? I believe He will.

One of my dear friends whom has now gone to be with The Lord, Dana, was our realtor. She could tell I was having such a difficult time letting go of our first home.

She said, Yessi, The Lord has more for you, He has grown your family so much and He has a place where you can bring Mama (what she called my mama) to. Please let go and welcome what He has.

I sat outside of a gas station waiting for my husband to return, weeping. I knew what she said was true.

I remembered the vision I had written down years ago, so I prayed, “Lord, help me to trust you, I let go of our first home Lord, I know you have the next person for it, comfort my heart and bring us our new home.”

Just a few short weeks later The Lord would reveal our next house and within two showings sell our first home.

What matters most:

What I desire for us and what I truly believe matters most in every season is to trust The Lord.

Whether your home is 800 sqft like our very first home was, or 4,000sqft what matters is that we honor The Lord with our homes, with the sacred places we will create.

This truth, “this belongs to you Lord, come and do with it as you will.”

This honest prayer has been difficult to pray sometimes. Why? Because I want to know what is coming next, what life will look like.

Whatever condition your home is in today, what matters above all is that your heart and mind be at peace.

How do we achieve this? It can only come through Gods love for us.

If you are in a transition, waiting period, please know this time isn’t wasted. Keep seeking The Lord, find trusted friends that will pray with you, for His peace and contentment to rise in your heart.

I have shared about keeping a tidy home here, I would love for you to go and read that post if you’re struggling with the managing of your home.

I share the practical steps I take every single week to help me care for my home and people.

I truly believe one of the reasons we were able to stay in our home comfortably for all of those years even as we more than doubled in size is because I love to organize, declutter.

These simple skills have helped me to not grow so overwhelmed over the years.

When I started having feelings of “we need a larger space”, “Every child needs their own room”, but I knew The Lord had promised peace I would begin the declutter process. First in my mind.

Ridding myself of the thoughts that didn’t belong there. Learning to take my thoughts captive has been one of the fights of my life and also one of my greatest gratitude’s.

The more we learn to do this, the more we will walk in freedom and peace. I hope to share more with you in a coming post.

Decluttering:

Eliminating what was no longer blessing us. Dave Ramsey has said that many of us battle large messes, not because we are messy people but because we have too much stuff.

I have seen this statement to be true in my life many times.

Today, if you are feeling overwhelmed, start out small, one tiny corner, one counter, one drawer, one closet.

Create space to breath.

I’m thinking about that box that is not allowing me to fully open up the laundry room door that needs to go in my van for a friend, and the goodwill bag I need to donate.

I hope to inspire you to continue to bring beauty and life into your home.

I want you to know that every single day I live with the affects of grief. A heart and mind that are continuing to heal and to fill with Gods peace and love even in so much brokenness.

I share almost daily over on my Facebook, sweet and simple videos to help you in your everyday life.

I want us to call BLESSED what God has called blessed. & Lets trust in Gods timing for every single one of our needs.

One of the things I do periodically is to go on spending freezes. This might include even deleting my amazon app so I am not tempted to purchase. Staying off FB marketplace.

When you are ready to purchase something lovely for your home, may I suggest a thrift store, Vintage store. Many second hand stores have beautiful pieces in varying styles.

I have dear friends who have their beautiful pieces for sale, I would love for you to support our small business owners.

Pop The Trunk Vintage Finds, In Austin Tx

Chantilly’s in Jacksonville, TX

Flutter Antiques inside of KINCL, her booth is the 3rd on the left when you enter. Taylor, Tx

I pray this weeks post blessed you. As always thank you so much for being here. Please share with your people and if you found this helpful, would you come back and tell me all about it? It means so much.

Blessings and love on your adventures with The Lord in your everyday life.

Dig deeper:

Nehemiah 8:10, Psalms 37:4, Proverbs 29:18, Matthew 6:33