So we did. Now -- I can't complain. My brother and then his wife contracted the virus. While they did feel kind of crummy for a few days, they experienced mostly mild symptoms as they stayed at home. However, because of the dates of exposure and symptoms and all the rules & recommendations from the CDC, my niece and nephew have to quarantine until August 15th. So -- please be in prayer for them! Full disclosure here -- as a school administrator, the last six months have been a blur. I have said several times that I feel like we are living in a movie. This doesn't seem like real life, as we make decisions about how to deliver instruction to children in the safest way over the next school year. While my 10 1/2 month school-year contract officially ends on June 15th and begins again on August 1st each year, this summer there have been too many decisions to make to really take much of a break. And then...quarantine happened. Sure, I continued to work on giving input for school reopening plans and I did continue focusing on some of my school duties over the last few weeks. But I also spent many hours every single day over the last two weeks working alongside Mr. Farmhouse and the girls to complete projects that we have been planning to get to "someday".
Not being able to leave the house for two weeks isn't ideal. If we weren't in quarantine, I wouldn't have had to cancel our annual well-child checkups for the girls, piano lessons, & tutoring. Mr. Farmhouse could have been working and I wouldn't have had to miss a few in-person meetings at school. We could have allowed being stuck at home for two weeks with no symptoms to be irritating and a reason to complain. However, last night, as Mr. Farmhouse and I rode the Ranger through the field moving hot-wire for the cows, I looked around and smiled. Thank you, Lord, for this time we have had together. Thanks for slowing us down and giving us the opportunity to connect deeply before we all head off into the unknown of this school year. Thank you that my brother's family has had mild symptoms and that they have the opportunity to work from home. Just thank you, Lord. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Amen  Back to the real world today, friends.
Sending gratitude to God from the farmhouse, Hannah ♥️🏡♥️
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There is a metal ornament representing each year of our marriage...starting with a wedding picture from 2004 and going through some of our major life events. The birth of each of the girls is represented with hospital pictures and 2016 when we took our trip to Florida includes a beach picture. I love being able to look at the pictures on these ornaments and be taken back immediately to the moment they were photographed. Some of these photos are professional (thank you, JcPenney, Amy Kostuke Photography, & Spread Your Wings Photography) while others are just snapshots.  It's amazing for me to think that almost fifteen years of marriage can be summed up in these ornaments. What a blessing they are to me.
Reminiscing here at the farmhouse this morning, Hannah ❤️🏡❤️ PS -- I get my ornaments at Mpix, in case you missed that link above. You can purchase your own right HERE. When we moved into the farmhouse, the upstairs consisted of one bedroom and an open loft area. The whole upstairs is in a plus-sign shape, so there was the potential for three smaller "rooms". We needed one more bedroom to give the girls each their own rooms, so we will finally build a wall in the next few weeks to give Harlee some privacy. We also added a bathroom, so the girls could have their own bathroom up there. The leftover loft space became our farmhouse playroom.
 And now....the moment you've all been waiting for...the Room Reveal for our Farmhouse Playroom. To be quite honest, this room has already evolved a bit since we moved in last July. We had originally planned to have the Barbies and doll clothes housed upstairs, but with the older two girls having bedrooms up there and our three-year-old downstairs, that setup just didn't make sense anymore. So we moved the Barbie house downstairs to Mattie's bedroom and made the playroom a little more functional for the preteens.
For nine years at the old house, we tried to carve out a place for the girls to relax that was "their own".
First, we had a nursery in one bedroom and a playroom in the other. When we brought Baby #2 home, the playroom got changed into a "big girl bedroom" for Baby #1 and the toys stayed in there. We put the girls together eventually and moved the playroom to where the nursery had originally been. When Baby #3 came home, the playroom became a nursery/playroom combo. Before we moved out here to the farmhouse, we even tried to put all three girls in one room to sleep and have the toys and desks in the other. It just never worked out quite like we had pictured. Until now. The farmhouse playroom is all I had ever hoped for. It sits opposite the new bathroom, with the older girls' bedrooms on either side. When Harlee's wall is complete and the new bathroom has a door, I will do a walk-through of the whole upstairs. Can't wait to share it with you SOON! Happy Sunny Saturday from the Farmhouse, friends! ❤️🏡❤️
The kitchen.
The "heart of the home". Often the central location of what's going on in our house, our kitchen can quickly turn into the catch all. In the old house, we had a peninsula that we had built-in to house the dishwasher we added a few years after we moved in. Besides meal prep and clean-up messes, you would often find lunch boxes thrown down after school, bills dropped on the counter, and various other items that would find their way to the flat surfaces of the kitchen. This peninsula quickly became a hot spot for everything that was in our arms when we walked through the door. It was a huge, flat space and it naturally seemed to attract clutter. When we bought the farmhouse, I really wanted to try and avoid having a hot spot area like this. The dining room table definitely has the potential to become this "hot spot", but by keeping seasonal decorations on there, the problem has been fairly minimal. Surprisingly. And by being intentional with our kitchen counter spaces, we've avoided a lot of that "hot spot clutter".
The yellow cabinet holds a few cookbooks and my Ninja blender that I use most every day.
It also houses the plates and bowls we use most often. I moved them down there so they were more accessible for the girls. We have onions and potatoes on the bottom shelf (and sitting over to the side if they won't fit inside!) Bread and veggies go on top! Sidenote: Glittery hand sanitizing gel in the hands of a toddler WILL take the paint off of the top of a Target clearance cabinet like this one. Or so we've heard.
Originally, the farmhouse kitchen was an eat-in kitchen.
It had a small space for a table where the sink is now and the stove and sink were on the whole other side of the room. The refrigerator was where the coffee bar is now and there was a little peninsula jutting out into the room where our refrigerator sits. The kitchen also had a tile floor that had been added right over the beautiful hardwood floors that the previous owner refinished.
One of my favorite things to do early in the morning before the sun comes up is to get my coffee and my Bible and go sit in the living room to talk to Jesus.
I don't turn any lights on in the kitchen, but just enjoy the ambiance of the white lights and all the various items that have been placed on top of the cabinets for a specific reason. If you look closely, you can see silhouette cut-out of the girls' profiles, a clay bowl that says "Hemple, Missouri" on it that reminds me of a very special family, a navy blue spool that I purchased the very first time I went antiquing with my mother-in-law, a "Welcome to the Farmhouse" sign that my mom bought me the very first week we lived here, a can that has a poppy on it that I bought on a trip to Oklahoma with my mom & sisters-in-law, and many other small sentimental items that bring joy to my heart.
I really love Amazon.
We have had a Prime account for several years and use it for everything from coffee to toilet paper, books to home decor, music to movies. Some day, I will talk to you about the joys of Amazon's "Subscribe & Save" program and my new-found love for Audible. Some day, I will talk to you about how amazing the Amazon app is and the fact that I have a dream to sell a children's book I wrote on Amazon someday.
Amazon has a host of items that fit my taste...and my budget.
As you've probably seen in some of my other posts, I love signs and wall-hangings to fill the walls of the farmhouse. Amazon has a nice selection of high-quality signs.
I have tried to be very intentional with the items I bring into the farmhouse, since we moved in last July.
One of the things I try to think about when I purchase items is the functional purpose that they could serve in our home. These containers are perfect for organizing AND looking adorable.
A nice warm throw is always a good item to have lying over a chair, reading available for snuggling up with a good book. I also love the natural pop of color that this wreath brings.
Seek out items that bring joy to your heart and make your home feel peace and calming to you.
Be responsible in your spending and intentional in what you allow into your home. And enjoy the process! Happy Friday from the Farmhouse, friends! ❤️?❤️ January 9th marked our six-month anniversary of our "first night sleeping at the farmhouse". Six months. In some ways, it feels like that was ages ago...and in some ways, it feels like yesterday. Over the snow days (and ice day and really cold wind-chill day) that we had off of school last week, I really reminisced about our time here at the farmhouse so far. I started looking through some of my old blog posts and Instagram photos. One of my most favorite memories for the rest of my life will be from 9:00 at night on the first Saturday night that we slept here. Our minister and his wife came out and prayed over the farmhouse. You can read about it in my blog post from that day...Bless this Mess. Since that warm July night, we have enjoyed family movie nights cuddled in the living room, mornings on the front porch reading our books, pick-up games of basketball out to the north of the house, friends over to BBQ, softball practice out in the yard, and for Thanksgiving we hosted our first TWO family dinners out here. We experienced our first farmhouse Christmas with the girls. We have painted and decorated, Added an upstairs bathroom, Tore down a barn, Added a chicken coop, Purged belongings, Purchased furniture. It has been quite the journey and I know we are nowhere near "finished".
Mr. Farmhouse has been working tirelessly in all of his spare time to get the girls a second bathroom. We paid a buddy of ours to do the rough-in work and plumbing (thanks, Brent!), but Mr. Farmhouse decided he could finish the rest out himself. With lots of help from our dads, we have finished the sheetrock, cement board for the tile, and wiring. Next up is paint, then putting in the vanity & sink, finishing the accent wall with barn wood & metal from the barn that is lying beside our house, the tile work, and installing the toilet & plumbing fixtures.
In another way, this year IS different.
This will be our first holiday season in the farmhouse. Finding a new place for the holiday decorations. Hosting dinners since we have more room in this house. A new way of purchasing gifts for the girls this year for Christmas (more on that later). I always like to divide up my holiday planning and kind of challenge myself to complete certain aspects of it each week...and I thought it might be fun for my online friends to join me. If you'd like to join me, just join my Facebook group here. We'll be starting some weekly & daily challenges on Sunday, October 22nd! See you there! ❤️🏡❤️ It was my dream to have a farmhouse porch swing. The girls and I would sit out there and swing and visit about the day. I would get up early in the morning and sit on the swing with my coffee and Bible for my daily "Jesus time". Mr. Farmhouse and I would sit on the porch swing and watch the kids play out front, as we waved to the cars that drove by. It was going to be wooden and "farmhouse-y" and painted a gorgeous shade of white. It would be hanging from the ceiling of the front porch and lined with beautiful outdoor accent pillows. And then...Facebook read my mind and sent me an advertisement for this.
So I added it to my cart online and found out I would get free 2-day shipping. And when I clicked into my cart to checkout, the truth was revealed. The tan swing was not on sale. The red swing was not on sale. The camo swing was on sale.
Mr. FH: What are you buying? Me: Oh, I was looking at a swing for the porch, but I think I'll wait. Mr. FH (looking over my shoulder): Wait...is that camo? Me: That's one of the options, but I think I'll just wait. Mr. FH: Is that $57??? Me: Uh...yeah, I guess it is. Mr. FH: That's so awesome!
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