Welcome!

Hello there, friend! Grab a tea and get cozy… here’s what we are chatting about in this little space.

Where we chat the things we need to keep close: our faith, our own learning, and how to find beauty in the ordinary.

Find it all intermingled– keeping, learning, and living– just like our life. (And yours.)

Your space to grab resources, encouragement, and ideas in your homelearning journey.

Where you’ll find stuff I love to read, use, buy, and give.

The place where I share how stories & speech communication shape the lives of children & parents alike.

Where you’ll find our family in our groove: living, learning, reading, making food…

“What if we stopped celebrating being busy as a measurement of importance? What if instead we celebrated how much time we had spent listening, pondering, meditating, and enjoying time with the most important people in our lives?”

Greg McKeown

About Me

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Essential Resources

Essential Keeping

Being a mom should change you. Not erase you.

I’ll be honest; there have been times that I have no longer recognized myself. The work of Motherhood had– and still sometimes does– completely taken over, and I was forgetting what I loved.

I got lost in the grind of motherhood, instead of seeing the joy it offered me.

I couldn’t find time for me, or God, or any of the habits I used to have or the creative outlets that energized me.

All work and no play makes Momma a dull woman. And a sad one. And a cranky one.

We say we would sacrifice everything for our kids, and we do. But in the process, what message do we send them? What message do we send to our little girls that all a wife and mom does is clean and run errands and not have time to stop and enjoy even the little things? What message do we send our boys? That women are meant to be in the home and cook and clean and nothing else? And while we can learn to embrace those necessities of homemaking and still be happy— it’s important for our children to learn that our value isn’t in what we do. It is who we are…

And Whose we are.

I’m on a path to remember who I was and find who I am now– with the improvements of the heart and character that the sanctification that homemaking and motherhood is working in me. I want to be the best version of who I can be to accomplish what God wants from MY life and in the lives of the people that live under this roof with me.

We are essential, fellow momma. YOU are essential.

YOU are worth keeping, just as much as your house. Don’t get lost in your list and your laundry.

Our calling is so much higher than clean clothes.

We are the keeper of His testimonies, in our hearts, and in our homes. 💛

Check out my
Must-Read
Booklist
Listen to my
“Victory” playlist
on Amazon Music.

Essential Keeping Posts

Essential Learning

“The word school is derived from the Greek word schole, meaning ‘leisure.’ Yet our modern school system, born in the Industrial Revolution, has removed the leisure—and much of the pleasure—out of learning.”  Greg McKeown

Learning NEEDS leisure. We input input input… and our brain needs time to process and meditate and GROW and ferment what we put in there. The leisure allows the percolation of CREATIVITY, and we are thankful for the communication of it in our home and world– through music, art, speech, innovation, story and more!

A large part of my Instagram feed is about how we “schole” with our eclectic version of a literature-rich, Charlotte Mason-inspired home learning life. I would love for you to explore my posts as well as my Insta profile to check out my Home Learning highlights! (They give you more of a day-to-day!)

Essential Learning Posts

Home Learning Ideas

Home Learning Life

Just another dinner… with a tomato cilantro salad and pickled jalapeños. TBH, they made the meal. 💛 Famous speeches and big thoughts aren’t just for big people. 💛 Here’s to children creating alongside us— even if that means clean spaces are replaced with splashes of chaos, color, and handprints. Cousin school consisted of art (some shading/color theory + and art study of Homer’s “Snap the Whip”), science (digestion + a stomach smooshing activity!), games (snap the whip!), and a nature walk where we found some new walking sticks! I merged one of my favorite lines from our poet this term with a song that we sung at church this morning… Morning time science this morning, brought to you by @yotoplay_us, @thewaldockway, and fun anatomy toys. I didn’t grow up watching, listening, or loving anything Star Wars. Just got this beauty in the mail, and I’m trying to find more than just a moment here and there to dive in! I’m still getting in the groove of the semester with a few extra obligations I’m balancing, but am sensing already the need just to give my brain a break from ALLTHETHINGS and indulge in my own “free read.” Am I teaching myself how to make a rag rug, just to pass on this handicraft to my language arts co-op class as we read On the Banks of Plum Creek?

Free Downloads

Click here to check out our educational freebies!

Journals, Narrating Notebooks, & Print-at-home Helps

Our Current Curriculum: A Gentle Feast

Click on the picture to go to A Gentle Feast and learn more.

(I have a post coming soon on why it is such a great fit for our family.)

Essential Speaking:
Communication Classes & Coaching


Before I was a homeschool momma, I got a couple of degrees in speech, traveled nationally as a debate judge and coach, and taught collegiate communication courses.

I keep my foot in my communication background by teaching speech and debate once a week to homeschooled high schoolers in my community, and have recently started to branch out a little more online.

If you are interested in seeing what is currently being offered, feel free to click on the pictures below to learn more about course offerings and our online coaching club or drop me a question in the contact form below!

Essential Speaking


Under construction…

(Right now, I have some Essential Speaking stuff tucked under Essential Learning… but it is going to be in a new home here with even more goodies! Woohoo!)

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My thoughts on Among the Forest People… and free narration pages. 💛

Let me start off by whispering an admission that I hope every Charlotte Mason, living book loving, nature studying person won’t hate me for. I really don’t like Burgess. There. I said it. I tried. I really, really did. But when I noticed my own kiddo’s interest dissipating, despite my attempts to enliven the words …

Continue reading “My thoughts on Among the Forest People… and free narration pages. 💛”