The Big White Farmhouse

This post contains affiliate links, which means I may receive a commission of any sale made at no extra cost to you.

My husband and I celebrated our nineteenth wedding anniversary this week.  Nineteen!  Time flies when you’re having fun.  That’s not to say that our marriage hasn’t had its share of bumps in the road.  We almost quit at one point, but I’m so grateful that we ultimately drew back to each other and kept going.  It reminds me of a quote from G.K. Chesterton about being two stubborn pieces of iron:

Very few people ever state properly the strong argument in favour of marrying for love or against marrying for money. The argument is not that all lovers are heroes and heroines, nor is it that all dukes are profligates or all millionaires cads. The argument is this, that the differences between a man and a woman are at the best so obstinate and exasperating that they practically cannot be got over unless there is an atmosphere of exaggerated tenderness and mutual interest. To put the matter in one metaphor, the sexes are two stubborn pieces of iron; if they are to be welded together, it must be while they are red-hot. Every woman has to find out that her husband is a selfish beast, because every man is a selfish beast by the standard of a woman. But let her find out the beast while they are both still in the story of “Beauty and the Beast.” Every man has to find out that his wife is cross—that is to say, sensitive to the point of madness: for every woman is mad by the masculine standard. But let him find out that she is mad while her madness is more worth considering than anyone else’s sanity.

— G.K. Chesterton, The Common Man 

Nineteen years of living and creating and working together has welded us tightly together.  May we never take each other for granted and may we stubbornly cling to each other in all of life’s storms.  Marriage is a gift.

Hoping to document the abundance around me all year long!

Around here, abundance looks like…

+ positive updates for all of our in-process shenanigans.  My husband’s skin is healing slowly but nicely after his basal cell carcinoma surgery.  My son’s car was ultimately deemed salvageable and will hopefully be ready to be picked up next week.  As for the hardwood flooring, we hit a snag when our first contractor quoted us an astronomical amount for the repair, but a second opinion brought a much better price point.  Hoping to hear from our insurance and get a plan in place soon.

+ cleaning the house like a fool!  We took Wednesday off from school and I deemed it the perfect time to work on some much overdue chores.  I scrubbed the grout in my shower with this new-to-me tool, I shaved the couch of fuzz and dog hair with this much-used tool and I deep cleaned the kitchen to get ready for Thanksgiving cooking.  A very productive day!

+ rolling with the punches as we still don’t have a usable dining room.  We set up our Thanksgiving table in the living room and ate in front of the fireplace.  So ridiculous but one story we’ll be telling for years to come.

+ finishing up most of my Christmas wrapping!  My goal was to finish all of my shopping before December so actually getting them wrapped was just icing on the cake.  So excited to have a calm and relaxing Advent season.

+ selling three unneeded items for the Car Loan Payoff Plan: a book, a pair of pants and a pair of kids’ snowbibs.  After shipping and fees, I made $15.46.

Reading //

• The Ignatian Rules of Discernment: A Practical Guide–Introduction from Megan Hjelmstad at Spiritual Direction // “The heart of Saint Ignatius’ Rules is this: in every moment, a great battle is being waged all around us, a battle between good and evil. The object? To win the most valuable territory in the universe—your soul.”
• When It Feels Like the Plane Might Go Down from Shawn Smucker at The Courage to Live It // “What, then, will have been the point of hoarding anything? Of taking the safe route? Of doing anything other than those things that lift up others, create relationships and community, and leave the world a better place than we found it?”
• Leninthink from Gary Saul Morson at The New Criterion // A long, but worthwhile read.
• Friendship in Marriage: What Really Makes a Home from John Cuddeback at Life Craft // “Aristotle saw that true friendship is all about virtue: it is rooted in virtue; it grows through virtue; its goal is virtue. Spouses have the best natural opportunity to discover and enact this reality in a context perfect for friendship but also more than just friendship. Theirs is a relationship intrinsically oriented to generating and cultivating the life of others; and as a sacrament, their relationship takes on even deeper spiritual signification and implications.”

Watching/Listening //

• 2025 Is Your No Buy Year! How I BOUGHT NOTHING For One Year from Taryn Maria
• Allow The Book To Change You – Read To Discover Not Validate from Rob Pirie – The Cause

Loving //

• this card game for aging Millennials // My husband and I bought this on a whim while we were out Christmas shopping.  We’re already considered “Geriatric Millennials” so definitely the target audience.  We laughed so hard.
• this quote from Richard Winn Livingstone (I need to read his book, A Defense of Classical Education!):

A man who knows the origins of the world in which he lives, looks at it with more understanding, walks in it with securer and more certain steps; he is less intimidated by words, for he knows their history, less inclined to either excessive respect or contempt for existing institutions, for he sees how they came to be there.

This post contains affiliate links, which means I may receive a commission of any sale made at no extra cost to you.

With Thanksgiving right around the corner, it seemed appropriate to focus on gratitude this week.  I’ve been feeling pretty worn down and this practice definitely helped bring me back to center and fortified my resolve to keep going.  Anyway, I made a big list of things I was thankful for throughout the week and here are just a few:

The incredibly kind comments and encouraging words on my previous post.  Getting more sleep than I have in months.  How much my children enjoying cooking and baking.  Little buds appearing on my Christmas cactus (maybe it’s a Thanksgiving cactus now?).  Early morning fires in the fireplace.  When my husband surprises me by starting the coffeemaker before he leaves in the morning.  Hanging out and shooting the breeze with my kids.  A “boring” week without any big catastrophes!

Hoping to document the abundance around me all year long!

Around here, abundance looks like…

+ celebrating my first high school graduate!  He really wanted to finish his senior year six months early, so I gave him the year’s worth of assignments and he got to work.  I’m so proud of his diligence and perseverance.  Since this is my first graduate, I had to figure out how to make it “official” and thankfully, there are many great options online.  I created an official-looking transcript through Fast Transcripts and ordered his diploma through Homeschool Diploma.

+ revamping some used gift tags.  My parents used beautiful tags for our gifts last year and I just couldn’t throw them away.  I covered the backs with some book paper (left over from last year’s junk journal – I’m a hoarder) and then used a Sharpie to write each family member’s name.  If they make it through the hullabaloo of Christmas morning, I’ll be able to use them again and again.

+ gaining some momentum with the Weather the Storm Challenge after a few lackluster weeks!  Money seems to be falling through our fingers with home/car repairs (and I’ve been doing quite a bit of Christmas shopping too!) so any way I can save a dollar or two feels like a huge win.  This week, I:

• used the weekly grocery store ad to buy chocolate chips, applesauce, and coffee on sale
• used a $20 coupon that we earned from using our grocery store rewards card
• sold eggs to friends
• organized and inventoried the deep freezers
• used tissue paper that I saved from a recent ThredUp order to package a sale
• made chicken broth
• finished the last project in the kids’ abandoned Paint by Sticker book (so calming!  I loved it)
• designated two ratty sweaters as “pajama sweaters” to give them one more season of use
• decided against sending Christmas cards (the Christmas budget is a bit slim this year)
• made bread
• found a new with tags pair of sneakers for my son for half of the going price on ebay
• helped my husband with my boys’ haircuts
• made it to November 22nd before turning on the heat!  (that little heat wave earlier in the month sure helped)

+ selling six unneeded items for the Car Loan Payoff Plan: two books, a single cloth napkin (I called it a “replacement”), a sweater, a pair of sneakers and a video game for my son.  After shipping and fees, I made $27.05.

Reading //

• “My Father, I am Yours” from St. Francis de Sales at TAN Direction // “Have you fallen into the snares of trials? Regard not your misfortune; look only to God; He will have care of you. Cast thy solicitude on Him, and He will provide for thee. Why trouble yourself by sighing or pining about the accidents of this world, since you know not what you ought to wish for, and God will always wish what is best for you? Await, then, in repose of spirit, the effects of the divine good pleasure, and let it suffice for you, since it is always good; so Our Lord ordered St. Catherine of Siena, saying: ‘Think of Me, and I will think of thee.’”  I needed this reminder.
• If Your World Is Not Enchanted, You’re Not Paying Attention from L.M. Sacasas at The Convivial Society // “Enchantment is just the measure of the quality of our attention.”
• On Conquering White Whales: Stemming the Tide of Cultural Ignorance from Fleur Forsyth-Smith at Intellectual Takeout // “This battle for the hearts and minds of our students may begin in elementary schools, but it must first originate with us: the parents and the teachers. By immersing ourselves in the best that has ever been thought and said and written, we are able to stand on the shoulders of giants, for they have given us the platform from which we can propel ourselves out of ignorance into the lofty pursuit of truth.”
• How Risky Play Fights Childhood Anxiety from Lenore Skenazy at The Coddling of the American Mind Movie // “What if the ways in which we are parenting are making life harder on our kids and harder on us? What if by doing less, parents would foster better outcomes for children and parents alike?”
• Embracing Candlelight in Darker Days from Patricia Patnode at Theology of Home

New Additions to The List // 

• Hunting the Unicorn: A Critical Biography of Ruth Pitter by Don King
• Collected Poems by Ruth Pitter
• Aquinas’s Shorter Summa: Saint Thomas’s Own Concise Version of His Summa Theologica
• The Quiet Season: Remembering Country Winters by Jerry Apps

Loving //

• this thought-provoking part in The Letters Home post from Grandma Donna // “There is an addiction today and it is an addiction to instant. Everything ‘now’ is causing us to waste our life, and this is not why we are here on this earth.”