Let's start at the beginning.
It was baby food and beauty for me. My mother was (and still is) a design enthusiast and she raised my sisters and I to be the same. She had a keen eye for how to pull things together in a way that felt extra special. The first home I really remember was done in a pastel Victorian style, but it was comfortable and feminine - and I noticed. Even as a little girl. I noticed that it mattered that the (ruffled) cream drapes hung well, and the accent pillows on the sofa complimented the soft pink club chair. The oak floors that we loved to walk barefoot on and the antiques. I noticed the Pfaltzgraff Yorktowne everyday dishes, all the rage in the 80’s and early 90’s, and the little collected vignettes on a side table. Our Mom subscribed to magazines and she let us peruse them and chat about our favorite rooms in the issue. She let us have strong opinions about the design of our own bedrooms and while she tried to guide us, she would always defer to what we really loved.
Both my parents were avid gardeners, and my Dad was composting and treating his lawn like his fourth baby long before it was blog-worthy or instagramable. It just mattered that we lived well in our house. It was never grand or expensive. It was simply intentional. A lot of passion went into home, and although styles have evolved and changed, the heart of it all is the same with my parents to this day. So it was inevitable that I ended up with the desperate, unabashed love for living a beautiful life.
Fast forward a whole lot of life to just a few years ago. I married and had children of my own, and it took me a while to figure out who I wanted to be in our family’s home. I spent a promising, but mere 5 weeks at the University of Arkansas in Interior Design before finding out that I was expecting our second baby. The timing just wasn’t right to continue on for me but it was a great confirmation that I had what it takes to someday lean in to those aspirations.
So on my own, some trial and error, a few terrible color choices, a lot of antiquing and a massive amount of research led to us building our first custom home with a general contractor friend in 2014. Then it was all dark floors, white walls and we were the first in our whole area to *gasp* paint our brick. We had to beg and plead with our HOA to allow it because no one had ever done it. That home was where we raised our babies and although we knew it wasn’t our final home, we made so many special memories that we will cherish forever. Over the years living there, we layered in what felt like us and that’s how I knew I had honed in on that magic formula. Ignoring the trends of the moment and really leaning in to the heart of how each unique family lives.
It’s always been about a feeling. How we get there is different every time but it’s always a process. I’ve just never been the girl who could order it all in a day and install it. In my opinion, really good design is so personal that it should make anyone who doesn’t live in that space feel juuust slightly not at home. Never to say we shouldn’t make our home welcoming, of course a guest’s comfort is extremely important. But that guest should have no doubt about whose home they are welcomed into. It should exude every bit of love and quirk that family is.
In 2022, after really believing we would live in our city forever, God shared His plans with us. We said goodbye to everything we loved and to our home, and made a move to my husband’s hometown, quaint little Arkadelphia Arkansas, to pastor the church my husband grew up in. When you plant deep roots and make beautiful memories in a place, it hurts to uproot. 3 years later it still aches at times. I don’t really share this, but I’ve never been by our previous home since our move. I think it just goes back to that passion instilled in me for home. I poured my love and heart into my family there and I think a piece of it is still standing in that kitchen.
But the plan of God always surpasses our plans, and though it’s been a hard few years being unsettled and saying goodbye, we’ve seen Him do more than we could have dreamed already. No doubt in our minds that we are right where He sent us, and we would never appreciate joy without a little pain along the way. I have grown so much as a human, a Mother, a wife and a Christian because of the pushing and prodding He has done in me in the last 3 years. I have poured out my everything as a pastor’s wife and I’ve seen such a huge return on that often challenging investment.
I’ve also grown as a designer, a curator of home. It took us a while but we found our forever land late in 2022. Just shy of 11 hilly acres dotted with Oak trees so many we haven’t counted them all yet. So we lovingly named our homeplace - Oak Hill.
When we bought the property it was completely wooded except one small clearing. We had a lot of pines on the land and we love pine wood, but not pine needles so we took a lot of them down and had them milled locally to build a barn for us to first live in, then eventually become a shop for my husband and boys. We’ve been living the barn life (it’s not a “barndominium” and we will jokingly but also seriously correct you if you say it!) for 2 years while we planned and have been building our main house.
The house is the biggest project we’ve ever done, residential or commercial, so it’s been quite a learning experience. But isn’t every new venture a learning experience, even for the most seasoned? We are inching upon a year of this build and we are finally close to finishing up enough to move in to our house, it’s weeks away from closing and *pray saints* move in day! Lord knows we don’t need any hiccups or surprises so seriously if you’re a praying person we need them.
All of those years I just talked about lead to today, and goodness there is a lot to share, so this substack was born out of having a whole lot more to say. I’ve been sharing the journey on my instagram, but only in bits and pieces since it’s hard to really convey the story in short form. I want to really give you the nitty gritty of our builds, but also the inspiration behind it all.
By “it all”, I really mean it all. The whole thing called life. This will be a place to read the practical, the behind the scenes real talk, but also the ethereal and all the hopes and dreams we all have but are afraid to voice out loud for fear of being too much. I’ll give my transparency if you promise to do the same in return. And I’ll give you beautiful pictures, delicious recipes, my own life hacks, family life, ministry life, maybe even my Spotify playlists if I’m feeling really open.
It will just be all the things that make my heart beat a little faster. I bet you’ll feel the same, so I hope you’ll stay a while At Home on Oak Hill.