Whimsical September

“Holiday Baking Days” are generally not a part of our December traditions, but 2020 found us having two this year: one for our kids (holy flour and sprinkle explosion!) and one for just me. All alone. In my kitchen. With no little fingers and extra messes to worry about.

*Ahem* – maybe the mess was just as big, but it was just me, prepping, cooking, decorating, packaging, and having myself a good ole’ time while Jamie graciously had the girls out of the house so that I could have some “me” time to baking some treats for our neighbors.

I can’t put my fingers on when I started cooking and baking from scratch, but it’s been my thing for a long time. I find that if you always have a list of essentials on hand, baking from scratch is not only a piece of cake, but it’s so much more affordable than routinely buying packages. It also tastes way better and is super gratifying.

As soon as we run out of baking essentials or a spice of some kind, I immediately jot it down on my grocery list for my next trip.

Having a trusted cookbook and food blog as your go-to is super important too, and when it comes to baking, Sally’s Baking Addiction is my resource every time. I’ve made dozens of her recipes over the last five years, and every one of them is perfect. She’s taught me so much about baking.

Cooking or baking from scratch is also so much easier and more enjoyable when you have a variety of tools to pick and choose from that fit your needs, such as baking sheets, a slew of measuring utensils, etc.

A few days ago I ran into our local Walmart and completely lost myself in their Home section.

 I haven’t updated a lot of my baking tools since we got married 10 years ago, so I scooped up some additional baking sheets, mixing bowls, measuring cups/spoons, and some treat containers to deliver to our neighbors. There doesn’t seem to be a kitchen item that they don’t have, and Walmart Home usually offers each kitchen item from several different brands to pick from. Most of what I scooped up during this trip was from the brand Wilton and Pioneer Woman (so stinkin’ cute!)​​​​​​​.

After I grabbed my ingredients, I headed home and prepped to bake the next morning (i.e. pulled up my recipes, set out butter to soften, set all dry ingredients out on the counter, etc).

I started at 9 a.m. and had the kitchen entirely cleaned up with packages ready to be delivered by 1 p.m.

If you’re looking to make some last-minute treats as well this Christmas week, here is how I quickly made these four recipes.

• Peanut Butter Blondies
• Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies
• Chocolate Cake Balls
• Chocolate Covered Pretzel Rods

1. I started with the Chewy Chocolate Chips Cookies. I made the dough and then put it in the freezer to chill.
2. Next, I made the Peanut Butter Blondies.
3. While those cooked, I made the cake for the cake balls. While that was baking, I made the frosting.
4. While the cake finished up, I got started with melting chocolate (both milk chocolate and white chocolate) for the pretzels.
5. Once the cake was cooled, I mixed it with the icing and scooped it into balls using my melon scooper. I lined a baking sheet with wax paper and then put the balls into the freezer to set.
6. While those were setting, I began dipping pretzels into the melted chocolate.
7. I swapped out the cake balls for the pretzels in the freezer.
8. I then dipped the cake balls into the chocolate and decorated them. Back into the freezer they went.
9. When the Peanut Butter Blondies, cake balls, and pretzels were all finished and cooling or setting, I got the chocolate chip cookie dough out of the freezer and scooped it onto a baking sheet.
10. I cleaned up all at once at the very end, packaged the treat boxes, and took Sadie to deliver them with me (always trying to sneak in one-on-one time with the girls where I can).

I doubled each of the recipes and ended up with 10+ boxes to gift to neighbors plus an entire tray to serve our friends who came over to film their daughters’ and our daughters’ Christmas piano pieces.

Here’s a link to all of the goods I grabbed from Walmart to bake. Having a fresh set of measuring tools and baking sheets was GLORIOUS. And everything was so affordable. I cannot recommend updating your baking items enough. It’ll make you want to get them out and do some cookin’!

I’m not going to lie – I just wrote that title and had to stop and think about if it’s really been four months since school started. Have we really survived? Have we really made it a full semester? Are we for real still doing this thing? We are, we are, we are! I cannot believe it. If I had a penny for every time I’ve considered putting them back in school, we’d have more than a handful of pennies.

But yet, here we are four months in, and I’m feeling pretty empowered (at least today…!) to finish up the second half of the school year homeschooling. We embarked on this journey without a road map of any kind, and A JOURNEY IT HAS BEEN.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

I have a million and one thoughts about homeschooling, but I’ll cut straight to the chase and say that I absolutely, positively love it 95% of the time. I’ve come up with that percentage because 19 out of 20 days I am filled with gratefulness for the wisdom I was hit with in the kitchen that mid-July day to homeschool.

But there’s that one pesky day every so often where Jamie comes home from work and I’m either crying, super moody, or just don’t want to talk because I’m done, I’m done, I’m done and I just can’t do all of this at the same time anymore.

But inevitably, the next day I’m over it and we have the very best homeschool day. It just goes in waves. Bless my husband.​​​​​​​

Another thing I’ll cut straight to the chase about: all three girls are definitely going back to in-person school next year if conditions with COVID have improved to allow for some predictability and new normalcy. While I love many aspects of homeschool very much, I can’t continue to homeschool and work from home. If it’ll be another year like this year though, they’ll be homeschooled again.

Now that I’ve summed up how we feel about homeschool as a whole, here are some smaller, broken down details about how the last five months have been. ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Pros and Cons of Homeschooling this Year

Pros (in no particular order):

1. The girls get to be with each other all day, every day, and their friendships with each other are rock solid. All three of them are obsessed with each other.
2. No more rushed mornings of a sleepy Hadley waking up to her alarm clock, arguing over her eating breakfast (she’s rarely hungry first thing in the morning), or rushing over getting dressed and out the door. Our mornings are calm and a sweet time for our family.
3. No more packing lunches! Praise.
4. No more keeping up with school schedules (i.e. what themed day is today, what do I need to send in for this or that, etc.) Mentally, our schedule is so much lighter, and it’s WONDERFUL.
5. We’ve saved so much money on clothes! The big girls have plenty of clothes and shoes, but I probably would have bought them more if they were in school. Now I don’t care if they mostly rotate the same 10 outfits that they love. Whatever!
6. I get to be their teacher, which has been very gratifying for me to watch them learn and apply new concepts.
7. We get to move at a tempo that is right for them academically. If Hadley nails a concept easily, we move right along. If she’s stumbling a bit on something and it’s not clicking quite yet, we slow down and work on it until she gets it. First grade is such a crucial “learn to read” year, and teaching her how to really do it has been AWESOME.
8. No more getting off the bus and seeing her occasionally sad because someone left her out, or hearing her say a phrase that she learned at school that I’m not too happy about. I get to keep her in this protected little wing just a smidge longer. 😉
9. School only takes about two hours each day. Sometimes less, sometimes more.
10. We have extra time for an additional dance class, weekly private speech therapy, and piano.
11. We’re able to spend more time with grandparents.
12. We’re unaffected by the constantly-changing school situation (i.e virtual, then in-person, then hybrid, back and forth quarantined, etc.)
13. I generally love that we get to do everything together. I feel like they’re learning so much just by going about my day with me. We try to make as much into a learning opportunity as we can.

Struggles of Homeschooling

1. Trying to get into a rhythm of what time of day to do school, how much school to do each day, etc. has literally taken the entire semester, but now we’re good.
2. I’ve occasionally felt curious if I was keeping Hadley on par with what she should be learning and where she should be. Thankfully my neighbor (who also has a first grader) sends me screenshots of her daughter’s work so that I know if we’re where we should be!
3. I literally couldn’t do all that “I” do if I didn’t have help. I try to be very honest that I have a lot of help from my right-hand girl Erin, who comes 15 hours a week. My mother-in-law comes over all day on Thursdays, and my mom comes over at the drop of a hat whenever I need her.
4. Homeschooling means that the kids are with me all day, every day unless I bring in reinforcement to help us out, and it’s a lifesaver.
5. Deciding to homeschool three months after I launched a business that I’d invested SO much into was an insane idea, and it’s been hard. I had to give up my morning workouts so that I can work from 5 – 7 a.m., and then from there I just squeeze in 2-3 hours of work when I can. It’s really hard though.
6. Homeschooling a pre-k student and 1st grader with a baby/toddler at home is REALLY DIFFICULT, and honestly, I don’t think we’d be able to do it well without another adult entertaining Jillian. I’ve read that some families that have a baby/toddler at home wait to do school until that long afternoon nap, but for me, I need that time to work. Again why I need those helping hands that I’m so grateful for. Nobody can actually do it all. Something has to give.
7. I miss seeing the joy the girls would have as they shared what they did at school. They have both always LOVED (!) school and every little thing about it. I look forward to them enjoying all of that again.
8. I miss the joy of seeing them make their own new little friends in their classes. Thankfully we’ve been able to give them time to play with and be around kids their ages 5+ times a week, so I don’t think they’re missing a beat socially. But again, I miss hearing them come home and tell me about a new best friend they made on their own.
9. If school takes longer than an hour, Hadley will sometimes start complaining, and we’ve had to really work on that. We take stretch breaks or play outside or have a snack. In general though we’ve had to work on expectations and learning that first grade is tough stuff and that school is her job right now, and it might take more than an hour that day of working on it.

Other swirling thoughts

1. I know without a shadow of a doubt that God was preparing me to homeschool for a while without ever realizing it. I remember asking my good friend Kayla (who also homeschools) questions all the time about it just because I was curious. I NEVER wanted to homeschool (ever!), but all of our conversations (just out of “curiosity”) really helped me set expectations for what homeschooling should look like.
2. The flexibility is the best. thing. ever.
3. I do think that having a background in education has helped me in this journey. My former teaching strategies come out all the time, which have been helpful.
4. One reason I’ll for sure send the kids back to public school eventually is because the material is going to get too tough for me to teach. 😉 I know that I could teach it, but I imagine that giving them a more quality education at home would take more of my time than it does now, and honestly the “extra time” is just hard to find.
5. I think homeschool is a really, really, really great option for a lot of families who don’t even realize it.
6. I also think that lack of accountability with homeschooling (at least in Alabama) is terrifying, and there’s a lot of families that are homeschooling that probably shouldn’t be.
7. I really look forward to the girls going back to public school next year, but I will also really, really, sorely miss so much about homeschool too. Such great options that are so different from each other.

Ah, that was a whole heck of a lot of rambling. Like I said, this has all been a complete whirlwind and truly a “learning as we go” kind of thing. I’ve tried to give my kids the absolute best while also working a new job that I love (so much) and run the house, etc. etc. etc. You know – all the things that we ALL juggle in one way or another!

If you have questions about homeschooling, feel free to get in touch! I’m no expert and could surely do a lot of things better, but know the few things I know and would be happy to talk more privately.

It’s a quiet post-holiday Friday morning here, and I’m immensely enjoying being up before my loves, sipping coffee on the couch with the fireplace on, and typing this. (Long-time readers already know that Teddy is snuggled up firmly against my leg.) I usually size myself up as an extrovert because I love being with my people, but quiet moments like this remind me that this is how I actually recharge. Ahh.

Another major holiday amidst COVID down.

Yesterday was a sweet day. Low key but enjoyable. We feasted and we rested. This was only the second time since 2011 that we’ve hosted the big Thanksgiving meal, and we enjoyed doing it.

Yesterday morning, I woke up feel inspired to go for a jog. My dad and I ran the Turkey Trot 5k several years in a row when I was in a college, and I always loved starting the holiday that way. I threw my headphones in, knocked out 2.5 miles (I’m kind of sore today after not running in 2.5 months!), walked in to the smell of Pillsbury cinnamon rolls coming out of the air fryer (the only way to cook them in my opinion!), and cleaned up before throwing on comfy clothes to cook in.

Jamie smoked two turkeys last holiday season, so he was excited to smoke another one yesterday. I made a bunch of sides (also burning the heck out of my left hand after grabbing the handle of a sauce pan that I didn’t know was hot!) and watched the Macy’s parade on and off with the girls.

They played hard, got dressed mid-morning, and then we welcomed just a few guests to dine with us: Jamie’s parents and my grandmother (COVID and loneliness have been especially hard on her, so I’m really glad she could join.)

Our families get along very well which I’ve never taken for granted even for a second.

I’d set the dining room table days prior after getting in a few boxes I’d ordered online from Walmart Home. I’d logged on to place a grocery pickup order last week and this beautiful tablescape popped up, which linked to everything I needed to recreate it.

I’ve shared so many times on this website that I’m very visual when it comes to decorating and need to see it all laid out in front of me. I have a hard time envisioning interiors on my own.

After seeing the prices from Walmart and realizing that we needed a good chunk of it anyway (all of our dinner plates are chipped and a mess!), I ordered what I needed to create this look. I’m glad I set it up a few days early because the site of it made me happy all week. I never keep our dining room table set because we usually use this area for homeschool, but gosh I sure did love the look of it all pulled together (a deep contrast from the rest of my life that I feel like I never have all pulled together, LOL!)

Almost everything you see in this picture is linked below!

We ate a big meal, enjoyed dessert, cleaned up the house, and then relaxed for a few hours. My mother-in-law and grandmother hadn’t been to our new house yet since they started building it, so we went over there for about an hour to give them a tour. I never mind an excuse to run over there!

My grandmother sipped a cup of coffee and then headed home around 4:30 so that she could make the seven-mile trip home before dark. My in-laws left around 7 p.m.

We started a tradition several years ago to gift the girls Christmas pajamas and all wear them for the first time on Thanksgiving night. Everybody really loves this.

The girls were bathed and in bed by 7 p.m. and out cold by 7:15. Jamie watched some TV while I browsed home inspiration (and put up a fun poll on Instagram!) before we both crashed hard around 10 p.m.

All in all, a sweet day!

I am keenly aware that people from all over the country (and the world) may be reading these words, and that they may be met with all kinds of emotions and thoughts. Some of you had a beautiful day yesterday celebrating in a way that was right for your circumstance and family and some of you may have really struggled for a slew of circumstantial reasons.

No magic words of encouragement, just solidarity in that this virus is really hard. We are “all in this together”, but also so drastically divided because of how we are uniquely affected in ways that we don’t quite understand about each other. I don’t know what is going on in your personal life and how this is all rocking you in a way that’s different from me, but just know that I wish you much peace as you tackle this very unique holiday season. I love you all.

Good morning! I’m writing this post in real-time like I used to do in the Stone Ages of blogging. It’s currently 5:02 a.m. and I’m weirdly wide awake after an exhausting weekend (I crashed early last night). Jamie is fixing me a cup of coffee and then he’ll head to the garage to work out while I work behind my laptop, except this morning I’ve decided to share on this page versus All Things Madison because I’m simply feeling inspired to do so.

It’s interesting how much this virus has changed so many of us and the trajectory of our lives in ways that maybe we don’t even realize. One of the many ways that the virus has caused a Domino-effect of decisions is our recent choice to build a new home.

While it was a decision we faced years earlier than we expected, we’re not totally surprised by it (and neither are any of the people who know us the best). We’re currently feeling very, very excited and grateful and I’d love to document how (in the world!) this came to be.

In early September, we had a very direct COVID-19 exposure. Jamie and I both had zero symptoms and tested negative, but we still decided to quarantine for a while. During that tight quarantine time, we got out one evening and drove around to two neighborhoods: one that I’ve had my eye on and one that Jamie’s had his eye on. We started looking at them through a different lens of potentially building a custom home in one of them one day.

In fact, let’s back up. Why were we even talking about custom home building in the first place? I thought we were in a home we loved that we could stay in for decades? Yes and yes.

But also, yes and no. There is no doubt about how much we love our current home. We really, really love it. But do we want to stay here for decades anymore? No. We bought this house firmly believing that our family was complete with two girls, and then we had our (best) bonus baby (ever).

And while this home is still phenomenal for a family of five, the layout is not going to be conducive for how we like to use our home. We’ve known for a while that we wanted a different layout. Square footage wise, we didn’t want anything much bigger. We just needed to have space that was more comfortable for our family.

There were four things that our current house is missing that we desired in a future home: a better bathroom situation for our daughters, some kind of permanent office space for Jamie and I, a second story so that we aren’t all completely on top of each other every second of the day, and no homes directly behind ours (just a personal preference that I’ve realized I really enjoy since I like being in our backyard constantly. I love a serene, quick backyard). Our current house has large bedrooms, a dining room, an expansive entry way, and two master closets, and though we love all of that, we would rather the square footage be more tailored to how we use our home.

Okay, back to quarantine. So we drove around and kind of realized that the neighborhood I’d been eyeing isn’t actually one that I could see myself moving to one day. Jamie agreed.

So we drove over to The Village of Oakland Springs, which is a traditional neighborhood development in Madison that Jamie has loved for years. In fact, when I first saw the plans online in 2017, I immediately knew that we’d be moving there when we moved to Alabama in 2018. I loved it. I remember calling my mom and my friend Amira and telling them about it, and they were both kind of underwhelmed by it. The neighborhood was basically nothing at that point, and we just couldn’t see the vision yet. Plus, there was only one home at the time with a three-car garage (Jamie’s MUST HAVE), and it was out of our price range. I loved it though. (That same house just went up for sale for $221k more than when it was for sale in January 2018. Wow.)

Throughout the last few years, we’ve kept our eye on that neighborhood, driving through it every few months gawking at the beautiful new homes. Jamie continued to talk about how much he’d love to build there.

And that’s the other thing about this neighborhood and the street we liked: it’s a custom home builder. So we knew that one day we could sit down with an architect and really map out a home in our price range that functioned how we wanted it to without the elements that we didn’t want/need.

After driving around that evening, we emailed the agent and asked if she could give us details about what some of the current homes are going for so that we could start setting our expectations right. It’s the type of neighborhood where very little info about the lots and homes are online, so we had to inquire.

We knew absolutely nothing about custom home building, so we figured that we’d probably need to save a lot of money between now and 2025 (ish) if we wanted to make this a reality down the road. Basically, we needed to be financially prepared.

Long story short, the realtor surprised me by sending two floor plans of homes that were set to be built. Both were gorgeous, but one of them wasn’t quite the home we were looking for.

The other one was perfect. Perfect. Like, I CAN’T UNSEE this floorplan. It had the DeSpain family written all over it. If Jamie and I were to take all of our conversations over the last couple of years and map out our dream home, this would be it. Every single square inch. I kid you not. It’s not 95% perfect. It’s 100% perfect.

They needed a large chunk of money down though to custom build, so we figured we’d hold onto that floor plan and build it down the road because we didn’t have that much cash. But then the builder surprised us with taking less down. I remember hanging up the phone with the realtor who had just shared the “good news” and laying my head on the counter as Jamie was like “Oh crap, really?”

But honestly, we just did not want to move. I didn’t want to leave my neighbors. I didn’t want the headache of moving. So for a bit, we decided that this wasn’t the right time to move, and that we would just start saving extra cash like crazy. I remember we said that we wanted to save $50k extra to put down to build that exact house in five years.

Two problems with that though.

1.) The lot our dream home was slated to be build on would be gone. You cannot replicate the lot we’re getting. It’s on the perfect street, one block from future retail and restaurants, two houses away from ponds, no backyard neighbors, the house faces west (which is a must have for us), one street away from the future neighborhood pool and fitness center, etc. etc. etc.

Even if we wanted to build this exact house, we would lose the lot, and this felt like a huge dealbreaker for me.

2.) Say we went bananas and saved an extra $50k to put down on the house. We know without a shadow of a doubt that that exact house will be $50k higher in five years, if not way more. It’s just that type of neighborhood and city where the housing market is going to continue to go nuts for a while. So if we put that $50k down on a house that’s priced for $50k more, we’ll be starting right back at the same place that we are now, but we’ll be five years behind in paying off the mortgage. Plus, the increase in our new mortgage is less than it would cost to save $50k.

At this point, we were kind of freaking out. I even had a big boohoo fest with my neighbors and confessed what was going on. LOL. I’m very, very close with a few of them and so are my kids. So I needed them to know what was up!

We just kept wanting to throw in the towel because “we just didn’t want to do this right now”. We had no reason to move. But when we looked at five years down the road, we know with certainty that we’ll be very, very itchy to custom build and move. And then we wondered if not hopping on our literal dream home now would be a huge financial mistake.

So the next step was meeting with the builder himself. I brought over 100 pictures I’d printed from Walgreens, and we basically went through and asked what we could get for the price of the house. Sam Bryan with Jimmy Bryan Construction has been so great to work with, and he basically went through my pictures and said “Yes, we can throw that in” or “No, that’s a $25,000 cast iron door”, LOL. In that initial meeting, he was able to tell us that we could absolutely customize the home for the list price.

Oy. We really thought that meeting would deflate our balloon and that we’d be done talking about it. We figured all of our “wants” would be massive upcharges, but nope.

During this time, we were driving out to the lot constantly. Friends and family would ask us if we’d prayed about it, and we’d just laugh and talk about how we’d been sitting out there praying together for weeks.

After about three weeks of walking through this process, we finally sat on the couch to make a decision. We’d felt heavy about it all day because we knew that night was “the meeting” we scheduled to have with each other.

We had every single piece of information we needed to make a decision, and we had done a deep, deep, deep dive into our finances. And everything was pointing to “Yes! This is an amazing opportunity and a well-thought-out financial and family lifestyle decision.”

But we decided that we just didn’t want to do this. We didn’t want to go through the process of selling our house, and we were worried about fluctuating interest rates (what if they skyrocket in 2021?) We also wondered if this type of decision is something that should be well-planned out over the course of a few years, not a few weeks? Were we rushing this for no reason?

We felt a great sadness in deciding that we just didn’t want to go through with it. When push came to shove, we were just scared about making a bad decision. But we just felt so sad about it. Thankfully we were on the same page though. We decided to pass on the house.

The next day, I texted Jamie and told him that I wanted to revisit the conversation again that night. He said that he wanted to talk about it too. We just felt unsettled after saying “no” to the house without a concrete reason beyond “it’s just not a good time”.

That night, the girls and I sat down to eat dinner because Jamie was running late. He walked in, gave me a kiss, and apologized for being late. He sat down at the table with a huge smile and his face and said “I’m late because I wanted to drive over to the new house to see what my new commute is going to be like. Let’s buy the house.”

I erupted into a fit of giggles, kept asking if he was serious, and told him I felt the same way.

The next day we paid a lot of money (which did make us question everything all over again LOL), but man oh man are we excited. Very, very, very grateful.

I absolutely, positively love home design. Exterior, interior, you name it. I’m not good at it by any means, but I love pouring over Pinterest and Instagram and designing room by room. My passion for this began in our Kansas house as I tried to update it on a shoestring budget and then spilled over into this house as I’ve overhauled and designed one room at a time.

The opportunity to do that with an entire house as it’s being built is so fun! Maybe it would be overwhelming to some, but I could not love it more. I already know that I’m going to be so sad when it’s over. But I can’t wait to see the finished product.

As for my neighbors, we feel solid enough in our friendships that everything is going to be okay. 😉

A home functions differently for everyone of course, but we really put a lot of weight into our home. I remember looking at homes with our realtor in Tennessee right after we got married in 2011. We saw the home that we would end up buying and talked about how great it would be to have our friends over for dinner or have our friends and family come visit and stay a weekend with us.

I firmly (!) believe that if you intentionally foster an inviting space, that people will come (whether that be seating at a table for dinner or a comfortable bed and fresh towels for guests who stay overnight). It doesn’t matter how big your space is, but rather what intentional decisions you’ve made to make your home a place that others know they welcomed and not any kind of extra hassle or burden.

So, there’s the story! We expect the house to be finished in May(ish). We will list our house about 60 days prior and hope that everything lines up well with timelines. If you think we’re bananas, just know that I don’t blame you. 😉 My whole family knows that we’re nuts and definitely march to our own beat. But we’re happy! And excited! (Have I said that 10 times?)