Dear friend,

I’ve started my days with a new pep in my step, as if my 40-year-old-body isn’t quite as heavy as it once was. I can feel it, sense it, almost taste the challenges and adventures that await me. I remember well the times I’ve felt the same surges — when I got married, each time I became pregnant, when I first began my work on our small little farm, the first time I traveled to Italy and attempted to speak in a language not my own. Each of these came with a sense of fear… yet alongside that, an unwillingness to waver.

My parents will forever tell the story of me as a young girl, striving and failing to put together a pink, off-brand, Lego-esque swing-set. I can remember fumbling with the small pieces in my inexperienced hands, palms sweating with stress and defeat. I’m sure I wasn’t following the pamphlet of directions and instead, was choosing to strong-arm my way to victory. It wasn’t going in my favor. My parents calmly encouraged me to step aside. To calm my heart, steady my hands, and refresh my spirit. “Come back to it later…”, they pleaded (most certainly in an attempt to keep the energy in the house one of peace rather than frustration.) But I was in it and I remember distinctly pushing aside their recommendations and tunneling into the work at hand, my glazed-over eyes fixed on the hundreds of tiny pieces still to be compiled. I rallied forward.

The irony of my telling you this story is that I can’t ever remember if I finished it or not — far back as my mind can reach, I cannot remember seeing the finished piece, nor playing with it, nor delighting in it. Rather, I simply remember the feeling of wanting to quite and not. In that moment, I felt sheer determination. Maybe it would’ve been the smarter move to quit. Perhaps I would’ve developed a calmer, less dynamic personality should I have learned to work within emotions that are comforting and safe. But if you’re like me, that doesn’t come naturally either…

It sounds better if we call it passion.

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Two weeks ago, I shared with you all that I would be setting aside a version of our work that has existed in the public realm for over sixteen years. The irony, of course, is that when I began that work, I felt severe fear and trepidation. Imposter syndrome they now call it — when one is perhaps a bit out of their depth, feeling as if they’re naked and exposed before the critics. I felt this back then. I began our homestead dream when there wasn’t a homestead to be had. I’d yet to learn how to raise chickens, milk a cow, prune a fruit tree, grow vegetables, or bake bread. I didn’t yet know how to keep a home, how to cultivate a garden, how to butcher or piece apart an animal, or how to manage a cellar of preserved foods through the winter. Stupidly, or bravely I’m not sure which, I went forward anyway towards what I wanted. I wanted a home, full of fragrant bread loaves and babies running around at my feet. I wanted a home — a place to belong, a place to grow — both literally and figuratively. Imposter? Maybe. But I think learner is more fitting.

After the past decade and a half, I can milk a cow in my sleep and grow more food than we can possibly eat. Our freezers have long been filled with the blessing of our home-raised meats, our pantry stocked with home-canned tomato passata, sun-dried tomatoes, and braids of garlic. While there’s always something to learn on the farm, and our time here IRL is not ending, I did (and do) feel ready for the emotion that other learners may identify with: fear.

The fear of trying something new, of letting others see, of failing. The fear of being a beginner again, of working to find steady footing in unfamiliar territory.

I know it doesn’t sound fun — it’s not, per se. My first trip to Italy in which I attempted to speak Italian was shockingly terrifying. I would check myself two, three, four times in Google Translate before I would dare speak, hands shaking and mind gearing up for a few moments before every interaction. I would violently laugh after every phrase I spoke, seeking to soften the ridiculousness of my efforts. I over-corrected myself, used familiar language when I should have used formal, and made an overall ass of myself on many occasions.

BUT.

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I began to dream in Italy, to translate in the wee hours of twilight sleep when my mind was open and willing. Over time, the Italians began to reward my effort, and sat in awe of the fact that I DID IT. I was speaking another language. I didn’t know I could do that! I didn’t know I had it in me! Like the elation I got after giving birth — I was wowed by my capability. A new piece of me came alive.

So yes, there is a new pep in my step. I feel like a student again, gathering up knowledge from my large collection of vintage Italian cookbooks, intentional conversations had with foreign friends, new words I acquire, and once again thumbing through the many notebooks I’ve filled with scribbles and notes from my travels there. You know the feeling of a brand-new outfit? One that isn’t yet worn in, stretched out, or stained? That’s how it feels now to sit down at this computer, to share with you these words, photos, and feelings. I feel thrilled!

New number, who dis!

I don’t want to preach at you, nor am I aiming to convince you to drastically change. This isn’t about Stella getting her groove back or the grass being greener across the pond. I think I just want to encourage you, to encourage myself, that learning is part of a beautiful, abundant, and expansive life. Our lives are allowed to have layers and we are allowed to explore them. I want to learn. I want to expand. I want to discover new pieces of this world that are a blessing to the experiences we will hold together.

I guess I’m curious too — have you ever felt the pull to learn something new? To try for something and risk failing because the thought of not participating is too much to bear? Have you ever shed your outer layer and transformed?

It feels a bit like trying on a swimsuit in front of a crowd, and also, as natural as breathing.

Thank you for letting me grow. I pray you get to as well.

Love,

Dear friend,

This past weekend, I used my sweet kitchen to prepare flowers for another funeral. It’s been five years since my last one; the large, marble-topped table that sits in the middle of our kitchen has held altar pieces, casket pieces, centerpieces, bouquets, and sprays. In a past life, before my hands were busy raising children and typing words (and even before Stuart claimed his spot beside me), I was building a career in a flower and garden house, spending my days tangled up amongst moss, bear grass, and poppy pods. For a decade, I served in this small and quaint garden house — filling endless floral and plant orders on busy days, and arranging shop retail displays of antique-inspired-knick-knacks on slow ones.

My hands were, and still are, trained for this work.

So when needs arise in our community, as they do, I am more than happy to be put to work. Such effort makes me feel useful when otherwise, I feel anything but. Death has a particular way of making one feel completely helpless. Yet the helplessness is mended by helping and even though shopping for terra cotta pots and sourcing buckets full of yellow sunflowers may not seem like much, it is something. It has a way of directing emotions, of directing grief. Sort of like baking bread.

I play the music my soul needs to hear. I prepare my tools and while I assemble, I let myself feel. I don’t try to sort out emotions or answer hard questions, I just let it come and rush over me. Such a time is cathartic and at the end, by God’s grace, there is a beautiful piece of the natural world to share with others. Something beautiful to delight in. It’s a small thing, but what is life but a billion small things, culminating to shape us? These are tiny gifts that helps hard moments to be beautiful. And thus, my kitchen serves us as is most needed on any given day; the floor filling with flower stems and our family’s lunch relegated to what we could scrounge out of the refrigerator and eat cold. There was no counter space to be had.

My kitchen has held much heartache over the years; friends have sat in the very chair I type this from and wept, children have been corrected, and more than one marital disagreement has taken place at the counter while stirring soup or chopping onions. Yet the kitchen has held endless joy too. It’s from this kitchen that we filmed our pilot for Food Network (a much grander achievement in my career than I ever thought possible). I’ve written books at the table and the counters have supported many children over the years, eager to stir and mix alongside me. When Juliette, our youngest, was a baby, she sat in a squishy pad on the countertop for hours a day. This way, as I labored, I could easily bend down to greet her, nuzzle into her neck, tickle her toes, and smooch her cheeks.

When I see our kitchen now, I see the gift of use. Edges of drawers are worn with fatigue, the tile floor we self-installed has begun to look as if it was, indeed, self-installed, and the aprons that hang nearby are stained with heavy use. Yet in the course of this daily grind, this layer of fatigue on our treasured kitchen, my hands are trained. Much like my time spent at the flower shop, the daily work in my kitchen has given me muscles that I can flex when needed: muscles to make double and triple batches, to cut biscuits, mince onions, know the softness of a perfect ripe peach, wash dishes in beast-mode, or turn a little of this and a little of that into something nourishing and delicious.

Daily work teaches you such things.

Coming home from the funeral, fatigued and weary from both the work and the loss, I found myself in the kitchen — I always find myself in the kitchen. I didn’t know what to do with myself. Melancholy. So I did what I know how to do, what work my muscles revert to when a lull is felt in purpose. I made bread. I didn’t have much to give, so I reached for one of the first bread recipes I learned how to make. It is a recipe that doesn’t require much of the baker; if you’re downtrodden, off your sourdough schedule, or simply unable, this is my bread recipe for such occasions. There are days I concern myself with hydration levels, cold ferments, folding and proofing to perfection. There are also days when I simply need the bread to serve my heart, my family. I need something comforting for the table — the promise of something rising on the countertop, in the warmth of the August kitchen.

And thus, I want to share my “Eat, Drink, and Be Merry” bread recipe with you. It is forgiving and endlessly adaptable (rosemary, cheese, and roasted garlic are my favorite additions). It’s one that has seen me faithfully through fifteen years of bread baking — on good days and bad, on productive days and times of melancholy. It is bread for you and for any that find themselves at your table. It is a bread that comes with a healthy slice of hope and comfort.

The morning following the funeral, I tidied the kitchen, swept up the mountain of flower stems, washed up the buckets, and scrubbed out the sink. I lit a candle. After an overnight rising, the bowl of bread dough I spent five minutes mixing the night before sat cheerfully on my countertop, ready to be shaped and baked into little, round, golden gifts.

My kitchen is here to be used, to be used up in service to others, and it is a great joy to me when I can use it for just that — this week, that looked like funeral flowers. Next week? Who knows. But what I do know is that there will be bread.

Eat, Drink, and Be Merry Bread

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Dear friend,

I’m not sure if I should admit this or not, but I'm currently listening to Anthony Bourdain narrate his best-selling book “Kitchen Confidential” on audio. I’ve appreciated Anthony in many ways over the years — particularly when it comes to his philosophies on food and sharing time at the table with others. He recognized that food was a tool for unification, and as such, was important to the tapestry of being human. But he was also a crass man, quite rough on the edges, and the book (which chronicles his time spent as a chef in New York restaurants) is that as well.

I listen to the book while I wash dishes… wipe bits of food off the countertops… or scrub squished blueberries off the floor. I’ve felt a camaraderie to listen to the stories of chefs, line-cooks, and dishwashers in commercial kitchens where there’s always a plate to clean or a sauce to stir. It feels reflective of my labors in the kitchen, and as we all know, laboring with company is far more fun.

Tucked within Anthony’s graphic stories and shady undertakings, one does see a sincere delight for good food. He has opinions on shallots versus onions (don’t we all), sanitation (yikes), the perfect knife requirements, and why you should never order a hollandaise at brunch…

But the idea he presented next changed my small home kitchen… even how I speak to myself when it’s time to wash up, chop up, or stock up again. If you’ve been struggling with the demands of your own kitchen, you’ll find this particularly helpful…

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Lest you be confused, I wanted you to hear it directly from the horse’s mouth. The business that we’ve run from our home for the past sixteen years, The Elliott Homestead, will be ending… well, yesterday.

The Elliott Homestead received endless love and affection from our family, from our followers, from publishers, from television series, from magazines, and countless interactions around the country with others who shared in our vision. It was a forerunner in the homesteading movement, long before social media, reels, SEO rankings, and the word homesteading became commonplace.

I began The Elliott Homestead because I was obsessively interested in building a home that felt at one with the natural world — one that reflected the seasons in table and harvests and one that acknowledged our beautiful and symbiotic relationships with the animals and soil that provides for us. I wanted to know the taste of fresh milk and the smell of fresh bread. I wanted to focus on my home and make sense of this deep and affectionate desire I felt to make babies, plant fruit trees, and pickle beans. I wanted to exist in an online world where that vision made sense and where I could celebrate and learn from others alongside me. It wasn’t there quite yet (this was 16 years ago, y’all)… so I carved out a little corner of the online world and devoted myself to sharing our journey as we built and stumbled our way through the next decade and a half of being entrepreneurs, farmers, and parents to a young and growing family.

And then something happened…

Life.

The daughter that was a week old when I started my blog is now almost sixteen — and there are three more added into the mix. As they’ve grown up, they’ve been active participants in our farm life. They’ve learned to milk, to hoe, to harvest and have grown up with the taste of fresh milk and fresh bread as their normal. They know the names of the weeds, the songs of the birds, and the ebbs and flows of how the seasons affect what lands on our table. As beautiful as this is, it’s not lost on me that they also have their own affinities and affections. Georgia would happily paint away indoors for hours, opting to write novels and illustrate her poetry instead of trellising tomatoes alongside me. The boys, our middle two children, are wonderful farm hands and incredibly helpful. But even they have stepped into their own hobbies and schedules, filling days with woodworking, jiu jitsu, and piano lessons. Our youngest, Juliette, was the only one of our children who was born while we lived here at the cottage. This is the only home she’s ever known. It’s as natural to her to pluck a peach from the tree she’s gauged to be perfectly ripe as it is for her to breathe. But, beautifully, they are their own people. We are here to do right by them, which looks a lot more like navigating transcripts, drivers ed, spiritual growth, and math lessons these days than milking the cow or weeding the pepper patch.

It’s not that our homesteading life has stopped, though pieces of it have. We sold the pigs off years ago during a particularly overwhelming season, we now are able to find sources for quality poultry without the fuss of raising our own (a task neither of us particularly enjoyed), two diagnosed dairy intolerances made the economics of keeping a dairy cow tip in favor of selling her to another farm, and years of acquiring gardening knowledge meant we could harvest as much produce as we needed — too much. There’s still shelves to eat through.

Throughout all these years of sharing and growing, we’ve hardly stood still. At the invitation of the late (and lovely) Carla Bartolucci of Jovial Foods, we found ourselves in Central Italy in 2018. It had been 10 years since my very first visit to Italy — it was a trip that left me full and breathless and awestruck. Now, in 2018, I felt the same emotions bubble up again. I wept more times than I could count during that trip — I was overcome by the beauty I saw there and brought the inspiration to my home table. This became our primary focus: let’s help people fill tables with delicious food (regardless of whether they grow it on their homestead or not.)

In 2021, we were invited by a new friend we met on the internet to visit Sicily in Southern Italy with her and her family. It was a completely providential trip and filled our hearts in ways that we couldn’t quite express.

In 2023, we decided to work our tails off for a year so that we could explore a new region of Italy with our entire family. We settled on Umbria for, again, completely providential reasons. I hope to find the words and time one day to express just how kind the Lord has been in opening up these opportunities and pathways for our family.

In 2024, we went back — hosting a group of 10 guests and sharing with them the intimate setting of rural Umbria. (Will work for travel.)

In 2025, I went back again — this time with a dear friend to celebrate my 40th birthday. A last minute ticket, a free place to stay, and an easy-going travel companion made this trip economical and delightful. Again, God provided for me so kindly.

We sit on the brink of yet another trip in September — this time, with another 9 guests. We’re throwing profit to the wind and taking the whole family, even convincing my parents to tag along for the whole journey.

Our love for this place is woven into the bunches of oregano that hang on our walls, the Deruta pottery that holds our homemade pasta, and the sense of joy that time at the table brings us. It is a place that teaches me simplicity, contentment, stillness, and delight. Those are lessons I never get tired of learning.

(No, we’re not moving to Italy.)

Through the passage of time and distilling down the value of these experiences, we’re looking forward to a future where our work is focused on bringing beautiful stories, recipes, and habits from Italian kitchens into ours — right here at home.

The Elliott Homestead is now Shaye’s Italian Kitchen.

It’s important for you to know that I’m 0% Italian. For some, that may disqualify me, but I don’t mind. I’m an American cook with an Italian appetite and by God’s grace, I’ve been given a wonderful affinity and affection for this ancient land half a world away. I can’t explain why, but I’m excited to finally submit to the siren song.

So that’s all. I just wanted you to know. I love all of you who have supported and encourage us over these past sixteen years and I look forward to another sixteen years spent bellied up to the table, sipping wine, savoring good company, and giving thanks for the many blessings we find there.

Love,

PS: “Rebranding” is something I’ve never done, so I appreciate your patience while “our growin’ is showin’.”

PPS: Cultivating the Beautiful Life, this newsletter, will now be “Confessions From My Kitchen.” As always, the long-form written content I share here will dive into my heart and life, through the lens of the kitchen and time spent at the table.

PPPS: Love you. Thanks for your support.

Dear friend,

Grab a cuppa, preferably something with frothy milk, a hint of sweet, and a strong espresso. Today, I want you to belly up to my kitchen table — a place where you’ll find crumbs on the floor and full bellies to show for it. As I type this, I’m sitting in one of the two kitchen chairs — a gold, velvet second-hand duo that lives by the wood stove in the corner. From this vantage point, in real time, I can smell a red sauce simmering on the stove. This particular sugo is seasoned with fresh garlic cloves, basil, shallot, and jarred tomatoes from last year’s harvest. The ground lamb in the meal was harvested from our own grassy fields and is a welcomed gift of seasons past that keeps on giving (God bless freezers). A throw-together chocolate almond-flour torta that I’ve made approximately 1,372 times is in the oven, pasta simmers on the stove, and the first of the season’s pepper harvest is roasting. A chilled white wine, perfect for everyday sipping, is in my cup. This beautiful bounty and I are just waiting for the family to return home from town, at which point we will serve up supper and enjoy our fill of today’s offerings.

It’s easy to see why this is the seat in which I am most contented, happy to be resting in my favorite place in the world. My kitchen. Magical life happens here.

“Contentment is a state of peaceful happiness and satisfaction. It involves accepting your current circumstances without a restless desire for more, while still allowing for personal growth and ambition."

It perhaps feels a bit paradoxical, to be living without a restless desire for more, while at the same time wishing to still grow and expand as a person (proof sits in the true emotions I’ve just shared and the Italian vocab cards littering the kitchen table I’ve yet to learn). Even still, I think contentment holds with it the possibility for happiness, in our homes and hearts. And when I think of contentment, I often think of Italian kitchens.

An Italian kitchen often holds no more than three knives: one for bread, one for meat, a small paring knife, etc. There’s usually a well-used, thin, plastic cutting board stacked on the counter, a few large bowls for mixing, and a small handful of saucepans for cooking. Plus a pot for pasta, of course. They’re rarely fancy. Yet each piece is valued and used. Each piece has a place and a purpose. I delight in episodes of “Pasta Grannies,” in which Italian grandmothers will manage to churn out a Sunday supper for their entire family using one burner, a pasta roller, two bowls, and their kitchen table as counter-space.

The answer to contentment isn’t having more. 

Perhaps you’ve seen the viral clip of two Italian men, gathering rocks into a wheelbarrow? (I can’t find it now to quote it exactly.) But as they labor, essentially, one says to the other, “This is our medicine. We have the sky, the fresh air, the physical movement of our bodies. We have each other. We have a nice afternoon and conversation. We have a calm. This is our medicine.” I think of this viewpoint often, reorienting my thoughts towards what there is already around me to be thankful for, even when there is labor at hand. Such observations refocus my eyes on what small gifts already exist in the humdrum of making breakfast, sweeping the floor, or marinating a roast. Or smelling this delicious sauce on the stove.

Because the answer to contentment isn’t having more.

La calma, I whisper to myself as I cheerfully (yes, cheerfully) fill my sponge with warm, soapy water and begin to scrub up the remnants of breakfast.

La calma, I repeat again as I mix last night’s leftover roast with garden greens to create a cold, refreshing salad for lunch.

La calma, I breathe as another drinking glass gets broken and another towel gets stained with juice from summer blueberries.

Can I be bold with you? I don’t want to waste my life being pissed off. No, let me be more frank: I refuse to spend my God-given time on this earth feeling anything but grateful for the many gifts and mercies I have been granted. Contentment, la calma, is my opportunity to take stock of it all and to yell at the top of my lungs: Lord, thank you! This is more than sufficient!

Such a heart-posture is made evident in the kitchen in beautiful ways. For ages past, women have learned to make do with what they have. They’ve cared well for their equipment, savored their harvests, and made use of their crumbs. They learned to make peasant food beautiful and appetizing by the work of their hands. They took stock and managed their inventory with intention and generosity. Let it be so in my kitchen!

For if we are not faithful with little, how could we ever expect to be faithful with much?

My dear friend Dolores spoke to me once of her Aunt in Naples who cooked out of a tiny, dark home — but it was always tidy and tended to, it was all used. “Her front porch is always swept,” she once told me. I think of that often. After all, what good does it bring those at our table if we have a grander refrigerator? A bigger workspace? Fancier gadgets? If we are not in a “state of peaceful happiness and satisfaction”, no new knife or fancy cutting board will help. I assure you.

Contentment can be found with much or nothing at all. It can be found with a bowl of porridge or a bountiful spread. Contentment lives in our hearts and it is free — you and I can have it, right now. What a gift that is!

Let’s play a game. Leave your answer in the comments. I’ll start:

“I’m content with the fact that ____________________.”

Looking forward to reading of the many gifts you already have.

Time to eat!

Chocolate Olive Oil Cake

This cake is incredibly moist from the olive oil, rich from the almond flour, and hits the palette like a perfectly cooked brownie. It comes together in a few minutes and can be topped with anything from fresh berries, to jam, to whipped cream, to, in this case, homemade hot fudge sauce. It’s an absolute star.

For the cake

6 tablespoons cocoa powder

½ cup strong coffee

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

½ teaspoon sea salt

1 ½ cups (175 grams) super-fine almond flour

½ teaspoon baking soda

⅔ cup (150 grams) extra virgin olive oil

1 cup (200 grams) date sugar

3 eggs

For the hot fudge

1 tablespoon butter

¼ cup heavy cream

2 tablespoons honey

2 tablespoons cocoa powder

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

½ cup chocolate chips

1 tablespoon corn starch

Flaked sea salt, for serving

1. Preheat the oven to 325°. Line a 9” springform pan with parchment paper on the bottom and oil the sides of the cake pan with a bit of olive oil. Set aside.

2. In a small bowl, whisk together the cocoa powder, coffee, and vanilla extract.

3. In a second bowl, whisk together the sea salt, almond flour, and baking soda.

4. Lastly, in a larger bowl, whisk together the olive oil, date sugar, and eggs for 3-4 minutes or until the mixture is lighter in color and creamy in consistency. Fold the chocolate-coffee mixture into the egg mixture until completely combined. Add in the almond flour mixture and mix well to combine.

5. Transfer the cake batter into the prepared pan. Bake the cake for 40 minutes or until just set in the middle. Err on the side of underbaking if you’re unsure — a toothpick put into the middle of the cake should come out clean, though a few moist crumbs are fine.

6. Set the cake aside to cool slightly.

7. While the cake cools, add the butter, cream, honey, cocoa powder, and vanilla extract together in a small saucepan. Whisk and allow the mixture to get very warm, though not quite boiling. Turn off the heat and add in the chocolate chips and corn starch. Again, whisk well to combine and allow the chocolate chips to melt.

8. Pour some of the hot fudge over each slice of cake and serve with a pinch of flaked sea salt.

Love,

This newsletter is only made possible by our paid supporters.

May the words I share be a nourishment and inspiration to your heart. Thank you!

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Dear friend,

My day began at 3:18 a.m. Lest you think I’m a grand overachiever who fills her early morning hours with meditations or cold plunges, I should confess that I only rolled out of my very comfortable, very inviting bed to let out the white, shaggy, old farm dog we affectionately call him Rex. He had somehow found his way inside during the course of the evening. He rarely comes indoors, opting for the task of barking off birds and skunks, and as such isn’t quite accustomed to the ways of life indoors. He was pacing and panting around our bedroom as if an accident was imminent. The dog breath in my face roused me from a dream in which I was charged with taking care of a fairy no bigger than the palm of my hand — I had her wrapped in the softest leaves I could find and was carrying her around in a little satchel. She kept giving me the thumbs up to let me know she approved of my efforts. I would’ve liked to see what adventures we were to undertake. Alas.

Thankfully, after letting the dog(s) outside (now plural because the Aussie follows suit when any activity is stirred), I was able to slip back into a peaceful (though fairy-less) slumber for a few more hours. My morning began officially at 5:21. The slight bang of my coffee cup being set on the bedside table lets me know it’s time — in our many years of marriage, I’ve yet to rise earlier than Stuart. He uses the few, quiet moments before anyone else in the house stirs to reads through dense and thoughtful books like “The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self” or Lord of the Rings, again. He likes beginning the day with contemplation and quiet. I enjoy beginning the day with coffee.

Bless him, he obliges me.

Coffee now in hand, gently roused from sleep, I sat for a few moments in silence. I closed my eyes and braided my fingers around the mug in my hands. I could sense Stuart eyeing me from his side of the bed and I gently stated “Don’t worry, I’m not going to spill my coffee. I’m not sleeping, I’m praying.” These first few moments of my day with the Lord are precious, although always a bit scattered and sleepy. I’ve been known to doze back off to sleep somewhere between adoration and confession. Inevitably, the smallest hint of caffeine now in my veins, I’ll wake back up (hopefully without spilling any coffee in bed) and resume my efforts once again. I feel grateful if I’m able to hold thirty minutes in this posture — sipping my coffee, communing with my God, connecting with Stuart in a meaningful way. Even during these summer days which are filled with far more fun than our normal routine, the pace of tending to the home and my work-efforts still holds… even more so in the summer when all of us are here to dirty the home and much of our audience steps away to enjoy their own summer season. It’s a season of labor for us, no doubt. And so I must begin in such a way: reminding myself that I must plant and weed and sow, and the Lord will bring whatever harvest he will. I remind myself, before the onslaught of tasks and efforts, that to keep a home is a grand privilege. I give thanks for food on our table, for dishes to wash, for laundry to account for, for sheets to change, for family photos to dust, for books to read, for trips to plan for, for checkbooks to balance, for meals to prepare. I name these gifts, one by one. I write them down. I begin my day by reminding myself that work is not bad and that I was build for effort.

Coffee now gone, I wash my face and gently drag a gua sha stone over the cheekbones and chin that insist on softening as the years roll on. I moisturize and inspect: perhaps there’s a hair or two that I need to take note of in the exposing light and magnification of my private bathroom. Such is life at 40, but I don’t pay too much mind to it. “Hello, beautiful! You look lovely today.” I say to myself as I finish moisturizing. And I mean it. I think there is nothing quite as beautiful in this world as a woman who is loved well — and I am loved very, very well. I hope my appearance does justice to the goodness and kindness of my husband, my kids, my friends, and my family to me. They shower me with affection and I wish it to radiate from my very core. Happiness is a far better treatment than Botox for true beauty anyway. My makeup routine is simple and takes less than five minutes, but even still, I start with my mascara because it is, in fact, my least favorite part of the whole ordeal. Once again taking my pastor’s advice, I do the thing I want to do least first. After that first coat of mascara is smeared from root to tip, the day feels immediately possible. Such matters are trivial, no doubt, but I’ve come to see the value of such teeny victories and gifts to oneself: I have a postcard of Italy as my bookmark, so that each time I open it up to read, I get happy butterflies in my stomach anticipating our upcoming trip in September, I spritz my pajamas with a delicious perfume so that when I change into them at night, I’m rewarded with a lovely sense of peace, I even put my feminine care products in a pretty lidded, wicker box so that when the way of women is upon me, I have a teeny-bit more delight in tending to such matters well. Small indeed. But they add up in a life that is comprised by a million of these small moments, and that ultimately, is written by an author far greater (and more creative) than I.

After getting ready for the day (today’s outfit was a white button up linen blouse over denim shorts, a top-knot hairdo, and gold hoops, obv and always), I made our bed and tidied the room. Pajamas were folded and put away, a load of laundry was shifted through, and I took a few extra moments to water the potted lemon, bay, and olive trees that sit just steps away from my room on the back patio. Pastel nasturtiums are planted at the base of the citrus trees and I make a mental note to harvest a few for a summer salad later. Eating flowers should be on everyone’s summer bucket list.

In reality, what I was actually doing by watering the plants was putting off the inevitable. I needed to send a text message to a friend and I didn’t know what to say…

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Dear friend,

It feels a bit posh to admit that I’m writing you this poolside. God bless laptops and the wifi that make remote work possible. I find myself within a stones throw of the Canadian border — at the home of a friend — where we annually spend a weekend grilling chicken wings, sleeping in, catching up on World Cup games, and generally enjoying the balmy weather of July. It is sweet indeed.

Perhaps the sweetest piece is that after a week of being gone, Stuart has returned home from a teacher training in Idaho, and life again is as it should be. Though I genuinely miss him while he’s gone, I took the opportunity to dig into a few projects around the house I’d been wanting to tackle. He hadn’t been gone two hours and I had already filled my normally-tidy bedroom with the entire contents of our under-the-stairs-storage. It was messy and has been longing for my attention for months. I decided that my first few hours without him would be the perfect time to tackle the messy monster.

My efforts didn’t stop there during my solo-week, but instead of writing all about our adventures, I made a video of our time instead. It’s a special way to invite you into the details of our days. Pour a glass and join me at the cottage for a few.

The new video is available to watch right here: we’re prepping the studio for company, planting, gardening, and enjoying the season at hand!

Off to show this flamingo who’s boss and pour another glass…

Have a blessed weekend, my friends.

Love,

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Dear guilty woman,

If you’re a woman who can’t relax without feeling guilty, welcome. I’m recovering from the same illness myself. But a few days ago, with a glass of white wine in hand (yes, it came out of a bag), I sat — still — and watched Mexico and England play in the World Cup.

In sitting for those few hours, I experienced a plethora of emotions. First came the guilt. I’m sure you’re familiar with that emotion. We hosted company over the weekend so dinner for a crowd was on my to-do list. I fought the urge to get up and chop more vegetables, stir the rice, check the simmering beef, and wipe off the kitchen counters again. Stop it, Shaye.

“The meal is fine. Let it be.” I said to myself.

I sipped my wine, curled up in the sweatpants that I’d changed into from my wet swimsuit, and felt cozy. I convinced myself to stay put and enjoy the game.

And then I did just that. I sat still and enjoyed the soccer game.

Did you know I liked soccer? I didn’t either. Despite the fact that Stuart has always been a soccer fan, sports haven’t really made it into the permanent family lexicon. But I’ve found the World Cup games to be exciting, entertaining, a point of global conversation, and a wonderful way to set aside the worries and stresses of my own mind. A small break from the grind. Something I’m not responsible for. Even more, a point of pleasure.

What other enjoyments am I depriving myself of by not being willing to actually relax freely?

Do I actually have plenty of joy? Opportunity? Pleasure? Moments to relax? … and in my hustle, just miss them entirely?

I immediately think of when I want to feel most relaxed, cozy in bed, washed of the dirt from the day and preparing for sleep for the hours ahead. Since no one expects me to be mopping floors at midnight, I try to let myself relax too. On bad days, guilt from the day sneaks in — surely I could’ve fit in another load of laundry or a bit of extra bookkeeping. But I push such thoughts aside because I’m not a machine, nor do I want to be. But I am a wife. And time with my husband, our time together in bed, is something I value very much. If I were to carry my guilt to bed, if I were to resist the relaxation and intimacy of time together, what a great enjoyment we would both be deprived of. “Sorry, honey, I’m not in the mood. I didn’t get the refrigerator cleaned out today like I wanted and now I feel like I’m behind already on tomorrow’s to-do list.” Gross. No, thank you.

I suppose, over the years, I’ve grown to see the value of intimate time together in such a significant way, that the guilt I feel for relaxing at this time of day holds no bearing.

Oh, if it could be so all throughout the day! Maybe it can?

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Dear friend,

I am forever chasing a feeling.

The feeling I chase isn’t to feel successful, or important, or powerful. Those are almost humorous to even type in a world where we control far less than we realize and all, eventually, die. How’s that for an intro sentence.

Maybe, years ago, I would have hoped for such feelings — feeling like I had achieved something grand, like I was somehow “important.” I think there was most certainly a time with my work when I thought life would look much different than it does now. Opportunities seemed to present themselves easily, like publishing contracts or show pilots, and as such I figured The Elliott Homestead was on its way to grander and greener pastures. I’m sure I prayed for such.

But I’ve prayed for a lot over the years… and through that act have been given that feeling I’m so keen on finding. I want that feeling to be with me always, regardless of earthly matters like budgets and open-rates and laundry piles.

The feeling I seek is the reason I don’t live in Italy (love it as I do) and the reason I am focusing on loving my current home well. It’s the reason I want to make chocolate chip cookies and am perhaps a bit annoyingly persistence about celebrating the joy of every day with simple pleasures. It’s the reason that I can take on the thousands of small tasks that come with a family, a job, and a place to call home, with peace.

This feeling isn’t a secret that unlocks more money, bigger accolades, a fitter body, or grander work successes.

It’s just the feeling of contentment. And here’s how I got it.

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Dear friend,

As I type this, our sweet life is as wild as ever. I’ve got ten pounds of cooked chicken in the refrigerator that’s waiting to be turned into enchiladas and chicken salad for a weekend away with my whole family, I can see a whole basket worth of ripe, red raspberries from my office window, we need to bury a sweet little quail that we (tried) to rescue from our cat, and my phone is alerting me that it’s time to work out. Again.

Life hasn’t gotten any smoother for us as of late. Yet somehow, it has gotten better.

In a sweet phone conversation with a dear friend, one navigating her own challenging season of life, I offered what comfort I was capable of which mostly looked like empathy. “I recognize how you feel” can traverse vast chasms of distance and circumstance.

Each change, each purposeful “elevation” towards (something more? peace? joy? acceptance? growth?) feels minuscule, so microscopic in weight that you wonder how it can stand up to the behemoth that is hardship. Such efforts can feel like dripping water into a pond — pointless and ineffectual. BUT THERE’S GOOD NEWS.

Such efforts are far from purposeless. With each load of laundry, each made bed, each walk in the fresh air, each purposeful meal, and each piece of life cared for, the tides begin to shift. You’ll feel it. Somehow, such actions unwind the coils that we unintentionally hold so tight.

Ooh — and make sure you stay to the end so that you can see the kitchen cabinet transformation (and don’t judge me for the before… yikes!) While all these actions seem small, together, they create something in our homes far greater than each individual piece. They magically weave together to form a sweet life indeed and help us feel better in our skin and in our spaces. Tell me — what does this look like for you?

Have a blessed weekend, my friends.

Love,

Dear friend,

Intimacy has been on my mind as of late. Not just that type of intimacy, but all types. Like friends who know where my silverware drawer is or share memes with me that they know hit at a hidden piece of me few people know.

In a hot, sticky lull over the weekend, Stuart and I sitting beside our little pool, he glanced my way and scanned the exposed forty-year-old flesh peeking (squishing?) out from my swimsuit, smiling. Part of our intimacy lies in him knowing what’s underneath. Monty Don, one of Britain’s most prominent gardeners, famously said that his favorite scent was the “nape of his wife’s neck.” Intimacy indeed.

Our children also live intimately intertwined with us, knowing how we take our coffee and what we look like in our pajamas. Just like me, they’ll grow up knowing the shape of their parent’s fingernails and catalog of jokes. They’ll know the tendencies of the family dog, the smell of the dank root cellar that sits under the kitchen, and the feel of our home at midnight when all guests have gone and just us remain.

When our church sings Psalm 23, eyes inevitably welled with tears, I purposefully offer a smile towards our dear friends. Their daughter died and we sang this Psalm as she was buried. I’ll never not think of her as the melody dances amongst the pews of Saints, many of whom aren’t aware of what such a Psalm means to them in particular. I’ve seen them weep and mourn, I’ve seen them grieve through the deepest of valleys, and I’ve also seen them rejoice. Together, we’ve traversed birth and death — and yes, I know where their silverware drawer is.

This is intimacy. And it is a rich gift.

Perhaps this feels a bit of a lofty introduction to my whole point in all of this, which is to take you on a massive photo tour of my garden (I think I counted over 60 images!), but in this particular moment it feels intimate and tender to me. Perhaps I’m feeling a bit tender. We are now in our tenth summer with the garden, a garden that was simply a field of grass a decade ago, and I can finally see how the intimate hands of the gardeners, our hands, have created an external piece of our hearts.

If you were here in person, I’d show you around, and internally be reminding myself to not apologize for the weedy spots or the rose that needs trellising. I’d have to fight the urge to tell you of all my plans, showcase my sunflower collection that will soon come into bloom, explain the bare spots where weather or misfortune has left us without, pluck up weeds as we walked along, and confess that most of our vegetables are currently being bought from our neighbors as we continue to build our new veggie patch close to the house. In my garden, after all, you’d see authentically into my wild and true soul. And baring one’s soul can be quite intimate indeed.

I hope you find the photographic tour of our garden lovely. Welcome to my favorite place in the world.

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Dear friend,

In a perfect summer moment, I would find myself with a full plate. In the literal sense of course. In my perfect moment my plate is piled high with a delicious feast, all of which I can eat and enjoy. There’d be music in the air… Django or Paolo… and it would be a delightful backdrop to the chatter of friends and family alike. They’re with me. I’m poolside, riverside, beachside. The summer sun is warming me up from the inside and I can feel it creeping into the dark and cold corners that I thought would never thaw. In my other hand is a beverage, most likely frosty, and for this fleeting moment — all is well.

Eating well is never on the periphery at our cottage, it is a part of life here. Not because we’re fancy, not because there’s anything to prove, and certainly not because we’re health-maxing. Eating well is central because it connects us to each other; thrice daily we get to rejoice in the fact that we are once again provided for, sustained, and nourished.

Last week, I sent my two boys on a small quest — they were to walk to the nearby farm, through the orchards and along the dirt trails — to pick up our vegetable order. There are a few items I’m not growing this year that I am most grateful to buy these from our neighbors who do such a wonderful job (and all the weeding). Market baskets in hand, the boys trudged off through the cherry trees that are already heavy laden with fruit, our Aussie on their heels and along for the adventure. I’d instructed them to enter the make-shift cooler at the farm, locate the basket with our name on it, and fill their own baskets with what was inside. They were to then hustle back so that we could get the vegetables prepped for dinner and store the extras in the refrigerator before the heat took its toll. Bless them, they did just that. My heart about burst when I saw them stomping down the driveway, baskets slung over their backs, green carrot tops flopping out, and a (now) very dirty dog still on their heels.

I can assure you that each pea pod we ate for supper felt far more significant than the sum of its calories. It was summer and community and pleasure and experience and delight all tucked together soundly.

Eating well, intentionally, allows us a break and a pause in our productivity, to remind us that life is far more than zeros and ones on a screen and that we are far more than machines for making money. For us there are ripe raspberries, seared steaks, cold glasses of lemon ice water. For us there is the summer’s first basil leaves, roasted tomatoes, and handfuls of black currants. It may not be a financially rich life, but don’t fall into the trap of thinking it’s lacking. It is rich in all the ways that deeply matter — at least, it is to us.

Let us not settle for pure sustenance.

In a culture of DoorDash and instant and constant gratification, I plead with you to seek out such tiny treasures of the season, whatever those may be for you. I want you to cook for people you love and find pleasure in the work of your hands. I want you to taste a perfectly ripe strawberry and eat an apricot still warm from the tree. It will make you feel rich indeed!

In The Cooking Community, we cook like this on purpose — more dishes, more crumbs, and all the most wonderful gifts you could give yourself and everyone who finds their way to your table.

Below are a few recipes from The Cooking Community's summer table. Enjoy.

Blistered Flatbreads with Garlic and Oil

This is my go-to pizza crust, but also a perfect bread to serve alongside summer dishes. It’s crispy, savory, and very fragrant — especially when it’s topped with spicy chili flakes, pungent garlic, and high-quality olive oil.

2 ½ cups (620 grams) warm water

1 teaspoon active dry yeast

6 cups (740 grams) unbleached bread flour, or all-purpose flour, divided

1 tablespoon rye flour

1 ½ teaspoons honey

1 tablespoon kosher salt

Olive oil, for serving

Minced garlic, for serving

Chili flakes, for serving

Fresh herbs, for serving

1. Combine the warm water and yeast together in the bowl of a stand mixer (or large bowl). Stir to combine and allow the yeast to hydrate for 2-3 minutes.

2. Add half of the bread flour (3 cups or 370 grams) and all of the rye flour into the yeast-water mixture. Stir with a wooden spoon until well combined. Cover the bowl and set aside for 90 minutes.

3. Add the remaining bread flour, along with the honey and salt, into the bowl. Attach the dough hook to the mixer and knead the dough on medium speed for 6-8 minutes. The dough should start to pull away slightly from the sides of the bowl — add a handful or two of additional flour if needed to achieve this.

4. Oil a large bowl. Transfer the dough into the bowl, cover tightly, and allow the dough to proof for an additional 45 minutes at room temperature.

5. Preheat the oven to 500° Fahrenheit.

6. When the dough has doubled in size, dust a work surface lightly with flour. Using a handful (about ¼ cup) of dough at a time, shape it into a circle with your hands, stretching and pressing with your fingertips as needed, until it is about ½” thick. Place the dough on a parchment-lined baking tray. Repeat with a second piece of dough. Two flatbreads are enough to fill a standard baking tray, so the baking must be done in batches.

7. Drizzle the flatbreads generously with olive oil. Transfer the baking tray to the preheated oven and bake for 8-10 minutes, or until the flatbreads are golden and blistered.

8. While the breads are baking, prepare your desired toppings and shape a second batch of flatbreads on a separate tray.

9. Remove the baked flatbreads and dress them with garlic, herbs, chili flakes, and additional olive oil. Slice into wedges and serve immediately.

Pepperonata

This is a staple on the summer table, as it goes over pasta, grilled vegetables, rice, meats, and everything in between. It’s sweet, fragrant, and full of intense Mediterranean flavors. It also stores well in the refrigerator, so one batch can serve you for days and days.

2 red onions

¼ cup olive oil

1 teaspoon salt

4 sweet red bell peppers

3 tablespoons red wine vinegar

14 ounces canned peeled tomatoes

1 tablespoon tomato paste

1 teaspoon sugar

Basil, for serving

1. Peel and slice the onions into thin strips. In a large skillet, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the onion strips and salt to the oil and sauté them slowly for 10-15 minutes until soft and translucent. Take care not to burn or brown the onions.

2. Slice the peppers into ¼” strips, discarding the stems and seeds. Add the peppers into the onion mixture, along with the red wine vinegar. Sauté the peppers for an additional 10-15 minutes, stirring every so often. The peppers will turn glossy and fragrant.

3. One at a time, squeeze the tomatoes in your hand to break them up into rustic pieces. Add them into the mixture, along with the juice from the can. Finally, add in the tomato paste and sugar. Stir well to combine.

4. Cover the mixture and simmer over low heat for 45 minutes.

5. Adjust the seasoning as needed with additional salt or red wine vinegar. Serve either warm or cold, topped with fresh basil leaves.

Lemon and Rosemary Roasted Chicken Thighs

This is a recipe that’s perfect to make for guests — all the “work” is done ahead of time, and it looks spectacular on a plate. I prefer to source chicken thighs that have the bone in and skin on, as this results in a moist, flavorful thigh. The only secret to this recipe is to bring the chicken to room temperature before baking — it helps keep the chicken moist and allows the marinade to work its magic.

2 teaspoons kosher salt

¼ cup extra virgin olive oil

3 teaspoons Italian seasoning

⅓ cup lemon juice

2 teaspoons lemon zest

4 cloves garlic, peeled and minced

2 tablespoons fresh rosemary, minced

½ teaspoon chili flakes

6 chicken thighs

1 lemon, sliced thin, for serving

Fresh rosemary, for serving

1. Combine all of the ingredients in a bowl, minus the chicken thighs. Whisk well to combine.

2. Add the chicken thighs into the bowl and use your hands to massage the marinade evenly into all the chicken, ensuring each thigh is evenly coated.

3. Allow the chicken to marinate for 2-4 hours at room temperature. Alternatively, the chicken can be marinated overnight in the refrigerator.

4. Preheat the oven to 400° Fahrenheit.

5. Place the chicken thighs in a baking pan, taking care not to overcrowd the pan. A bit of room around each thigh will ensure they roast and don’t steam.

6. Bake for 45 minutes or until golden. The skin should be crispy, and an internal thermometer should register at least 165° Fahrenheit.

These are recipes from The Cooking Community — my community where I share recipes, videos, and community with a group of home cooks who are choosing to eat well on purpose. This week, you can get three months free. I'd love to cook with you this summer.

Love,

Dear friend,

Even though I’d taken the care to “put the kitchen to bed” last night, wiping off counters, emptying the sink drain, vacuuming the floor, and setting out fresh hand towels, I still came up to find a sink full of various mugs and plates. Teenagers. If I had to guess, it looked like someone cooked a few chicken sausages and made a mug of hot chocolate around midnight. The fresh hand towels were already streaked with cocoa and the remnants of ketchup had dried to the bottom of the kitchen sink.

Still. Coffee was in hand.

One cup down, shared with Stuart mostly in silence today, I headed off to shower. I was in a bit of a funk today — clean hair helps move these stuck emotions along I find. Everything is better with clean hair and armpits. I often use my shower time to pray and I’m not sure if this is good or bad, but I do it nonetheless. It’s quiet time for me, though I often offer my prayers up audibly. The Lord hears them. I’m sure Stuart does too, but as our marriage works, he already knows them all anyway. And he already is well aware that I talk to myself, and the Lord, out loud and often. We pray together too.

Hair lathered in foam, I peeked out of the shower to discover that much to my dismay, the littles had indeed removed the special (i.e. clean and nice) towels from my bathroom that are in fact, never supposed to leave my bathroom (under severe threat from a mama who likes hers clean and dry). Knowing they were most likely upstairs in a pile on their dirty bedroom floors, I tried to remind myself that “this too I will miss when they’re grown” and shouted out at Stuart to please grab me a towel from the dryer. He was tucked in at the small table in our bedroom, tending to his digital work, before heading to the summer sheep pasture with the boys that’s a few miles down the road. During their morning excursions to the summer pasture, Owen practices driving the big truck on country roads and they move sprinklers and grain the animals each morning. They come back after twenty minutes eager to tell me stories of how each individual lamb is growing, who did something cute today, and who received the most attention or nibbles from the small flock. Today was no exception. But in Stuart’s haste to tend to the watering chores at hand, he forgot my towel.

I used a wash cloth.

Still, I managed to (eventually) dry off and slip on some blue linen trousers — the kind that are soft in the waist and thus soft on the 40 year version of myself — and a clean tank top. It’s finally summer, it’s finally warm, and I welcome the light and heat on my shoulders. I let my clean hair air-dry but put on some mascara and concealer. “Hey beautiful.” I said to myself in the mirror. “You look great today.” It’s a new (fun) little game I like to play with myself where I remind myself what is true. The woman in the mirror listens to me — and I like when she hears nice things.

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I made the bed that I have shared faithfully with my husband for 17 years (thankfully, we had upgraded the mattress during that time) and put in a load of his laundry from mowing the lawns on Saturday morning (another task he has done faithfully for the 17 years we’ve been married). I had to guess on a few of the “half-in, half-out” laundry pieces, strewn close enough to the hamper to make me think they were dirty, but not placed inside the hamper in a finalized plea to be cleaned. Smell test. They all got put in the dirty pile.

I finally came upstairs. A signal to my family, to the world, that help has arrived. My life for theirs, truly and fully, just as Christ lived and died for me. It’s also time for coffee #2. At the top of the stairs, I was greeted by two little chicks that my youngest daughter, Juliette, had saved from an inattentive mother. She very kindly, and gently, finished peeling them out of their shells and brought them inside to care for after they were abandoned by a hasty new mother. I could see that she’d upgraded their living quarters to a much larger box, one lined with my electric heating pad and a lovely hand towel from my collection. Both of my lovely things were now soiled with chick poo, which is both sour and hard as concrete when dry, but I kept walking, making a note to deal with it later. Maybe after coffee #2, but probably not until after coffee #3.

I still haven’t cleaned them.

The day ticks on.

Despite the “Do Not Disturb” sign posted on my home office door, there were no less than nine interruptions today during a one hour business call. I made a mental note to have a sit-down conversation with my wonderful crew of people, so intertwined and tangled in my life that I cannot always see where mine ends and theirs begins. It is what I hoped for — to be within arms reach of them, to be their constant and ever-present mama. My heart’s desire, my most lovely reality… so long as they remember to not cross the office threshold during times of work. (Cause that makes me cray-cray.)

Stuart, after returning from lunch with a co-worker (did I tell you Stuart took a job at our church?), seemed to vanish. I needed to run a new monthly calendar by him — lame, but we all need our systems to stay on top of this insane reality we live in — and this was my best attempt to make sure that nothing fell through the financial cracks. A printable, monthly checklist that I can physically hold and mark. Call me old. But I need it to be on paper. I want to touch it and mark it and see the pages month-after-month line up in my notebook. I want to physically check a box and stick a paperclip on the corner. Those who live digitally deny themselves such pleasure in picking out colors and pens and stickers and highlighters to delight them, in my humble opinion. Plus, I do like to work on my handwriting. I want to be an old, eccentric grandmother who speaks Italian and has beautiful handwriting and a wonderful collection of paperclips. Anyway, I set out on a quest to run my new little checklist by Stuart, only to find him deep in a closed-door conversation about puberty with one of our children. God, that you would be so kind to give me such a man! A man who loves his children so well and desires that they never feel alone, never feels without answers, is never left to guess alone. But I didn’t have brothers and thus, know very little about boy puberty, so I quickly shut the door and told him we’d discuss my choice of spreadsheet colors later.

And before I forgot, I sent him a quick text to please look into a few mystery charges that had come out of our bank account.

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It’s only the afternoon — there is still supper to be made, laundry to fold, and a home to tidy for tomorrow. If I am lucky, I’ll have time to reset my little office sanctuary before the labors of tomorrow. A few desk plants keep me company these days (as if I needed more company with nine-interruptions-an-hour) and they could use a bit of water. There’s an empty coffee cup to wash.

This is an ordinary day for us here at the cottage. To some, it may seem boring. I sleep with the same man, over and over. I correct and love my children, over and over. I consistently show up to work not because it gives me some grand fulfillment, but because it is good, honest work that blesses us and provides for us. I wash the dishes and sweep the floors. But God has been so faithful in providing for our needs. We have food. We have one another. We have peace in our souls.

Throughout our days, we do a thousand small actions and movements, over and over, that say far more than words could express.

It is faithful, steady, and ordinary life.

And it is the greatest.

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Love,

Dear friend,

Last Sunday, we spent five hours with our boots on the ground, wandering through brush and trees and hillsides, covered in dirt, and so bloody happy I wish we could’ve bottled it up and carried it with us always. I love a good mission and this day, it was simple. Spend the day together not working. Lest we think “not working” looks like sitting still entirely, for us, it looked like traversing the foothills of the Cascade mountain range we are so blessed to call home, eyes peeled and minds engaged, looking for mushrooms. (I would’ve been just as happy if we found zero.)

The smell of the moss, the chatter of the children running up and down the hillsides, the sense of discovery all around, it felt electric.

I’ve been making a lot of hard decisions lately; decisions that will leave more space for life and moments just like this. After a few decades of building our family and over a decade of building our home, we figured it was high-time that we start making sure we enjoy some of it too. That makes it sound simple, but it didn’t feel simple to me. It felt like a thousand small decisions to feel joyful.

It felt like looking myself in the mirror and saying “My dear, you look lovely today.”

It felt like letting everything that we already have be enough.

It felt like seeking out opportunities to love others and to be with them.

It’s no secret that I’ve had my struggles this year. By God’s grace, I’ve been digging out of dark places and learning to set my footing on what is good and true and beautiful once again. It’s no one thing, but instead, a combination of so many little pieces… small decisions, small words, small victories, small moments taken.

Small adventures like our mushroom hunting.

Small projects like stringing up some new lights and spreading some gravel to create somewhere beautiful.

Small actions like taking out my camera again and using it to see beauty.

As I should’ve expected, there’s no magic bullet for any part of life — but would we really want there to be? Or would we rather labor and sweat, toil and solve, build and harvest, weep and rise, hunt and find, tend and nurture, mix and delight, laugh and cry. I’m finding, more and more, it’s both/and. It’s laboring when there is labor to be done and making sure to fill up too. As I show in this week’s new video, it’s about putting in the sweat-equity and then making sure to stop and enjoy it all a-plenty. It’s the low hum of chatter that’s always surrounding us as we labor and the many hands that jump in to help and learn. It’s the feeling of satisfaction when the job is done and the delight in discovering something new.

I suppose, in short, it’s a hunger for life. And it feels good to be hungry again.

Barley and Mushroom Salad

When the wild mushrooms are in season, do try to use them. Wheat berries could easily be substituted for the barley, though they do take a bit longer to cook. The flavor of this salad is light — this isn’t a punchy vinaigrette that demands your attention; rather, it’s a subtle nod to the light flavors captured within. Simple, comforting, and beautiful.

Ingredients

• 8 cups water

• 1 cup barley, rinsed

• ½ teaspoon sea salt

• 6 tablespoons butter

• 2 shallots, minced

• 2 cloves garlic, minced

• 8 ounces mushrooms, roughly chopped

• ½ teaspoon dried herbs, such as thyme, rosemary, or tarragon

• ½ bunch fresh parsley, finely chopped

• Large handful fresh greens

• 1 teaspoon wine vinegar or lemon juice

Instructions

1. Combine the water, barley, and sea salt together in a saucepan. Bring to a simmer, cover with a lid, and let cook until tender — about 30 minutes. Strain off any excess liquid and set aside.

2. Meanwhile, melt the butter in a large saucepan. Add in the shallots and garlic and cook until just fragrant — no more than 2 minutes. Add in the mushrooms and cook them in the butter mixture for an additional 4 minutes until just soft and tender. Sprinkle with the herbs, toss to coat, and set aside.

3. On a large platter, scatter the parsley and greens.

4. Add the strained barley into the mushroom pan and toss well to combine.

5. Pour the barley and mushroom mixture overtop of the greens and gently toss to combine the salad.

6. Drizzle the vinegar or lemon juice over the top and do one final toss to combine the salt. Season to taste with salt and pepper and serve.

Have a blessed weekend, my friends.

Love,

Dear friend,

I just completed a very unglamorous part of my 90-day summer mission. Last week, I invited you all to join me in falling back in love with our homes (our lives!) this coming summer. But my first task on this mission was ugly.

My pastor often reminds us to do the thing we want to do least first, a desperate tactic to help us prioritize our energy toward the very thing we're trying to avoid. As I thought through this challenge, I realized that falling back in love with our homes this summer goes far beyond bouquets of parsley and ironing our linens. Those are all lovely and delightful, most certainly, but before those gifts can feel delightful, perhaps it is far more important that we deal with some of the darker, uglier, more unglamorous corners of our home. Like (insert yours here)… lest cultivating beauty in our homes end up feeling far more like lipstick on a pig than we’d hoped…

Even though I didn’t want to, I thought long and hard about the pieces of our home that felt ugly — the pieces that I didn’t, couldn’t, love. Here’s a not-so-fun exercise: what feels emotionally ugly in your home? What would you like to see emotionally change?

I asked myself these same hard questions.

We might as well get this over with…

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Dear friend,

I’m on a 90-day mission and I’d love for you to join me. Surely you’re up for an adventure? You’ve just survived May, after all, which is the mother-of-all-months if you’ve got kids in school. I’m assuming most of you are still wearing your battle gear from end-of-year events and spring sports — let’s take that off, slip into our favorite sundress and woven sandals, and spend the next three months together delighting.

In the coming summer months, the ones filled with ripe tomatoes and bundles of lavender and toes dipped in cool water, I want to invite you to join me in falling in love with your home. Where you are, right now. Not some idealized version… not the one you see in your mind’s eye at the end of your to-do list… but the place where you find yourself in this very moment. Let’s spend the summer falling in love with what we already have.

I won’t call it a challenge. I don’t want to add another to-do on your list. But what I do want is for us to feel nourished in our spaces. So let me ask you this — what nourishes you in your home? And how can you be nourished, right where you’re at, in this coming season?

Whatever your sources of nourishment are (I’m sharing mine below), I want us to devote the coming season to diving deep into those pockets of our homes. I’ll be sharing my own journey as we go. Perhaps I’m a bit of a hopeless romantic, but I find that when the energy of our home shifts from survival to delight, when our eyes are open to the blessings at hand and our hearts gladly accept our daily bread, there is more beauty and joy to be found right now than we realize.

Care to fall back in love over the summer?

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Dear friend,

“Chicken salad” I scribbled on the blue painters tape before sticking it on the lid of a Tupperware filled to the brim. I gathered my container, along with some brioche buns and sliced watermelon I’d tucked carefully into a Ziplock, before beginning the twenty minute drive to a friend in need. I stood in her doorway as I handed off the humble supper, keeping conversation very simple. Those in need don’t always want to talk. Sometimes they like to cocoon and rest in the safety of home — but food creates a triage during such times. At some point, everyone needs to eat and in such moments, we soldiers who wear our aprons as combat gear arrive for duty.

I’ve been considering my kitchen lately as ground-zero for the much important work at hand; a side dish for a farewell party, hobbit-style rolls and sausages for an upcoming LOTR adventure, appetizers for a baby shower, pork carnitas for a family friends graduation party, and prepped meals for an extended family weekend at the lake. That’s to say nothing of the daily meals that keep our own family, those who find their way to our table, and a plethora of neighborhood children and friends fed and happy.

Each of these needs, at its core, is just some combination of common ingredients: olive oil, flour, bell peppers, roast, salt, lime juice, yogurt, eggs, ham slices, or basil. But such is the common art of cooking.

I actually quite like this term for what happens in the home kitchen. For six years on our podcast we’ve been “rescuing the art of homemaking from the daily grind” and time in the kitchen is no different.

Though the word ‘common’ may cause some to see such tasks as boring or tepid, I interpret it as sturdy and steadfast. Common means that the work of our kitchens is consistent, a steady pace that matches the normal schedule of hunger. It means that food is not meant to impress, but to provide what is commonly needed by the common folk — nourishment and respite. Such a common kitchen steadily dishes up, over and over again, that which is needed using that which is provided. Such a kitchen is not flashy or pompous, but rather, celebratory of ordinary provision and harvest.

Such a kitchen is used.

Yet to counter such commonness, we recognize the art form that the home cook has the opportunity to pursue. Lest you think I mean fancy smears on plates or oddly flavored foams adorning the breakfast plate, I assure you, this is not at all my point. The Cooking Community and I have spoken at length over the years over the beautiful art form that is the home cook; in her efforts, year upon year, she begins to develop a special sense of taste, budget, pacing, planning, resourcefulness, and delight in her kitchen. She knows how to use the handful of strawberries left in the refrigerator — slicing them up thinly and tucking them into a spinach salad, alongside purple onion and walnuts — just as she knows how to use the remnants of a smoked ham hock in a vat of split pea soup (she makes extra to freeze or to share with others). Last winter, longtime Cooking Community member Yana taught us the joy of “jam tea” in which a spoonful of homemade jam (or remnants scraped from the very bottom of the jar) is mixed in a mug of hot water. Resourcefulness and delight at its best!

The art of this common art is the simmering of chicken bones to make stock, the management of pantry items to keep them free from pests, the sprinkling of calendula petals and borage flowers over whipped butter, the tending of herbs outside the kitchen door for pleasure, and the drying of these same herbs for dark and sterile winter months. The art in my own kitchen looks like fresh tea towels each morning, flowers from the gardens in jars on the counter to welcome all who enter, and training my instinct to know when people need food and what would serve them best.

I returned home from delivering dinner to a fairly tidy kitchen (having spent the morning mopping up unknown substances from the sticky floor and garbage can). The remaining chicken salad was happily tucked away in the refrigerator, the other half of the watermelon snuggled up alongside it. Dinner was accounted for. I threw out a last minute invite to my parents who unbeknownst to me had zero dinner plans still at 5:00 (they’d spent the afternoon shuffling cars to and from the mechanic).

And so we sat at the kitchen table with them, filling warmed and toasty tortillas with chicken salad and bright green gem lettuce leaves, adding a handful of cheese-puffs on the side for good measure. I forgot the watermelon, but no one minded. We sat in my common kitchen, ate delightful and simple food off paper plates, and relished in the art of such a moment.

Any home cook knows no less than a hundred decisions and actions are represented in such a moment, from the chicken bought to defrosted to roasted to a thousand micro actions in between. In such a moment, I think of mimicking my favorite Italian artist, Sandro Botticelli. A lifetime of hard learning and effort to train an artist’s skills are represented as flowing lace, flower blossoms, and the soft lines of a woman’s face. To view a Botticelli painting is to delight in the seemingly effortless, yet behind the unbelievable artistry is the common work of hard training and practice — every day methods used to create some of the highest art humans have ever witnessed.

Sure. My art form looks like a Tupperware of chicken salad, but I hope Botticelli would be delighted none-the-less. Surely he ate. Would he not enjoy the crust of a freshly baked loaf of bread? The comfort of a braised meat? The delight of a sliced and seasoned summer tomato? We all need to eat; this means that some of us need to tie on our aprons, drizzle the oil, mince the parsley, pour the wine, and delight in the common art we’re invited to create.

Love,

Dear friend,

I started therapy a few months ago. Hardly original, I know. But when the diagnosis of the “blues” came, I was desperate to get back to my old self. This year, I just couldn’t shake it. The blues (I find this word far easier to use) followed me like an uninvited shadow from room to room, conversation to conversation, and I hated their presence. I recognize them as intruders, robbers, and thieves of the joy I had worked so hard to cultivate.

I’ve previously shared with you that I am working very closely with my naturopathic doctor who has helped me tremendously (did you even know liquid serotonin/dopamine is a real supplement?!) As a sign of my gratitude, I send her messages every few weeks to let her know how thankful I am for the knowledge she has shared with me — from dimming all my screen lines to yellow, to a trace mineral supplement that is taking away period problems I’ve had for decades, to eliminating potatoes (and with them my chronic anxiety and joint pain) — it is knowledge of the human body that has improved my daily life and shaped a new physical path forward for me. Praise God!

But depression isn’t just biological. It’s mental too. As such, daily prayers have been my comfort, open conversations with Stuart my motivation, and time with a therapist my safeguard.

During our sessions, I’m a good student and take good notes; I find I return to the same helpful phrases again and again to remind myself of good and true things. It’s like rewiring the brain circuits and in some ways, I feel like a toddler learning to walk again. “Don’t touch that thought. Bad. No. Here, play with this thought instead.”

I am doing so. much. better.

Stuart and I are in a thick stage of life and the demands are high. This is blessed and normal and totally on course with our stage of family. ALL IS WELL. But even still, it is a great gift to have others speaking into my world, offering objective opinions, and examining blind spots I cannot see on my own. As an ambitious dreamer with a husband, four kids, small farm, goals, and perfectionist tendencies, here are the most helpful reminders my therapist has given me thus far.

Thought by thought and habit by habit, they’re reshaping my world.

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Dear friend,

My family just walked out the door for our final day of coop. You should see the kitchen. And the laundry room. And the bathroom. And the floors. Ma dai.

Even though Stuart bears the brunt of our homeschool year, it’s no less true that we are both arriving at our final day of school a bit worse for the wear. Encouraged? Sure. Excited to see progress in the children? No doubt. Exhausted? YES.

When pennies and energy feel a bit short, I often remind myself that it is natural to feel such. The money we bring into the home accounts for every toothbrush, every piece of paper, every sock, and doctor appointment. Stuart and I are but two people covering the cost of living for six. Likewise, as parents do, we continually pour out our lifeblood into the next generation. We tend to their souls and their desires, filling our schedules with bible classes, jiu jitsu, piano lessons, and events with friends. My calendar is not just mine, but rather, is filled with pieces of life for six people. It’s no wonder it feels like a lot. Stuart and I are but two people living the lives of six.

As I type these words, I’m staring down an office that has been absolutely destroyed by printed essays, scattered flashcards, broken lunchboxes, tangled laptop cords, and historical figure costumes. My beautiful green buffet in the dining room is filled with worn math books and leftover nubs of pencils. Tubes of glitter glue are stuck to the edge of the drawer and there is a funky smell coming from Will’s cabinet that I’ve yet to brave finding. “After we finish Friday…” I keep telling myself. After Friday, I’m fixin’ to do some serious work with a few garbage bags and a deep seeded desire for order and cleanliness once again to reign.

My boys’ room is unspeakable. After we finish Friday…

But even amongst the chaos that it is May, it is good. Deeply good. Parenting is often presented as a sacrifice — as my life for yours. A giving up of what I wanted from life to provide our children with the life that they need. Parents, at the best of times, can be held up for being so selfless… so attentive… so sacrificial in the raising up of their families. But even amongst the absolute rubble that is the end-of-the-homeschool-year, it doesn’t feel like a sacrifice. I don’t feel like I had to give up life as I wanted it to be, or life as it should have been. I don’t feel that I’ve been sacrificial.

I FEEL LIKE: “I CAN’T BELIEVE I GET TO BE A PART OF THIS.”

I have four delightful weirdos that will greet me with hugs and kisses each morning. I get to live, for this short season, with these four souls that are wonderful reflections of a husband I absolutely adore. I got to carry them… nurse them… nurture them and love them. In fact, I get to love them unapologetically as much as I can possibly muster. I get to be a part of their birthdays, their victories, their sicknesses. I get to be their safety net, their sounding board, and a member of their inner circle. I have the privilege of being a beacon in their world, at least for the short while they’re at home with us. Praise God, I get endless affection and devotion and attention. I get to be Mama. This is hardly a sacrifice — this is one of the greatest gifts in the entire world. Lord, who am I!

Those four souls racing around my house are the reason that I bear scars, the reason that my womanly figure is both accentuated and deflated all at once. My body sustained a decade of life for them, pouring out, yes, but it was not a sacrifice to use my body to carry and nurture their life — it was amazing. And after being able to bear witness to that transformation and life and growth and development, I still get to keep pouring out into them. There is no money, no calendar, no trip, no accomplishment, no job title, no “living my best life” that could ever, ever compete with what I get to do on the daily.

All that’s to say… here’s our new video for the week, which has nothing to do with any of this. But those of you who have been here for awhile know that if you can expect anything from Cultivating the Beautiful Life, it’s honesty — what’s on my heart will always be what you find tucked inside these letters. So while our new video involves a late spring garden tour and a favorite Roman bun recipe, you may have a better understanding of who I’m baking for and why we cultivate our home gardens in the way we do; it is an outpouring of the love and joy we feel here in the cottage for this life we get to live.

Love,

Dear friend,

Tomorrow I turn 40. Over the years I have celebrated my birthday in many ways, from pasta parties to French 75 cocktails to casual gatherings at home. Though all have been special, the details of them have long since passed from my memory — they’re now simply woven into the tapestry of my life. And it’s been a great life so far!

This year, I’ll be celebrating my birthday quite casually — the day is sandwiched between homeschool coop days and end of year activities in perhaps one of the busiest seasons of life to date.

Though it was 19 years ago now, one of the last birthdays I can recall distinctly was my 21st. I remember this birthday because a) I ate a hot dog from a gas station, which if you know me at all, you know is unbelievably uncharacteristic and b) I met Stuart the following weekend. Life, as they say, would never be the same.

The day we met, I had yet to fully battle with the blood-bath that is the Christian conversion, tumultuously living with one foot in and one foot out of my faith. Scripture calls this sort of faith “lukewarm”; I think this is putting it quite kindly. What I was living in at that time, on that birthday all those years ago, was little more than the filth. I was wrestling. I was wallowing in a pigsty of my own making. My friend Audrey often says “Play stupid games, win stupid prizes,” and so it was. This was a birthday I spent winning stupid prizes for playing stupid games.

And then came my 22nd birthday.

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