It is a process: making a HOUSE into a HOME.

And I am feeling a little melancholy as I reflect on old pictures because I MISS those spaces filled with so much.

But I love the process of creating. Over and over. Because there’s nothing like creating a place to “grow” a family.

We have worked to make many houses into “HOMES.” From our rentals in the beginning for all those years in Virginia to short-term homes like our little townhouse we lived in for a semester in China.

We bought our first real house when we moved to the desert many years ago:

Oh that place holds so many velvet memories!

From paint projects:

To bedroom building projects:

To filling up the pool with growing kids:

So many hours of cooking together:

To welcoming new babies:

The driveway filled up with boys:

…and love notes:)

To all the holidays:

Birthday celebrations:

And teenager beginnings:

…and the regular, run-of-the-mill every-day family hoopla:

Oh, we made that house our home, that’s for sure.

I wrote a lot about our house projects in that old home of ours. You can find many of them under the category “Home Sweet Home” which is HERE.

I love to talk about what we put on our walls, and how that influences family life and also helps create a home. You’ll find all kinds of posts about “walls” over HERE (new and old home).

Oh, that was a good house, and it was hard to leave, but a few years back we bought this house:

…which we turned it into this:

We started all over on making that new house into a home.

We put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into this thing and are so grateful that it has become such a great place to gather and continue to raise our family.

There was so much work that went into it, in fact, and people were so interested in the process (plus, I’m a record-keeper at heart), that I started a whole new “sister” blog to chronicle the process of remodeling. Although I am still working to update it to include all the finished rooms, but you can find much of the documentation of the process on that blog over HERE.

I recently did a post about what we’ve put on the walls of our new home over HERE.

Keep checking in on that one for more updates.

I believe it is true what Winston Churchill said, “We shape our dwellings, and afterwards, our dwellings shape us.” Whether our homes are big or little, new or old, I believe we can shape them into holy places for our families.