The Art of Homemaking - Making Our Lives Beautiful

As keepers of our homes, we have an opportunity to bring beauty into our homes and into the lives of our family members and anyone else who graces the thresholds of our homes.

As someone with a creative spirit, I appreciate this aspect of homemaking.

It's about seeing beauty in the little things. Searching with eyes open and ears tuned until the beauty is found.

Beauty in the common, ordinary things. Because it is absolutely necessary to slow down long enough and open our eyes wide enough to see the beauty that lies within the common. Skim back the mundane and dig deep into the soil of extraordinary. Little hidden gems from the Father that are available to those who breathe deep and slow enough to find them.

A vase of field grass and wildflowers picked by little hands.

Freshly cut lavender from the garden and its calming, nostalgic scent.

An old family heirloom, a crazy quilt pieced together in 1924, now hanging on an old chippy white quilt stand.

Ave Maria playing softly in the background, bringing calm and peace through the beautiful notes that were spilled forth onto paper so long ago.

A basket of cookbooks, the pages full of nourishment for the beloved family.

Little hands mixing up the flour and sugar and eggs.

The gift of growing our own food. And the beautiful diversity of the tastes and smells of those foods.

A new passion strummed out over the strings of a guitar.

A stack of handmade, crocheted coasters.

 

A boy's wild imagination wrapped up in the pages of a page-turner.

A stack of freshly washed bath towels, stacked up neat.

A pitcher full of last year's hydrangeas from a dear friend's garden.

A sink full of warm, sudsy dishwater.

Gleaming wooden floors that smell clean and feel smooth under the feet. (Oh, this one rarely happens so it's a true gem when it does!)

Beauty is around us. God gives it to us to inspire us, to motivate us, to invigorate us. God's creation is full of beauty and creativity for God is the Father of creativity after all. Look at what He's made. His creation exudes beauty and diversity and color and art.

This is how to find joy in the midst of the mundane. This is how to find beauty in those tasks that have the tendency to be boring and routine and dreaded.


We look for the kernel of beauty that exists in it. Each of our tasks as homemakers has that gem hidden somewhere in it. We must look for it. And then the mundane is no longer mundane.

God is the One who plants that desire for expression in our souls. He is the One who plants the seed of creativity and art in the soul. And it is a gift that He gives to us to share with those around us.



So we can look at our homemaking as a way to express that art. The art of home. The art of making our homes beautiful expressions of His gifts to us. And these gifts are not the ones that line the shelves of the local home store. These are the gifts that line the shelves of our heart, that mean the most to us, the can be seen only with a little digging and work.

Come, Thou Fount of every blessing,
Tune my heart to sing Thy grace;
Streams of mercy, never ceasing,
Call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
Sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount! I’m fixed upon it,
Mount of Thy redeeming love.

 He is the fount of every blessing!

James 1:17 - Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.



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Far Above Rubies
Time Warp Wife 
Growing Home