The Hygge Homestead & Hive

08/21/2026

Some lessons are written carefully between the lines. Others are waiting quietly at the water’s edge.

Today: looping letters, muddy knees, two old bullfrogs we’ve affectionately named our plopping frogs, and the slow work of becoming acquainted, with words, with wild things, with ourselves, and with one another.

No rush to hurry childhood along.
Just enough structure to strengthen the hand, enough freedom to awaken the mind, and enough unhurried time to notice that the same frogs have returned to their favorite place beneath the trees.

This is the education I want them to remember:

Look closely. Stay curious. Practice beautiful things. Know your neighbors, even the ones who answer with a plop.

And perhaps, somewhere between cursive strokes and pond edges, they are learning the loveliest lesson of all:

You’ve got a friend in me. 🐸🌿✏️

08/20/2026

Hygge was never the house. 🤎

Turns out, that may be the lesson of this strange little chapter.

Life behind the scenes has been… a lot. The kind of when it rains, it absolutely pours season that someday will require a very long story and a very large cup of matcha.

I cannot wait to tell you all of it.

But for now, this is what our life looks like:

Homeschooling from a Hilton for a month.
Morning walks beneath the trees.
Books tucked into bags.
Dogs underfoot.
Sunshine on little shoulders.
Bare feet, goggles, and long afternoons floating the lazy river.
Conversations that become lessons.
Lessons that become adventures.
And five people learning, again, that home is something we carry with us.

We are letting hard seasons make us more awake.

We’re tending to the things that still belong entirely to us: our minds, our bodies, our rhythms, our relationships, our curiosity, our sense of humor, and the tiny rituals that make an ordinary day feel cared for.

We’re swimming. Walking. Reading. Exploring. Resting when we need to. Learning everywhere. Eating together. Finding beautiful corners. Letting the girls have childhood right in the middle of the grown-up mess.

Maybe this is Hygge on the Road.

Not perfectly curated.
Not pretending everything is wonderful.
Just the quiet, stubborn practice of making life warm while life is still unfinished.

Because hygge was never really about candles, blankets, or even the four walls around us.

It was always this.

Connection before everything.
Home wherever we are.
And the decision to keep making something beautiful of the life actually in front of us.

More of this chapter soon and do I have stories for you. 🤎

08/09/2026

08/08/2026

Am I the only one wondering when expecting basic decency became unreasonable?

When did asking questions make a homeowner “difficult”?

When did expecting communication become demanding?

When did documenting everything become excessive?

When did asking someone to actually do what they said they would do become too much?

Maybe the problem isn’t that some of us expect too much.

Maybe we’ve normalized expecting far too little.

Be agreeable.
Don’t ask too many questions.
Don’t make anyone uncomfortable.
Accept the explanation.
Take what you’re given.
Move along.

No.

I can be kind AND ask hard questions.

I can be gracious AND document everything.

I can respect someone’s work AND expect them to do it well.

I can understand that people are busy AND still expect communication.

And I can advocate fiercely for my home without apologizing for it.

Because somewhere along the way, “easy to work with” started sounding suspiciously like easy to dismiss.

I don’t want special treatment.

I want honesty.
Communication.
Competence.
Follow-through.
Decency.

The things that should have been ordinary all along.

Maybe homeowners demanding those things aren’t the unreasonable ones.

Maybe we’re just finally refusing to normalize less.

08/07/2026

Emma’s favorite summer flower to eat is passionflower.

Which feels very Emma.

Wild. Useful. A little unexpected. Almost impossibly beautiful.

She walks out into the garden daily, harvesting blossoms from vines that have completely taken over their corner of the homestead and above her, the entire place is alive with Gulf fritillary’s.

Passionflower is their host plant.

So we don’t just grow flowers here.

We grow caterpillars.
We grow chrysalises.
We grow butterflies.

Right now there are probably thirty Gulf fritillaries dancing through this little patch at any given moment , bright orange flashes weaving through the vines, floating over Emma’s head, disappearing into the trees and circling right back again.

And my God, this is the stuff.

Not the perfectly manicured garden.

Not the landscape that behaves.

The garden that spills over its fences.
The vines that wander.
The children who know what they can harvest.
The butterflies that have decided this is home.

A plant feeding a little girl while simultaneously feeding an entire generation of butterflies.

That is abundance.

That is ecology.

That is childhood.

That is the kind of education I will choose every single time, the kind where nobody announces that science has begun because she is already standing right in the middle of it.

And thirty orange butterflies dancing around her.

Summer at the Hygge Homestead. 🌿🦋

08/03/2026

Well…

Apparently The Hygge Homestead has one more chapter to write.

If you’ve followed us for a while, you know this season has involved more plot twists than we ever could have planned. 😅

At this point, we’ve learned to stop asking, “What’s next?”

…and simply ask, “How can we make this beautiful?”

So while our timeline has shifted (again!), we’re choosing to spend this extra time doing what we love most.

Thoughtfully restoring spaces.
Creating cozy corners.
Making our kitchen, dining room, mudroom, and garage as warm and welcoming as they deserve to be.

If we’re going to be here a little longer, we’re going to make every day count.

There will be plenty of dust.

Probably a few surprises.

Definitely a lot of coffee.

And, knowing us, more than a little hygge.

So here’s to embracing the unexpected…

…and leaving this home even more loved than we found it. 🤎

07/25/2026

“What do you want your story to be?”

It’s become one of my favorite questions to ask our girls.

Not when life is easy.

When they’re hesitant.

When they’re nervous.

When they’d rather stay comfortable.

“I don’t want to go on stage.”

“I don’t know anyone.”

“I’m scared.”

Instead of convincing them, I ask,

“What do you want your story to be?”

Tonight, Charleston and Bella ran onto a stage beneath the Texas sky in front of hundreds of strangers.

They learned hula from professional dancers.

They told stories with their hands.

They laughed through coconuts, pineapples, and watermelons. (If you know, you know.)

They watched Moana, ate Kona Ice, and danced under the moon.

Earlier today, Charleston planned every stop of her 11th birthday.

A dog shop.

A local dog bakery where an entrepreneur generously shared business advice and stories about her daughter’s path into marine biology.

An adoption event where we fell a little in love with a sweet beagle named Piper.

A used bookstore.

Not because any of those places were the “best” attraction.

Because together they became her story.

I’ve realized that childhood isn’t built by waiting for extraordinary moments.

It’s built by saying yes to the ordinary ones that become extraordinary because you were willing to step into them.

So whenever fear, uncertainty, or embarrassment shows up…

We’ll keep asking:

What do you want your story to be?

Because years from now, they probably won’t remember what made them nervous.

They’ll remember that they danced. 🤍

07/23/2026

Charleston turns eleven Friday. 🤍

There is no birthday party.

In this season of her childhood, she isn’t deeply attached to a circle of peers for a traditional party to feel meaningful.

We pack the car instead. The bikes. The dogs. The books. The sisters.

And we head off for a few days built entirely around her.

LEGO. Swimming. Caves. Gemstones. Nature. Bookshops. Thrift stores. Good food. Slow mornings. Unexpected stops. Whatever makes an eleven-year-old girl’s eyes light up.

This is one of the greatest gifts home education has given our family:

We stopped believing childhood had to happen in separate little boxes.

School here.
Life there.
Travel for vacation.
Birthdays for parties.

Instead, we make the world the classroom.

We learn geography by going somewhere.
History by standing where it happened.
Science by touching it.
Nature by wandering through it.
And life by actually living it.

Eleven doesn’t need a guest list.

It needs be a few days on the road with the people who know you best.

A childhood measured not in invitations, but in stories.

Not in how many people showed up, but in how fully you showed up for your own life.

The world was never something we were preparing our girls for.

The world was their classroom.
Their childhood was happening now.
And we went out to meet it.

Happy almost 11th birthday to our wild, book-loving, LEGO-building, animal-adoring, endlessly curious Charleston. 🤍

Adventure awaits.

07/22/2026

If you are thinking about homeschooling your children, I want to tell you something before you buy a single curriculum.

Please, for the love of childhood, do not leave school only to painstakingly rebuild it inside your home.

Home education can be so much more than school at home.

It can be the radical reclamation of something modern childhood has almost entirely lost:

time.

Time to notice. Time to follow a question farther than forty-five minutes allows. Time for a child to become completely consumed by birds or bridges or Beethoven or bugs and stay there long enough for fascination to become knowledge. Time for books read under blankets.

For afternoons spent building something that does not work the first time. For puzzles left unfinished on the table. For conversations that wander wildly beyond the original question. For boredom. For invention. For meaningful work.

For childhood to unfold without someone ringing a bell and telling it to move along.

But if I could give one piece of advice to a family beginning their home education journey, it would have almost nothing to do with education.

First, get to know your children.

Not who a curriculum says they should be at nine. Not what a standardized measure says they should know at eleven.

Them. Know what makes them laugh until they cannot breathe. Know the peculiar treasures they carry home in their pockets. Know which child needs silence and which one needs to speak every thought aloud before she understands it herself.

Notice what they return to again and again when no adult is directing them.

Spend time together with absolutely no educational objective.

Enjoy one another.

Connection is not something we squeeze in around education. Connection is the soil from which the deepest education grows.

When children feel known, they become brave enough to wonder. When they are given time, they become curious. When they are trusted, they begin to trust themselves.

And when we stop treating childhood as preparation for some distant, more important life,

we discover that this is the life.

Over the years of building our home education life and The Hygge Homestead, I collected hundreds of beautiful, purposeful things, not because children need more stuff, but because the right things can become invitations.

A puzzle says: Come sit beside me.

A board game says: Stay awhile.

A beautiful book says: There is an entire world you haven’t discovered yet.

Art materials say: Make what doesn’t exist.

A basket of naturalist tools says: Go outside. Stay. Look closer.

Open-ended toys say: You decide what happens next.

These things have a purpose.

Connection. Curiosity. Imagination. Wonder.

So as we open The Hygge Mercantile and begin passing pieces of our beloved Homestead into other homes, perhaps that is what I hope we are really passing along.

Not simply books. Not simply puzzles. Not simply homeschool resources, educational materials, games, toys and beautiful things.

Invitations.

To gather around a table. To put the phone down. To read one more chapter. To make something with your hands. To go outside and discover something you didn’t know was there. To follow the child. To recover a little of what this hurried world keeps trying to take from us.

Wonder.
Curiosity.
Time.
And each other.

If you are beginning your homeschool or home education journey or simply trying to create a slower, more connected childhood, you are welcome here.

Come browse the shelves. Come find the extraordinary books, puzzles, games, homeschool resources, art materials, educational treasures and open-ended playthings that helped fill our Hive with wonder.

I would love to help you find the things worth bringing into your home.

But if you ask me what you need first, you already have them.

Your children.

Go get to know them.

Everything else can come after.

🤎

07/20/2026

“Is your homeschool life really as fairytale as it looks?”

A mother asked me that yesterday. She is new to homeschooling. Three boys, 10, 8, and a toddler.

We stood there at the Mercantile among stacks of books and puzzles and all the beautiful evidence of childhood, and we talked.

About homeschooling. About community. About where to even begin when suddenly, beautifully, terrifyingly, the whole wide world is yours to teach from. And then she looked me right in the eye. “I worry I’m not good enough.” Oh, mama.

The fairytale isn't that we wake up every morning to perfectly behaved children reading Shakespeare beneath an oak tree while sourdough rises on the counter. We have hard days. We get behind. We change plans. Someone cries. Sometimes it's me.

The fairytale is that we get to know our children. Really know them.

We get to notice what makes their eyes light up. We get to linger over a question instead of rushing to the next subject. We get to abandon the lesson because a rush of swallowtails landed in the garden. We get to build days around actual human beings instead of bells and benchmarks.

And no, you do not have to be extraordinary to give your children an extraordinary childhood. You have to be willing to pay attention.
To begin. To trust that a mother who loves her children deeply and is willing to keep learning alongside them is already holding something no curriculum can manufacture.

Yesterday reminded me why I loved the Hive so much. It was never just the forest. It wasn't the beautiful spaces we built. It wasn't even the programs. It was people finding each other. And somehow, here we are doing it again.

This little Mercantile was supposed to be a way for us to pass along the books and treasures we've collected through years of raising and teaching children. But something else is happening here. People are lingering. Strangers are talking. Mothers are asking me how to homeschool. Where to begin. Where to find community. Whether they're doing enough. Whether they are enough.

And yesterday, I watched my own three girls working beside me. helping customers, building their little businesses, solving problems, talking to adults, knowing that their hands and ideas have value. I could have burst.

This is home education. Maybe some of the very best of it. And it has me thinking about a lot of things. About what families are hungry for. About what children actually need.

About how many mothers are standing at the edge of a completely different life, wondering if they're brave enough to step into it.
About what happens when we simply give people a place to find one another. I don't know exactly what comes next.
But I know that I felt something yesterday that I haven't felt in a while. A little spark.

And if you know me, you know I tend to follow those. 🤎

For now, we'll keep opening the Mercantile doors.

🌿 THIS WEDNESDAY | 5–7 PM
📍 The Hygge Homestead | Magnolia

Hundreds of beautiful books. Homeschool + educational resources. Puzzles. Games. Toys. Childhood treasures. Plants. Our free bin. And more coming out every time we open as we slowly empty this enormous, beautiful chapter of our lives.

Come early. Once a treasure finds its next home, it's gone. Come for the books. Come hunting for something wonderful. Come say hello. And if you're standing at the beginning of homeschooling wondering whether you're good enough, come talk to me.

Because maybe what you need most isn't another curriculum. Maybe you just need someone a little farther down the path to look you right in the eye and say:

Yes. You can do this.

See you Wednesday. 🤎🌿