The Lifegiving Home- Sally & Sarah Clarkson

Recommended by all the homeschool moms, I decided to give it a try. Amazon Kindle had a crazy summer thing going on where you got points every time you purchased books and those points could be used to get more books. I didn’t discover this until the program was almost done, having spent the summer purchasing the girls books! I had a nice little nest egg saved up and picked this book to start.

I’ve always known how I’ve wanted my home to feel when I grew up. Warm. Inviting. The place my children would want to be, and their friends too. A comforting place to find refuge for our family and our friends. Full of traditions, hospitality, baked goods, and snuggles. Now, as an adult, a wife, and a mother, those same goals were there, but how do I get there?

Honestly, I picked up this book hoping for some answers. Homeschool mom?✅ Christian mom?✅ Proponents of books EVERYWHERE?✅ Similar goals for the family and home as me?✅✅

The additional cool thing about this book is Sally tag-team wrote it with her oldest daughter Sarah! It gave a really cool perspective through certain chapters as it wasn’t all Sally explaining how or why she came up with traditions. Sarah shared what the traditions meant to her, how it felt growing up in that atmosphere, and how much it helped shape her as an adult. As a mother with littles, it’s not only nice to see mothers who have made it, but to also hear and see what it meant to the kids growing up as well.

Sally and Sarah did not disappoint me on my quest to provide a “Lifegiving Home” for my people. They divided the book up into the 12 months of the year, sharing seasonal rhythms, holiday traditions, family stories, and how some of them have changed as the children have now become adults!

A seemingly minuscule take-away for me, was doing seasonal home decor. I know, it sounds so silly. I’ve always struggled to commit to purchasing decorations for inside. We are also quite limited in our storage space. But as I read about Sarah helping her mother pull out the decorations, switching things out for the season, and those memories, I was reminiscent of my own mother switching out our Indian Corn fall decor for the winter snowmen! I found myself intentionally grabbing a fall-colored table cloth, specific mini pumpkins, and a few other fall treasures to nod to our changing season.

The above take away only scratches the surface of the many ideas of come away with. I loved Sally’s tradition of escaping after New Years for a day to plan so much, that I’ve planned my own Planning Day, but have decided to make it a mini-mothers event with some of my friends! We’re going to get together at not-one-of-our-homes, snacks, fire place, and PLANNERS! We’ll be able to chat about the year behind, the year ahead, share our family traditions & rhythms, and just have a few hours set aside to prepare for the coming year.

Some of my takeaways weren’t from the book directly, but reaffirmed things we’re already establishing as tradition in our home: like Belgian waffles & buttercream frosting for birthday breakfast, like jammies and a book Christmas Eve, or our German Easter Tree.