our GOVERNOR has ordered people to stay home to limit the spread of coronavirus![]() First of all, Hi friends! If you are local to me you are not alone. This is happening to you, me and our neighbors. What can we control? Our joy. We can choose to let this order steal all of our joy or we can choose to create joy with the circumstance we are faced with - Coronavirus. Personally, as a friend, mama and wife, I feel like I will look back on this season of life being proud that I woke up every day chasing joy even when I didn't feel like it. In today's post you are going to learn about some of the ways I chase joy during a stay at home order. My hope is someone out there gains inspiration to change the gut bomb feeling that the words, 'Stay at home order' bring into a more uplifting feeling that 'The season of chasing joy' can bring. Before you carry on with this article please take a deep breath in, slowly exhale and say out loud, "I can do hard things. Every little thing is gonna be alright." keep busy and feel a sense of completion through the gift of PROJECTSNow more than ever people are spending more time at home. What better time than now to step out of your normal comfort zone and explore new cooking techniques and flavor in the kitchen! Stay tuned on my Instagram stories where I share what's happening in our kitchen quite often! Maybe you will be inspired there! Create homemade holiday crafts with supplies around your home or ones that can be shipped directly to you through Amazon prime. I will go ahead and link the natural wreath DIY and being present during the holiday season post that went live last week here. Tackle home projects that you've been wanting to do like painting, try out a peel and stick wallpaper or create new decor through restoring what you already have into something new! Simply by mixing baking soda with paint onto a recycled glass jar or wine bottle will create a textured vase that is sure to make you smile! Don't forget to turn on some good music while you reinvent something into cute. I enjoy searching for acoustic, instrumental, female country or Christian playlist while I craft. Maybe detail cleaning your home like washing that plastic shower curtain liner or stripping your linens in a bath tub soak with borax and detergent all day will make you feel accomplished. Doesn't everyone feel better at home when it's clean? Let's chase joy by creating a space that makes you feel good. Clutter is something that needs to go if you're feeling anxious. Studies show the visual site and functionality of clutter doesn't bring ease to the mind. If you need too you can take it slow by maybe throwing one thing away each day. You will feel lighter I promise. You're taking advice from someone who just downsized from a lot of stuff that filled a 2700sqft house down to our now 1000sqft tiny house. Man, it feels GOOD! You will feel complete rather than in a state of disarray after you declutter. challenge your mind and feel proudWe all have shown interest or passion towards a certain area in our life. Rather than just knowing about it become an expert at it. For me I know some Spanish but I am no means fluid and I would like to learn the language to teach my biracial son his heritage. This is something that would make me feel proud and accomplished. I love the idea of bringing the outdoors into interior design and studying this would only make me more confident in my design choices if we ever build a home or renovate one again. I have already began studying different methods to create homemade pastas and fresh doughs for baking. The more I know the more I can create for my family which delivers a proud moment when we gather around the table. Acoustic guitar and songwriting are something that I will never master but that I can study to become better. These are all things I am passionate about and have fun doing. What will you gain more knowledge on during this season of chasing joy? REST EASY to FILL YOUR CUPRest is so important and sometimes we need it to help fill our cup back up! My trigger, actually, is lack of sleep. When I get behind the exhaustion triggers me and my joy becomes compromised. Take the extra time to soak up the sweet details of your children during play time, hand embroider a stamped pattern in peace and quiet (here's one I just ordered from Amazon - a tote bag DIY), relax your muscles by taking a hot shower or bath with an aromatherapy steamer, do a home massage with something like this back and neck massager, watch romantically cheesy Hallmark holiday movies on the hallmark channel while you give yourself some at home spa treatments. I will link a hand mask and a FarmSkin face mask here for you to shop online. Another pleasant idea is planning at home date nights with your partner if applicable. Create rules for the date night where you don't discuss anything related to politics, finances or quarantine. You chase joy during that date. Create a snack platter like a charcuterie board with pickles from that old jar in your fridge, cheese, nuts, fruit and crackers. Ask each other questions about the past and stay focused around memories that resemble the good times. Perhaps you could spend 5 minutes counting your blessings together and saying a prayer giving thanks to God for your relationship. If you don't want to talk you could just make out for ten minutes and become an expert at kissing. You might even pay that $19.95 to rent the movie Yellowstone on Amazon like one of my girlfriends recently demanded we do! haha I hear the movie is full of good looking fellas so if you like that kind of thing well there ya go! Stay tuned for my Yellowstone review. :) Friends, love yourself and others well while you chase joy this season! Please copy and paste the URL for this article to share joy with family members and friends! Leave a reply sharing a home activity suggestion, a favorite movie, Netflix TV show or recipe for others to enjoy or say, "Hi!" letting me know you feel inspired! xo Chelsea
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A welcome note from the author: Harmony is the flow of life. When what you think, what you say and what you do come together you've created perfect harmony. It's like the sweet melody of that perfect song. That sequence of single notes is musically satisfying. When the sequence of events that seasonally occur around us are a combination of wholesome feelings, we remain present. When you read this post, you will understand what I mean by this. Think of one of your favorite tunes. Next imagine that same perfect blend, not in the song but in your life, with what's happening around you in the outdoors, inside the walls of your home (including the chaos raising littles can bring) all creating the perfect seasonal vibe, that perfect harmony, right at home. My hope is that this post inspires just one other person out there. If it does well then...I've impacted someone's holiday season in a down-home way and that brings me joy. Love yourself and yours well during this time. being present during the holiday seasonToday, my hope is that you find inspiration for making a natural holiday wreath with elements found in nature. I don't know about you but something about the busyness of the holidays in years past hasn't felt right. Rushing here and there amongst others out and about rushing too just flat out drained me. January would hit and I would be like oh my gosh I am exhausted. All that work. It flew by and I am now left with department store decor to clean up and store away in totes. As I packed, I would think will I even like it all in a year from now? Seeing the ones we love near and far should be the busyness. Also, home cooking and homemade decor from the help of family members within the comfort of our surroundings should be what keeps us busy. It's this kind of busy that ends up leaving me with a wholesome feeling. A feeling of being present. You see every time I look at this beautiful homemade natural holiday wreath I think about home. The branches are from our property. The pinecones were gathered by my toddler on a pinecone hunt down the road. The old laundry basket ring we used brings me joy because it's recycled into something beautiful. The kitchen goods -oranges, cranberries and cinnamon sticks - these things bring that fresh organic vibe that reminds me of good health. An overall healthy home is what I strive for. All of these things make the wreath extra special. When stepping back and comparing this to years past where I would have a kid in a shopping cart begging for snacks or to leave while I stressfully tried to pick a wreath out. Better yet shopping on my own for a wreath amongst a rushed world and as we know this year where a masked-up pandemic is in effect. These things all impact the result of our overall holiday season fulfillment. From one wife, mama and friend, this process of decorating with the natural rhythms of the seasons with our hearts in mind is a good approach. A humble lifestyle living as a joyful millennial can exist. It's up to us to see that. Follow me on Instagram for more inspiration. Everything but the hardware grew in the dirt.gather supplies and tie everything onDepending where you live and what you already have around you this process will look different for everyone! If you don't have an evergreen tree don't fret. Get creative and use old sunflower or rose heads to add texture. Look for sticks, grass, straw, bush branches, berries, pinecones - whatever you find will be perfect for your home and that is what matters! You are decorating with the natural rhythm occuring around your homestead as it is this that brings the peace. I did soak my pinecones in a 50/50 water and white vinegar mixture for about 1 hour, rinsed and dried them before using them to rid of any bugs. The oranges I dried by slicing in roughly 1/4 inch thick slices, laying on parchment paper, cooking at 250 degrees for 1.5 hours flipping halfway through. Watch that they don't turn brown. You want the oranges almost all the way dried out but not quite when you take them out to cool. You can try to create a ring to mount the wreath to using sticks or you can cut an old laundry hamper top off like I did. Metal hangers work great or you can purchase a wreath ring from Amazon Prime linking a 2pack of large 19 inch ones here for you! I hope these tips are helpful! Enjoy watching my wreath come to life as you scroll the pictures below. Remember that your wreath will be beautifully different and custom to your home life. I attached everything with a stretchable string and used some thin wire to add the berries. Here's the leather cord I used to tie up the cinnamon sticks. Enjoy the process and tag me on Instagram showing your completed natural holiday decor project @DownHomeAdventure I am in love with the finished product! Have a question or an idea to share? Leave a reply! Did you find inspiration here? Leave that note too!
Happy Holidays! :) Chelsea ![]() Picture this: A young girl who was raised in the city and the country and the city and the country again due to a broken home. Yeah, like many other millennials my parents went through a divorce – it sucked. Fast forward 14 years to a woman living in a small town who had the big house, dream job and the blogger rapport with brands who sent product after product to her doorstep for promotion to the world. To now, as I sit here I am a loving wife, Mama of two boys, an English bulldog and 8 hens living in a 1000sqft home that was built in the year 1900. I am parked at our kitchen table because well if it was a dining table there would be a room for it. Haha. I am right next to the kitchen sink so we are going with ‘kitchen’ table. Sourdough starter is bubbling away in a mason jar on the counter and vanilla beans are turning vodka into extract in the pantry- I’ve never been happier! 2020 has been a different year with the Coronavirus pandemic, the BLM movement and politics in general. Not only this, it is the year I adjusted to being a mother of two and the year that the housing market showed to be one for the sellers so we jumped at the opportunity after many, many prayers. We sold that big home of ours and went tiny. When the pandemic first hit a lot of people that know us made comments on how prepared we were for a shutdown. I hadn’t realized how prepared we were and how unprepared others were before this. We had plenty of canned goods, onion bulbs and seeds for the garden because Spring was fast approaching for planting and our girls, the hens, were showing up to their nesting boxes to lay eggs daily in our backyard. When it came down to it at the end of the day it was these things, the ones that kept on giving, that held of utmost importance and added that wholesome feeling to our lives. With this in mind I can't help but see the obvious of what is important. Simply put, I think society tries to make the world a fast pace race but what we have to see is there is no finish line. When I say this I mean that trends exist, seasons come and go and with this comes a never ending cycle to buying all of the things and more things and some more things after that. My goal with this space is to share quality. Things made to last. Recipes, home tips and products that make a lasting difference; think sustainability. Earlier in this post I mentioned that I previously had worked with several brands as a blogger. I absolutely love this kind of work and believe in how effective this marketing is when sharing products that are truly beneficial. What I didn’t realize until recently is that the way society has progressed is scary. So quickly we have seen with the progression of technology has also come the in your face ‘because everyone has a phone’ marketing (#ads) and I believe this has fed and will continue to feed lack in product production quality. As a Mama, I find myself wondering, “what is the future going to look like for my children?” As a consumer living tiny, I find myself fact checking the quality, diversity and intention of a product before I make a purchase or work with a brand. It’s funny, do you ever look back on your life and not always understand why you did certain things and then a lightbulb moment hits you sometimes months or years later and you’re like, “Ok God, I get it now. You are the real MVP!” Best. feeling. ever! I know this blog post is super bullet point based and I have not elaborated a ton, this will come based on the season of life that I am in. I hope you join me! I am so excited to share that we changed the name and intention of this blog! Welcome to Down-home Adventure formally Adopt Adventure. A humble lifestyle living as a joyful millennial can exist. It’s up to us to see that. Please stick around for what’s to come here! If you’re excited, tell a friend. Thank you so much for your support. My hope is that Down-home Adventure becomes a resource for many homes. We will share our hearts and our adventures together while we learn, laugh and cry. This life is what we make it. The choice is ours not societies. RESOURCE: OXFORD LANGUAGES
down-home /ˈˌdoun ˈˌhōm/ adjective NORTH AMERICAN adjective: downhome
/adˈven(t)SHər,ədˈven(t)SHər/ Learn to pronounce noun
Hi friends! I am aware that Coronavirus is a controversial topic. This article is short and sweet about my personal thoughts on my family's preparation in case we face home quarantine. I have received several direct messages from mamas asking what in the world we are doing to prepare so here it goes! There are articles popping up everywhere about the virus and I am not talking about that here. The controversy is much too political for my taste. I like to keep most things bright and light! However this is worth talking about on my relatable lifestyle blog. :) If you want to read more about the virus I actually suggest this article by Lissa Rankin, MD. It bought me a ton of peace. Click here to read it. Let's talk home quarantine thoughts and family preparation.From what I gather, the idea of a home quarantine will come without much notice (if it even happens) so officials are telling us don't be afraid but be prepared by stocking up on home goods and food. I honestly didn't take this too seriously until I started seeing my neighbors preparing, my Instagram community messaging me about it asking what we are doing to stay ahead of the curve and then this morning our local chamber posted an alert. Suggesting that the homes in our community should be prepared just like when we are about to hunker down for a 10+ day winter snow storm. Like many of you, I too have heard several stories about this situation. Who knows what is true, so here's the deal...I am making sure we are prepared for a short notice home quarantine because well I am a wife and a mother to two little boys. The reason why I am doing it ahead of time is because I don't want the shelves at the grocery to drop in stock if/when a quarantine is suddenly at large. That would be inconvenient to have to travel with two little kids to find supplies not to mention the point of a quarantine is to stay put. I'd like to limit exposure if we get to this point. Here is a list of the things we have stocked up on or that I have read would be a good idea to stock up on incase a home quarantine occurs in your area: Baby Food (if applicable) |
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