A Growing Home has now been around for a few years. It first started out of a little pushing from Pat and has become a creative outlet where I’ve shared recipes, ideas, and updates about life. If you’ve followed along for any amount of time you have noticed that I’m sporadic with my postings, and that is probably a pretty good reflection of life as a mama to four young kids.

The blog has evolved from its start and I’m expecting that it will continue to. I’m still exploring what I want this space to be, for myself or for others that read along. With a new year starting, I’ve had a lot of ideas about new kinds of posts I’d like to share. Last night I went through some of my site history to remember what I’ve written. My blog for me, among other things, is a place where I can catalogue recipes and links that I myself want to look back at. And I do! I often look up the recipes for the Neiman Marcus Cookie, Korean braised chicken, Vegetable Frittata, and most recently the pumpkin bread recipe on my 4 Fall Muffins and Breads link. And every year, I will be looking back at the Toblerone Cheesecake to make for Pat’s birthday. With the recipes in particular, I have my own kids in mind too. I wonder if someday they will look here to remember what they ate growing up and get exact measurements to make their comfort food.

In the cooking realm, this year I’d like to share more cooking techniques and practicals on cooking for a family. I’ve learned a lot from my mom, aunt, and uncle, watching a good amount of food network, browsing cookbooks and from cooking with some of my good friends who are really talented in the kitchen. Over the years I’ve become really comfortable with cooking, with or without a recipe to follow. I’d love to pass on what I know. I’ve also done a lot of reading about the food industry and that has really shaped how I source our food. One of my current experiments is to see if I can totally avoid the grocery store by buying directly from local farmers. More on that to come.

I was really amused to see that the all-time most popular post in my archives is the DIY Reusable Swiffer Pad. I’m not sure if that’s a mistake, or if there’s really that many people out there who just can’t get enough of their favorite cleaning tool. Ha! I wasn’t surprised to see that posts about my life as a mom are also read a lot. Why I Decided to Become a Stay at Home Mom, Pregnancy This Time Around, and most recently Welcoming Baby. I’ll continue to share here and there about parenting and family life, that’s very much my world over here.

And lastly, a new topic I’d like to open up and talk about here is spirituality. My faith shapes every aspect of my life and in my previous work, I got to share that with college students and young adults through large group speaking, small group teaching, and one on one mentoring. I love getting to explore our spiritual lives and I’ve been wanting to share about my own spiritual habits as well as how our spiritual life intersects with everyday life. Whether spirituality is something you think about or not, I hope that these kinds of posts will be helpful and interesting to you.

If you have any thoughts, questions, or ideas about topics I can write about I’d love to hear. I mostly have general ideas about what I’d like to share and any feedback would be great. You can leave a comment or email me at agrowinghome@gmail.com.