Christy K. lives with her husband and two daughters on a farm in rural Kentucky, eight miles outside of a town of 1800 people.  They moved there when she was 23, 20 years ago (and at first, they lived in a tent in the barn).   She was born in Illinois, but grew up primarily in California, and she moved around a lot during her childhood, about every three years.

List three words to describe your home:

Busy, Happy, Well-Fed.

What is your favorite room, and why?

My new bedroom, it is empty, clean, completely orderly and it has a writing desk.

What is your favorite item and why?

My books and bookshelves–reading and writing is my work and my hobby!

What is your favorite color in your house?

Light blue lazure throughout the main room (living room and kitchen) of our home, it’s fresh, clear and uplifting, light- filled.

Describe your evening and/or morning routines.

We are a rather non-routine family, since my husband and I both work from home, and our daughters are home schooled. We don’t use alarm clocks, we wake up when ever we wake up. We have leisurely mornings drinking coffee, journaling, checking in on the news on the internet, and our daughters typically read in the mornings, it is a very quiet time.

Evenings center around preparing dinner as a family.  We usually harvest a good amount of the vegetables for dinner from the garden. Sometimes we purchase special ingredients to make restaurant-style dinners like Thai, sushi, homemade pizza, since choices are quite limited in our local town of only 1800 people (chicken strips and biscuits and gravy anyone?). This helps keep life interesting for our teenagers, especially.  They love and appreciate quality food. We eat dinner later than most people, around 8pm. We often play a game or watch a movie. When our daughters were young, we only watched movies maybe once a week, now that they are teenagers, and we have Netflix we watch a few nights a week.

Name three things in your fridge:

Butter, salad, eggs

Do you recognize anything about your aesthetic style that reminds you of your mother’s home or your grandmother’s home?  What is your inspiration for your home?

My style is the opposite of my mother’s. She has a crowded (but clean and orderly) house filled with nick nacks. We have a small home, 900 square feet, and only one small bathroom, so we limit the items in our home to necessities. Our importance has never been on money or things, but on having lots of time, creativity and quality of life. I think we can describe ourselves as having adopted the ‘voluntary simplicity’ model. We do have lots of books and art made by my daughters, or people we know. The inspiration for our home comes from nature, spirituality, a desire to live in a natural, non-cluttered environment, and a love for art.

What do you pack for lunch for your child? Snacks?

My daughters are now 15 and 17, and they are home schooled, so we don’t pack lunches. When they were young they loved a snack of mixed vegetables arranged neatly on a plate and ranch dressing to dip them in (carrots, cucs, celery). We played restaurant a lot, and they could order “combo platters,” slices of cheese, chips, fruit, crackers, etc … several little things together on the plate. (It was the only thing ever on the menu but they never seemed to notice)!

Your child’s favorite activity, craft and or game?

We always cooked together, made lots of simple toys with felt, even using the inexpensive kind (.25 cents per sheet), made tents over the clothesline, and created elaborate ‘corrals’ with sticks and string, so they could play with their toy horses and people. We made paper puppets and glued them to Popsicle sticks, created sets, and made up small-sized theater performances. Now one is a costume designer, and the other trains horses!

What has being a parent taught you?

Patience and how much we learn from our children, and how much fun it is to hang out with teenagers.  My husband and I do so many interesting things that we would never have done, listening to music we would never know about, etc …

For more information about Christy and her family, visit these websites: Lilipoh,  Breathe Deep Productions and Garden Insect Video.