Boring is not on the menu of my life. This is all about making home a more flourishing place – no more ho-hum, let’s do extraordinary! Let’s turn off the tv, and turn on life. Let’s go exploring, let’s experiment in the kitchen, let’s play, let’s flourish!

I’m April and with my husband Tim, we are journeying through life, growing and learning together, raising a family, and above all trying to serve God. I want to make my home a place full of love and laughter, a haven for our family to learn and grow together. Does this mean we have a big house or that I’m always caught up on laundry? Nope. It means we are imperfect but trying to learn more every day and base our family principles on the Bible. It means that “home” is more than where we live. This is just our temporary abode; we are on a joyful journey together.

This blog is our place to share our adventures along the way. You’ll find tips and ideas for creative projects, cooking, teaching, and fun stuff to do as well as some more serious thoughts about raising a family and perspectives on life in general. Come sit at our table, help yourself to to a plate and join in the laughter and discussion!

I also want to share with you the general plan of what you will find on this blog. Obviously, plans can change, but Lord willing, I hope to continue blogging here like this…

I plan to post three times a week, on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and Tim plans to post on Tuesdays. Fridays will be the weekly challenge post day, where I take several weeks and have to complete some sort of challenge each Friday in that time- first it was the adventure-a-week challenge, then it was the upcycled home decor “hack” challenge, and next is going to be a DIY blog redesign series challenge. On Wednesdays I plan to continue a theme of “seek the things above”, which will be more serious minded posts about trying to serve God. Mondays will be more flexible with posts about various topics largely from a poll many of you voted in a little while back. A Monday post might be about food, creative projects, family time ideas, my art, just some thoughts. Tim’s Tuesday posts are his weekly web comic, RTW cartoon.

If you would like to keep up with The Flourishing Abode, there are a couple way to subscribe, and I wanted to explain the differences. One is to subscribe via e-mail … just put your email address there in the box, confirm your subscription, and you’ll receive a handy email in your inbox when a new blog post goes up. The second is to subscribe by RSS … this means that you can add my blog to your reader. For instance, if you use Google Reader (or another type of reader), just click my RSS link, then choose which reader you use, and you’ll see updates from my blog in your reader. These two options are in my sidebar to the right, but I’ve also included them here in this post – just choose whichever option works best for you, so we can keep in touch! :)