Daune’s Home is a Place to Celebrate

In support of the Inspiring Home Moments campaign Homes.com reached out to bloggers and asked them to share their home moments. These are Daune’s home moments from Cottage in the Oaks.

The two main instruments we use in our family to tell our story is celebrating and creating — our home is a place to celebrate creativity; and we like to do it everyday. We love to celebrate the big occasions, but we don’t want to miss the daily ones. We have a fun mealtime tradition: The Appreciation Plate. It’s a plate that doesn’t match any of our other dishes – and each night someone different gets it. We celebrate the one with this special plate by taking turns sharing what we appreciate about them. It’s so simple, but such a powerful celebration of each individual in our family. And, you know, it’s hard being irritated at someone when you are being appreciated, or appreciating them!

We love opening our home up to family and friends – whether it’s our large annual Christmas party, a graduation party in the garden, or a fun, impromptu dinner. We want those that cross our cottage threshold to feel special and be a part.



As former professional ballet dancers, my husband and I poured all of our creativity out daily on a stage. We loved it! When we decided to start a family we knew that the best decision would be to retire as performers – it was long 18+ hour days… not great hours for parents. We turned one room in our home into an art studio – we still needed an outlet to be creative! So, all the creativity that used to be poured out on stage was now poured out in artwork and our home. We loved our studio.



As life always does, things changed. Our family grew. We wanted each of our children to have their own room. So, you know what that meant – yep, the studio became a bedroom. But, what we realized is that you can be creative in any space in your home. We use the front porch, the kitchen counter, a table set up in the middle of the room – any kind of space will work. Regardless of the size of our homes, we can always find a spot to create.  We used our office floor and the dining room table to create some fun drop cloth chair covers several weeks ago….and love sitting in our porch swing working on art journals.



A home should be the reflection of the ones that live there… not a magazine, Pinterest, a friend’s home…..it should uniquely represent the very special people that live and grow there.  Here at our cottage we like to celebrate and create… and our home reflects that inside and out. Our home is a soft place to land; and we hope it is for others, as well. What two words do you think describe your home? What is happening in those wonderful four walls?

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