JO Blog

It has been a year since our last art e-course…. Creatively Made {rediscovering the beauty of your gifts}. I am so excited to have a new art course that will begin April 8, 2013. I hope you will join me making lots of art in The Journey of Letting Go {Creating beauty from ashes}! Just as […]

I get more comments about my hair than almost anything else. It is actually quite amusing. I was starting to get worried that when I cut it I was going to get a comment like Amy in Little Women, “Jo, how could you, your one beauty!” Thank goodness I didn’t get anything like that…yet. So, […]

{I surprised my family with a weekend in Denver…I didn’t even tell Kelly} Sometimes I wish I could slip back into time and be a small child that can’t sleep on Christmas Eve with an excited heart. As a child you are oblivious of other things going on around you. {A night ice skating with […]

Thank you for your wonderful response to our Thoreau Collection! I love that you also love all the French treasures and special fabrics. Many bags have sold out but we are working on getting more made for the new year. If you didn’t get a bag yet don’t worry….we made you lots and lots of […]

What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us. -Henry David Thoreau Thank you for your beautiful response to our Thoreau Collection! We sold out of a few of our bags in one day! We thought we had produced plenty and were so surprised by […]

{all new bags} {The Julia French Messenger Bag} I am so excited to tell you that the new collection is here! Welcome to The Thoreau Collection… {Vintage Clothes} {Grainsack Market Bags} {The wool Aubrey Ruffle Tote} {The Emerson Handbag} {French Linen Market Bag} {The Elsie Linen Messenger Bag} {Grainsack Market Tote} {The Ellison Camera Bag} […]

Welcome to our home! I am so excited that you are here. First of all I wanted to thank my sweet friend, Jennifer Rizzo, for asking me back this year to show you our home all dressed up for Christmas. I love that Jen puts this house walk together and it is such a fun […]

Good evening everyone! Well, there is a first time for everything. Tomorrow we are not able to launch our new collection because my whole family has been fighting the flu since last Thursday. Every. Single. One. With Christmas boxes exploding all over our home we have taken turns getting sick and trying to take care […]

I can’t believe that tomorrow is December 1! How can it be so close to Christmas and a brand new year? I have thought a lot about our month of December and what I really desire for our family. Part of the plan has been built upon two of my three that fight and pick […]

Sometimes your path seems so clear and other times your gifts take you on a journey you never could have imagined. There are times in your life when you know without a shadow of a doubt that you are doing EXACTLY what you were made for…and then you wake up one day and know it […]

Our Thanksgiving was just as I imagined with just a bit more time in the kitchen than I imagined. I guess food doesn’t cook itself…weird. We hiked, went to see THIS movie, made THIS recipe and stuffed our face with THIS. We ended our night with “Little Women” and I feel like the Christmas season […]

{the image is mine} When we were pregnant with Jack we were living in Adam’s Morgan in DC. I was about three months pregnant with Jack on Thanksgiving that year. Without family  to spend the holiday with we decided to just keep it low key and have a simple meal at our home and watch […]

We recently took Benjamin’s room from his nursery paint colors to a room that will grow with him for awhile. When Jack was born we decorated his nursery in pale blues and it was beautiful for our first baby. When Benjamin was born he was our third baby and second boy. I knew as soon […]

{Photo source Lissa Whitlock} Tiggy & Grace. The name alone makes me smile. Not too different than the friend behind this new business and adventure. {Photo source Lissa Whitlock} Kimberly Taylor has such a beautiful style whether she is practicing her photography, making a meal for her family, feeding her chickens or caring for her […]

I can’t tell you how much I have loved doing the Creatively Made Home e-course. It has been so fun to play with my home and to share my love of family and home with others. I thought you all would like to see some of the photos I took this week for one of […]

My Grandma Jeanne would look around the room at her large family, raise her glass, smile and then say, “My cup runneth over”. That is all she needed to say. We knew exactly what she meant and we felt the same thing. It was an abundance of heart and love. It was that overflowing abundance […]

I am so excited to tell you that I am a teacher again in Christy Tomlinson’s “The 12 Artsy Ornaments of Christmas No. 2”. Last year I had so much fun teaching in the course and seeing all the gorgeous ornaments, decor and gifts that all the teachers came up with! I love Thanksgiving so […]

Through this weekend only receive 30% off your total order in the SHOP. Use the code FALL30 at checkout for your discount. Have a wonderful weekend!

Obviously I like writing about this because I am back for more:-) My last post was supposed to be longer but I needed to make dinner for my family. I thought it would be weird to tell them to go make themselves a sandwich while I write about creating a cozy home. So….here is the […]

I know I am not alone when I say that the cooler weather inspires and encourages me to love on my home more. The leaves falling and the cooler days and nights just make everything just a bit more cozy. I love having a cozy home and making my family feel warm and loved. Sometimes […]

I adore fall. It is my favorite season with spring a close second. The crisp air, the leaves crunching under your feet, big pots of something good on the stove, apple picking, apple cider, loving on my home more…it is all so good. It is too short though. Maybe that is why I cherish it […]

It has been so easy to jump up and down and tell you all about the four other hosts of Creatively Made Home. In fact, I smiled the whole time I wrote about them. Kimberly Taylor Sara Duckett Jennifer Rizzo Tracey Leber It is a little harder when it comes to yourself and maybe that […]

{All photos were taken early in the morning before anyone else was awake} ** How do you see your home? Many times we see our home for what it isn’t and not all that it is. That is one of the main reasons I wanted to create the course Creatively Made Home. It certainly wasn’t […]

  I hope you all had a wonderful and relaxing weekend. We took the children to the Littleton Historical Museum and they made apple cider, saw the animals, ate pumpkin pie, took a wagon ride and picked out their pumpkins to carve. I can’t wait to show you the photos because it is like stepping […]