If you are like me, the first few weeks after Christmas you get the decorating bug. I am not sure if I get the urge to redecorate because it is the beginning of a new year or because the house looks so blah after the Christmas decorations come down. Regardless of the reason, every January, I find myself redecorating. Many times the changes I make are only minor, but those small changes seem to make all the difference when I do them.

This year, I have found myself following the same yearly ritual, so I thought I would share a few pictures of what I have done with you. As I continue down the road of making our house more early, I am amazed by the progress that I have made. The house is feeling more and more cohesive, and every room I enter into makes me feel a little more peaceful. As most of you know, our house is currently for sale and when it does sell, we will be building a saltbox. So in many ways, the collections that I am adding to now and the way that I am displaying them is a practice run for the saltbox. Even though it seems we are not making progress on building our dream house, we actually are. I am making progress by realizing how I want to display my collections, and I am making progress by acquiring more early pieces that will look perfect in our future home.

As I was thinking about making small changes in our house, I was reminded of how each of us should make changes in our own lives and in our relationship with God. God does not want us to become stagnant in our relationship with Him. He wants us to continue to draw closer to Him, and He wants our understanding of His plan for our lives to become clearer with each passing day. That is the thing about this life that we all need to remember. None of us are perfect and none of us will ever completely understand what God has planned for our lives, but that does not mean that we should not try to continue to improve. God is so massive and powerful that the more we come to understand His ways, the less we really understand. However, in trying to understand His ways, we develop a closer relationship with Him, and that in itself makes all the difference.

In many ways our homes are a symbol of our own lives and our souls. We want our homes to be the best they can be and we want to update them and maintain them. We want them to reflect a sense of peace, and we want others to see the joy they bring us. We should want the same thing for our souls and for our relationship with God. We should want our souls to be the best they can be. We should update them and maintain them. We should strive to have our souls reflect God’s peace, and we should want others to see the joy that having a peaceful soul brings. Improving our souls is very much like improving our houses; sometimes it is the little changes that do a world of good.

I hope you will enjoy the pictures of our house with the small changes that I have made, and I hope that you will continue to try each day to improve your soul. When we make small changes to the places in which we dwell we will have more peace and PEACE MATTERS.

~Dan~