Grateful Living: Reflections on HOME

This is my post to share a touching story and lovely quotes about the most important place in a person's life--their home...

Best Snowflakes on the Block
It is Christmastime on our street. The homes are decorated with tinsel and many-colored lights. Some windows frame beautifully decorated trees, and well-shaped wreaths hang on the doors. At one home, however, a little confusion of homemade snowflakes congregates in the picture window. They are hung in childhood fashion (not in the adult perfection of other windows nearby) and whisper a special secret about the occupants of that home.

I want to share a secret with you. The secret is that children are more important than picture windows; that fingerprints and boot-drips and carpet stains aren't nearly as important as a child's self-esteem. Those little white snowflakes tell me something more. They tell me that smashed bouquets of dandelions adorn that kitchen table in the springtime and are loved as if they were the most beautiful of imported orchids. They tell me that a pet potato bug in a box can live there unmolested, that helping with a bug collection is just as important as doing the wash, that viewing the first violets of spring with a child's hand in yours is better than a shiny floor, that listening to a child's fears is more important than television, that children's art is more beautiful than the greatest of the old masters.
Oh, they do tell a special story, those snowflakes.
(Sherlene Parker, Ensign Dec. 1976)

A small house well-filled is better than an empty palace. ~Thomas Haliburton

Houses that express comfort and well-being can go a long way toward making us feel at home in the world. ~JoAnn Barwick

Everything in the White House must have a reason for being there.  ~Jacqueline Kennedy

Tis a gift to be simple, tis a gift to be free...Amish song

'Mid pleasures and palaces, though we may roam,
Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home.
~Pa, Little House in the Big Woods

God bless this house And all that's in it

A garden of flowers Some books for the hours

Sweet dreams Good Health

and Love, glorious love. ~unknown

“...I remember thinking how often we look, but never see...we listen, but never hear...we exist, but never feel. We take our relationships for granted. A house is only a place. It has no life of its own. It needs human voices, activity and laughter to come alive.” 
― Erma Bombeck, A Marriage Made in Heaven: Or Too Tired for an Affair