At The Picket Fence with Vanessa Hunt — Where Ideas for your Home Meet Inspiration for your Heart

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Temperatures are dropping here in the Willamette Valley and I got our hot cocoa station set up just in the nick of time! My kids LOVE this sweet (literally!) spot in our house and my daughter added her own personal touch with the little sign on the wreath. I’ll be happily restocking ingredients over and over throughout the season as my kids and their friends make a pit stop here. We’re definitely ready to cozy up!! Do you have a hot cocoa or coffee station at your house? What are your must-haves for the perfect hot beverage? ☕️🎄

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It’s begun!! 🎄🎄 My best girl LOVES decorating the family room tree (we do a fresh tree in the living room after Thanksgiving) but she does NOT like me to take her picture while she’s doing it (see photo two). Ahhhh...preteens. 😂🤪 I’m just so grateful to have a buddy who is as obsessed with Christmas as I am and who still wants to be apart of it all with me!

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Happy weekend friends!! This has been one of my favorite kind of days today. The boys went and had some guy time and my daughter and I got some sweet girl time and now we’re all cozied in together at home enjoying just ‘being’. I’m doing some baking and dreaming about this year’s Christmas mantel. This photo is from a few years ago but it’s still one of my all-time favorites!

What’s been the best part of your day today? ❄️

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Matthew 7:13-14 says, “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the way that leads to life, and only a few find it.”.
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When I was a little girl we took a trip to Silver Dollar City theme park in Branson, MO. One of the attractions there is the Marvel Cave. The whole theme park was actually built right around the cave! I will never forget the feeling of descending into the darkness. We had to walk down a steep, narrow path and I could feel the rocky walls beginning to close in on me. From time to time, our guide would even have to call out for us to duck our heads so as not to whack them on rocks that were jutting out. And just when it felt like we had been walking forever; just when it felt the most narrow and the most dark; just when we were starting to get really weary from navigating this path, we turned the corner and found ourselves awestruck as we gazed at this enormous room. Everywhere we looked there were stalactites and stalagmites. Lights had been installed and they reflected off of these formations creating the most beautiful colors on the walls. There were pools of water in a shade of aquamarine I had never seen before and waterfalls flowing from upper levels. That long, winding, damp trek had been so very worth it. The descent into darkness had revealed light…and life!

My prayer for you friends, is that you will look at that narrow path with the small gate as an opportunity. It’s an opportunity to experience the kind of freedom that our souls are longing for. The wide and broad path of the world promises us a freedom that is fleeting and temporary. But at the end of the narrow path, there is hope and peace and life everlasting.

I’m choosing the narrow path. And in spite of the hardships, in spite of the challenges and the fears and the times that can feel as dark as the journey down into a cave, I wouldn’t trade a single minute of it.

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I was up half the night with a very sick kiddo so today I’m drinking ALL the coffee and my girl and I are going to hunker down and have a day at home to rest and recover. I absolutely hate it when my kids are sick but if there is a silver lining to it it’s that I get to do all of the fussing and caring and mama-ing that I don’t get to do as much lately now that they are tweens/teens. I’d prefer to not have a vomiting kid, but at least I get a whole day in the middle of the week to pour some extra love out on my favorite girl! And maybe we’ll both get a nap! 😴

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Happy Saturday friends!! We’re off to the pumpkin patch on this crisp Autumn day with the promise of food being the only thing that’s motivating my teenager to go! 🤣 One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned from this stage of parenting tweens and teens is that you have to let your traditions change and grow as your kids change and grow. So the pumpkin patch we are going to today might not have a petting zoo and slides but it has food trucks and fire pits and we will all be together which is the whole point after all, right? 🍂. What are some of your favorite fall traditions?

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“Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns." (George Eliot)

Hope you have a deliciously beautiful Autumn day friends! 🍂

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It’s cold and windy and rainy outside so I’m just snuggled up on the couch after making our Saturday morning pancakes (I may or may not also have @hallmarkchannel Christmas movies on too!🎄) and planning out our hot cocoa station for this year. Here’s what I created a couple of years ago and I can’t tell you how much my family loves this annual tradition. It’s the very first area that is decorated in our home for the Christmas/winter season and it’s so fun to put a new spin on it each year!
What are you up to today friends?

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Welcome Friday!! I’m flinging open my door to you and I’m SO glad you’re here! 😅 Hope you all have a great day dear friends!

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