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At The Picket Fence with Vanessa Hunt

Where Ideas for your Home Meet Inspiration for your Heart

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Meet Vanessa
- Featured

Christmas home tour

November 28, 2017

Christmas Home Tour 2017

November 29, 2016

My Christmas Home Tour

December 3, 2015

Christmas Home Tour 2015

December 4, 2013

Christmas Home Tour ~ Vanessa’s house

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Recent Posts

A New Light For the Kitchen October 15, 2019
My Most Simple Fall Home Tour Ever September 27, 2019
Copper and Feathers Fall Mantel September 18, 2019
Five Minute Fall Decorating September 6, 2019
Being Mom and Friend August 9, 2019

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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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Eleven years. It’s the longest I’ve lived in any house. We moved around quite a bit while I was growing up and I always wanted my kids to have the comfort and security that comes from spending most of their childhood in the same home. When we first walked through this house with our realtor, I remember spotting the window seat in an upstairs bedroom and I could so vividly picture my daughter, who was only 9 months old at the time, spending hours there reading and gazing out the window. Now, that same room with the window seat is bearing witness to the highs and lows of life as a tween girl and I love knowing that she will always have memories of the sanctuary that it has provided.

But, there has been one side effect to living in a home for so long that I wasn’t quite expecting. We’re starting to update what we have already updated once before!

Most recently, I decided that it was time to freshen up the light above our kitchen table and I was so thrilled to find this beauty!

I love the rusty tone and I think it looks pretty fantastic in this space. It’s softer than the black fixture that was here before which we hung when we first moved in and replaced the brass fixture that came with the house.
I’m so grateful to have lived here long enough to have this wonderful ‘problem’ of updating what we’ve already updated. Our home keeps evolving as our family keeps evolving and changing and I’m so grateful to finally have a place that truly feels like home. 🍂
(Product info in stories)

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A few years ago, in a blog post about fall decor, I casually mentioned that every October I set out a pair of paper bag pumpkins (say that five times fast!) crafted by my children when they were each in kindergarten, respectively.

In one of the comments left for me, a reader told me that she would love to actually see those paper bag pumpkins.

I’ve wanted to share them with you ever since then. But, I always talked myself out of it. I mean, why would anyone but me care about them? And then I began to think about why I take those paper bag pumpkins out every year and what they mean to me.

In this season of motherhood, I’m experiencing that bittersweet sense of not only truly knowing that time is going by quickly but also this deep awareness of how little of it there is left. No longer do I see it stretching before me like some kind of yellow brick road meandering along until it meets the horizon.

So, I do things like putting out paper bag pumpkins every year.

Because sometimes the tangible items serve as the beginning of the intangible thread which connects us to the past, the present and the future.

We need to see a little bit more of this in blog posts and on social media, don’t you think? The things that reflect our real lives. Not the lives that we shove into a closet or hide in the laundry room in order to take the prettiest picture. But the ones that allow for the sweet, homemade crafts to peacefully coexists with the elegant home decor.

Because, in the end, it’s not the perfect lamp we found or the latest paint color we added to our walls which we will cherish the most. It’s those little reminders of the life we’ve lived. They remind us of the joys and the sorrows and all of the gloriously mundane days in between.

So hang up those popsicle stick ornaments on the Christmas tree, drink your coffee from the hand-painted mug you got for Mother’s Day that year, put your fanciest earrings in the little clay bowl crafted by tiny fingers and wrapped up in newspaper with all of the reverence of a sculptor and his masterpiece.

And I’ll be here putting out my paper bag pumpkins. 🍂

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Happy weekend friends!! I finally got my Autumn home tour up on the blog but I’ve hesitated sharing it with you. It’s not going to be as grand as others you’ll see in your feed. You won’t see a porch overflowing with pumpkins or elaborate table settings or rooms that could do double duty for the front window of a shop.

What I’m sharing with you this year is reflective of what’s happening in my heart right now. It’s the pull for something a bit...gentler. For finding the loveliness in simplicity.

My door is open and it’s a standing invitation. I hope you will come over and pay me a visit! You can find the link highlighted in my stories. 🍂

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Fall is my favorite season. I love the crisp air, the incredible colors, wearing my favorite boots and sweaters, visiting the pumpkin patch and knowing that Christmas is right around the corner.

But, every year around this time another feeling settles over me. It’s tinged with sadness.

It makes me feel…melan-fall-y.

All around me I see this dramatic and colorful evidence of change.

Of time moving forward…and moving quickly! With each leaf that falls I think “slow down, slow down.” In the past, I used to feel so conflicted about this melan-fall-y feeling that arose in me every year. How could I love this season so intensely and yet feel such a sense of sadness inside at the same time? And then I began to look at it in a different way.

Perhaps this feeling wasn’t something to be pushed down. Maybe I was just supposed to sit in it…let it come up all around me like when my sister and I would bury ourselves in the big pile of leaves our dad had just raked until only our eyes were visible.

Maybe this season isn’t just about sweaters and boots and mulled cider candles and pumpkin spice lattes. Maybe feeling melan-fall-y is actually a gift.

A chance to pause and revel in this season before moving quickly onto the next one.

Maybe walking through the woods, leaves crunching underneath, feeling that ache inside is supposed to remind me of how finite I am so that I can remember just how infinite my creator is.

Maybe He even built that ache right into me so that I would seek Him out. The truth is that while the leaves may fall off of them, the branches that seem so stark and bare hold new growth inside. New life. Fresh starts. So, I choose to embrace my melan-fall-y feelings. I allow room for them in my heart.

Not too much room.

But just enough to keep me keenly aware of just how fleeting this world is…and just how truly grateful I am for every moment I have in it.

Excerpt from my book ‘Life in Season’ 🍂 #hopewriterslife #hopewriters

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We interrupt the usual photos you’ll see from me here on IG to bring you this bittersweet image! My 16 year old got his driver’s license today and I’m all kinds of proud and terrified and a ball of nervous energy. While he was taking the driving test I sat there at the DMV praying for him and picturing him as a toddler. 😭 I truly cannot believe how quickly this milestone arrived!

It’s going so fast and I would just like time, and other drivers on the road, to slow down a little. 😳 But it’s also just so exciting to watch your kids grow and face new challenges and become these amazing people! Mamas of littles, don’t be afraid of the teen years. Yes, there is some hard stuff but it is far outweighed by all of the good stuff and honestly? Teenagers are a LOT of fun!

So, watch out world, here comes Ian!! 🚙

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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.

Happy first day of Autumn dear friends! 🍂

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Happy Saturday! 🍂 It’s crisp outside this morning and I’ve got a fall candle lit and pancake making started. What are your plans for the day? We’re going to be doing some yard work and purging of closets and some football watching and I’m sure there will be a nap or two in there as well.

A puttering around the house day is one of my favorite kind of days! ☺️ What are you up to?

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This year’s Autumn mantel came together in a matter of minutes and I think it might be my favorite ever! Copper and feathers and wheat and just soft touches of fall. Simplicity is the name of the game for me lately and yet I still want it to feel warm and cozy. I think this fits the bill don’t you?

Also, I confessed on the blog today that I have seasonal playlists and I’m sharing some of my favorites from the Autumn collection. They’re so perfect for helping to welcome my favorite season! 🍂

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