Our Story

Life ~ Crossing Cultures

Having been raised in a rural area in Ohio and then Kentucky, to the mountains of Montana to teach school in a little one room log school house, and the beaches and city life in Sarasota, Florida, in a culture that seems “quaint” to the outside eye, I was taught the value of homemaking, entrepreneurship, and community.

Community: In community I learned to share life with others, host, serve, encourage, teach, support other’s small businesses, help build and grow, all to enrich the lives of those I meet.

Faith and Ministry: With my faith being the most important thing to me, I am discovering a path being laid out with growing opportunities to engage my community and the world, adding cross cultural differences from the Amish lifestyle to my current lifestyle. God has provided for me to do this in a variety of ways, including speaking, coming alongside women in the Renew Women's Discipleship Ministry and teaching them how to bake and cook as we build sweet relationships and enjoy the food we create together, and then by loving on and leading a group of women from our church as we study God's word together and build community, weekly, intentionally, and prayerfully. This summer I had the opportunity to form a Dream Giver group (inspired by the book “The Dream Giver” by Bruce Wilkinson) for Christian entrepreneurial women to come together to discover, support, encourage, work, and hold each other accountable in the goals and dreams The Dream Giver (God) has uniquely created each one of us with, and is calling us to “for such a time as this”.

God is teaching me how to “tell my story”, and the “heart” and the “why” of what I am passionate about. 1 Chronicles 17:16 says it well, “Then King David went in and sat before the Lord; and he said: “Who am I, O Lord God? And what is my house, that You have brought me this far?”

Entrepreneurship: In 2021, I accepted my brother-in-law and sister's invitation to team up with their family-owned business, Cedar Ridge Furniture, to help with online sales and marketing on Wayfair, websites, and across social media platforms, as well as growing the collections on Amazon and Etsy. Their Amish hand-crafted Western Cedar outdoor furniture is beautiful and timeless, and is shipped all across the United States. They live in a small, very remote, Amish community tucked into the West Kootenai Valley overlooking the Whitefish Mountain and Canadian Rocky Mountain ranges in Rexford, Montana. This is the same community that I lived in and taught in a small one room log schoolhouse, the very school my nephew now goes to!

Since moving to Chattanooga in 2015, I have seen a real desire by women to learn some of the homemaking skills I grew up with. There is a desire to learn how to provide for the needs of her family without having to rely on the items that may, or may not be on the grocery store shelves. I grew up learning to put enough food up for a season. When the world seems crazy, I have to remind myself, “what would my viewpoint be if I was still Amish and not seeing the news or Facebook?” “I would only live life, knowing that I know how to live without electricity, and prepare and preserve food.” I see this as an opportunity to come alongside women, and build confidence, relationships, and community. Communities are crucial to not only survive, but thrive, in so many aspects of life. 

In the summer of 2022 I set out to meet this desire expressed by those around me who would ask me to teach them. With my grandma Alma’s legacy as my inspiration, and my fond memories of baking with her around her kitchen table (the table I now have and still use) with her Amish recipes, and using her kerosene or wood cook stove, depending on the season, to produce cookies, cakes, and pies with the flakiest crusts you can imagine, I launched a new addition to my online store and sharing my love for Young Living essential oils, by adding my cottage bakery preordering options, coffee roasted by Baba Java, artisan teas by Piper & Leaf Tea Co., and a new product line inspired by my Amish heritage.

Many who know me know that I am passionate about fostering community, and what better way than coming alongside women over cups of coffee or tea lattes, as well as workshops to share my love for cooking, freezing, canning, and baking with my mom’s and grandma’s handwritten recipes in addition to many other new and old recipes steeped in tradition and my heritage. If you would like to be invited into my cottage kitchen world and get the new year news when it drops in the beginning of 2024, please contact me to be added to my mailing list!

Each item and workshop somehow ties into my life and story, or supports a small business with a similar vision and mission, all in support of the home to create an atmosphere of simplistic values and traditions where relationships and community can be built and flourish, one cup of coffee or tea, shared meal, and connection, at a time.

Teaching: As a teacher in a two-room parochial school in Kentucky, to a little one-room log schoolhouse in the mountains of the remote West Kootenai Valley in Montana, to teaching English to my foreign speaking friends in our community, and German / Pennsylvania Dutch to those desiring to better communicate with that community and heritage, to now sharing and teaching kitchen and home keeping traditions that I grew up with to women in my community, I have grown to enjoy watching others gain confidence by helping them learn.

Homemaking: We, as women and wives, are called to be gatekeepers of our homes, and to look after the ways of our household. With this principle in mind, I am passionate about sharing my natural living choices which goes hand in hand with my love for homemaking, gardening, organizing, volunteering, hospitality, community, preserving food, cooking, and baking. I have learned to appreciate what some may call a more simple lifestyle.

Since becoming a wife in June 2019, Proverbs 31 and Titus 2 have become two of my favorite chapters. These scriptures are rich with words of wisdom, inspiration, business ideas and principles, and challenges me to be a virtuous woman, whose price is far above rubies. This woman is not described as one with no purpose, plans, or calling, but instead she is living life to the fullest. She is kind, wise, business savvy, hardworking, and she enjoys the fruit of her labor. Strength and honor are her clothing, and she shall rejoice in time to come. The Titus 2 woman teaches others what life has taught her. She is busy at home, self-controlled and pure, kind, and loves her husband and family. It is my desire for everything I do to flow from these God-breathed words guiding me.