Original Drawing of Girl With a City- SailandSwan

When you think of the word home, what is your first vision? Is it your current home? An apartment, a condo shared with a roommate, or fiance? Is it the home you live in now? The first home you bought on your own? Well, if you are like me you can not soon forget the home you grew up in. Every time I think of the word home, I usually go right back to the yellow house in the country I grew up in. It was a place to run and play with lots of sun shining in it, a two-story Victorian home. It truly was a great place to grow up.

Home Sweet Home- Sarah Summers Illustration

The house I grew up in my parents built themselves, with their own hands, not just designed so it was a very special place, our family island of sorts. It was not glamorous or a mansion but it was big to me as a kid. It had a very large yard and large trees and a swimming pool. Since my family sold it around the time I left home myself, I have never really been able to shake the image of the house as the ideal of ‘home’. I strive to give my daughter a place similar to it and wonder if we all think of ‘home’ as where we grew up, big or small, rich or poor.

No Place Like Home- ChattyNora

During college and for a while after, every place I lived felt transient, not really a home but just a temporary situation that I knew would serve its purpose but would also run its course. So this leads me to contemplate.. how long does it take to make a home? Not literally but emotionally? Is there a threshold for accumulating enough memories to make a house feel full and be able to relate to it as a home, the ultimate peaceful safe house that can shelter you from the world?

Home is Wherever I Am With You Print- Art By Amy Nelson

I guess I contemplate the subject of home a lot these days now that I am a parent. I have fallen in love with my small house and hope that it will elicit the same feelings of happiness for my daughter as she grows up. A place for her to run and play and a place for her to feel safe.