Finding "home"

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to meet Gabrielle Stanley Blair of Design Mom.  She was having a book signing of her book 'Design Mom: How to Live with Kids: a Room-by-Room Guide'. She was just beyond fantastic.  I've been reading her blog for a while now (thanks for introducing us Pinterest) and I fell in love with her style and insight. 

It wasn't until today that I realized I never read what she had written to me when she signed it.  I flipped open to the page and there it was, 'wishing you luck on finding "home"'.  Seriously?  How more amazing can this lady be.  Here we are selling our "home" and in search of new one and I read this!  So now I'm stuck in deep thought about "home".  What is home? How to we define home?

I'll be honest in saying that when we first bought our house it took a while to make it feel like home.  Yes, it's where our stuff accumulated and our house started to resemble our 'sent' (I'm not talking body odor, people, I'm talking that defining sent that your personal house just smells like.  you know?).  But what made our house a home was memories.  The more memories we added to our house the more and more it felt like "home".  The place where our emotions can run freely, laughter is heard, tears are shed, and joy is felt.  This house of ours is HOME and soon we will be saying goodbye to it and making a new house our home. 

I'm not one who holds on to objects. I'm the 'I haven't used this for a while I'll toss it out' kinda girl.  So when selling a home I'm not worried about purging more than half of the crap we own.  But what I'll struggle with is looking around those empty rooms that are full of so many memories.   I'll see in that empty room a cradle that held my babies while they slept, and in another, a table where we ate our favorite foods together. 

"Home" is brought with us.  Home is in our hearts.  It's the special memories we make with one another, wherever that may be.  So, here's to our new home...whichever one we choose...that is too can hold many precious and special memories we will create.