Meet Heidi from Castle on Ridge Road where she finds joy in homemaking, homeschooling, and everyday hospitality!
Welcome to my beautiful, blessed, and somewhat chaotic life. Here at Castle on Ridge Road you will get a glance into my everyday adventures as daughter of the king, wife to my highschool sweetheart Joe, mom to 6 rambunctious boys (one more on the way) and 2 beautiful girls.
With 7, soon to be 8 children, my days are filled with laundry, laughing, school, messes, company, food, laundry, food, laundry…well you get the picture! I will share with you my tips and strategies to wade through the everyday challenges of running a large household while homeschooling and practicing hospitality both with family, friends, and even a stranger or two.
So why name a family blog “Castle on Ridge Road”? The “Castle” part really is a joke. You see I come from a very small community in rural Ohio and my mother decided to take the family farmhouse and turn into what all the neighbors nicknamed as “The Castle”. So when I decided to have a blog, I reached out to my community of friends and family and this was the chosen name!
But I am getting ahead of the story, you see my mother was the 3rd generation to live in this home and now I am the 4th, my children the 5th. And to add to the story, we even were married here in this front yard!
Joe and I dated through most of highschool and all of college and got married the summer we graduated. We first moved to a town thinking it was going to be Mayberry, but soon learned the country life it was for us! Fast forward a few years and we found ourselves in the country in a lovely 1860’s farmhouse that the previous owners had completely remodeled, down to the studs. We quickly added chickens, cats, a horse, and a pony to the mix then a few more kids (already had a dog) and our lives got busy really fast! We even had a milk cow for a day! That is a story for another day. We were living a wonderful country life, but our love of hospitality and the size of our home were butting heads, so we started looking for land or a larger home in the country.
Then in 2016 my dad suddenly passed away and long story short our lives made a detour and all roads led to us coming home, here to the “Castle” where we moved into the main home where it all started. We built a house for my mother, and live around the corner from my grandma, 96 (still kicking it at home), one of my brothers, my uncle and aunt, and many cousins!
Our kids are enjoying living on our 5 acres of the family farm that is over a 100 acres with a small woods where the kids really enjoy making forts, trails, and exploring God’s creation.
So why a blog? For years I had thrown around the idea, but usually felt inadequate, overwhelmed, and put it in the “someday” category of life. Well life doesn’t slow down, that nudge never went away, and someday will soon disappear, so why not today! So here I am to share with you some of the wisdom I have garnered from my failures, successes, and mostly the amazing people, family, and resources the Lord has provided to me along the way.
I always joke that I am a “lover a many hobbies, master of none”. This is very true, but there are some areas from either necessity or passion that I have been able to practice a lot and I will pass along what I learn! I have always been passionate about organization, productivity, hospitality, and cooking from scratch. I enjoy trying new things and new ways of doing things, while also maintaining the schedules and routines that keep this large family not just surviving, but thriving!
My hope for you faithful reader, that you to will gain some helpful tips, recipes, and encouragement to serve your family!