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Photo by D Sharon Pruitt

Houses are such emotional investments, aren’t they? What is literally walls, a floor, and a roof soon becomes so much more to us. We spend time making them livable, making them reflect our personalities and interests, and making them a home for our families.

Places you rent just don’t seem the same, do they? It’s so much different pulling into a brick and mortar place that is all yours (you know, after the gazillion years it takes to pay it off). Living in apartments, I always remember thinking in the back of my head ‘this place is nice, it’ll do, but it just doesn’t feel like mine.’

I’m trying to shift my thinking on this. Home isn’t the place, necessarily. It isn’t the paint on the walls, or the furniture inside, or the number of rooms or bathrooms it has.

‘Home’ is a feeling. It is lovingly baking from scratch (or from a box) your daughter’s favorite brownies. It is sitting in your easy chair reading a book by the fireplace. It is warm soup in the fall, and singing carols at Christmas, tending to gardens in the spring, and running through the sprinklers in the summer. It is family dinners and friends popping by to visit.

Home is the ultimate feeling of comfort.

No matter what house you happen to live in, or where you move, if you have your family beside you, you’re home.

Photo Credit: Pink Sherbet Photography on Flickr.