Meet Mandy from Desert Farmhouse Family
Hello! I’m Mandy, an enthusiastic mom of three kids and a happy wife of their dad, Matt. Yep, I’m in the thick of family life and loving it (even when I can’t handle it…but that just drives me to find a way to do better!). I want to share with you all of the tips, tricks, strategies, and thoughts for raising happy, healthy, kind, capable kids that I have an enthusiasm and passion to find, try, and love. I’ll share with you how I focus on intentional family living to make the most of the everyday and seasonal experiences and situations that we go through as a family. Maybe I can help you take the things that drive you crazy become the things that make you smile. Ideas for routines, organizing the household environment, involving your kids in unexpected ways, simplifying, and many more ideas for family life will fill these pages. I hope some of them speak to you!
Some more about me…I’ve been described as “hippie country,” which makes me giggle, but I totally get why. I’ve labeled myself as a Mama on the fence….I don’t truly reside in any one camp in any aspect of life. I mean, I live in the hot, dry desert and try to create a little farm/ranch, or “ranchette” as I have called it, living in a little wannabe farmhouse; hence the oxymoron I came up with for the name of this blog and our abode…Desert Farmhouse Family. Desert and farmhouse are obviously polar opposites. I guess I do walk on the fence which follows suit to who I am. I typically understand the other perspective and try to appreciate the ideas and experiences of those alike and different from me. So I land in the middle a lot or on the fence.
My husband and I would love to actually live out in the country and have a ranch or farm. However, a great career of his and our extended family keep us in the arid southwest Mojave Desert near Las Vegas that we both grew up in with our loving families. Since we can’t always choose where are roots are, we can make the most of it. So instead of whining, complaining, and wishing to live on a ranch in the beautiful countryside, we choose to make the most of the place we do live. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing! So to keep his career and proximity to our family, we live on the outskirts of our city with a small, but large for here, acre of land. We had horses for a little while, but they were retired for the sports life my kids choose. We still have chickens and have talked about the addition of goats, sheep, alpacas, or ducks to the mix at some point. Our love to travel during the hot summer months makes us hesitate to commit to more than chickens, but we’ll see! We spend too much money on a garden that can prove to be more frustrating than fruitful in this climate, but it’s not impossible, and we keep on trying! We have birthed one child in the hospital and two at home. We live on both sides of the fence in many ways. We struggle with it, yet love it. And that is the birth of our Desert Farmhouse Family.
What matters to me most is how I choose to live my life…and that is working at always improving myself and living with intent in my little desert farmhouse with my little family. So welcome to my Desert Farmhouse Family where I focus on intentional family living.
“Be the change you want to see in the world.”
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