# Homemaker Portrait | Breanna Wakefield

An episode of [The Art of Home: A Podcast for Homemakers](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1557993655), 8 Nov 2023, 1 h 37 min.

Audio: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1587457/episodes/13929275-homemaker-portrait-breanna-wakefield.mp3

Send me a text about this episode! In this episode, I had the privilege of interviewing Breanna Wakefield, a full-time homemaker and mother of two. Breanna opened up about the strong influence her mom and grandmothers had on her homemaking journey, highlighting the importance of understanding the why and how behind our daily tasks. We delved into the challenges she faced during her pregnancies, including complications related to endometriosis and her battle with postpartum depression. As someone who has personally experienced postpartum depression, I found our conversation incredibly relatable and encouraging. Breanna also generously shared her tips, tricks, and ideas for successful homemaking, leaving me inspired and eager to implement them in my own life. Trust me, you don't want to miss this valuable and heartfelt conversation. FROM THIS EPISODE All links and resources will be available in this week's free newsletter. Click the link below to subscribe. *For future reference, check newsletter archive, Season 16 Vol. 6 HOMEMAKING RESOURCES • Free Weekly Newsletter, Homemaker Happy Mail • Newsletter Archive HOLIDAY HOMEMAKING RESOURCES • Advent Devotional Guide • Holiday Homemaking 2021 & 2022 (enter "holiday homemaking" in search bar) SUPPORT & CONNECT WITH US • Leave Us A Review • Love The Podcast (works on any device) • Stay In Touch with The Art of Home Podcast • Leave Us a Voicemail • Instagram | Facebook | Website | Email • Follow The Art of Home on Your Listening App • Follow The Podcast (works on any device) • Support The Art of Home • theartofhomepodcast.com/support (detailed instructions for sharing, reviewing and tipping) Support the show HOMEMAKING RESOURCES • Homemaker's Journal, AoH Seasonal Magazine • Private Facebook Group, Homemaker Forum • JR Miller's Homemaking Study Guide SUPPORT & CONNECT • Review | Love The Podcast • Contact | Text/Voicemail-use the link at top of description | Website | Email • Follow | Follow The Podcast • Support | theartofhomepodcast.com/support DISCLOSURE • **Buy | as an Amazon affiliate, AoH receives a small commission at no extra cost to you when you use our links to purchase items we recommend • AI Content | Portions of this episode’s copy and/or show notes may have been drafted with the assistance of AI and then reviewed and edited by a human, Allison Weeks.

## Chapters

- 0:00 Welcome & Update from Allison's House
- 13:18 Breanna's Beginnings & Influences
- 25:41 Expectations
- 31:07 Parenting, Difficult Pregnancies & Postpartum Depression
- 50:38 Priorities
- 1:02:17 Hospitality
- 1:08:47 Homemaking Q&A: Wins, Fails, Tips & Resources
- 1:16:59 The Art of Home & Titus 2 Advice
- 1:27:35 Reminders & Bonus Content

## Transcript

[0:03] Allison Weeks: Hello Homemakers, welcome to the Art of Home podcast, where we are exploring how Homemakers cultivate a place to belong.
[0:09] Allison Weeks: I'm your host, allison Weeks.
[0:11] Allison Weeks: I am a wife, a mom to four grown kids, a granny to one little boy, and I've been practicing the Art of Home for over 31 years now.
[0:20] Allison Weeks: Welcome today.
[0:22] Allison Weeks: If you're new, I'm so glad that you found the show.
[0:25] Allison Weeks: If you're a returning listener, I'm so glad to have you back.
[0:29] Allison Weeks: Thank you for tuning in all of you.
[0:32] Allison Weeks: I pray that this episode today will be an encouragement to you and will give you some inspiration and some practical ideas that you can apply right now in your own practice of the Art of Home.
[0:45] Allison Weeks: Well, hopefully you can tell that my voice is in much better shape than it was last week.
[0:52] Allison Weeks: I have recovered from the crud Praise Jesus.
[0:57] Allison Weeks: I'm feeling much, much better this week.
[0:59] Allison Weeks: So I was able to do what I had intended to do last week over the weekend, and that is put up the main Christmas tree.
[1:09] Allison Weeks: So, yes, I am one of those people who starts early, but I will tell you that I do not bring out any Christmasy things besides the tree and the lights until after Thanksgiving.
[1:24] Allison Weeks: I give Thanksgiving its proper place All the decor, seasonal decor in my home is still fall and it will remain fall until right after Thanksgiving.
[1:35] Allison Weeks: I put the tree up with its lights only because I am not a fan of pre-lit Christmas trees.
[1:43] Allison Weeks: I've just never, they just don't work for me.
[1:46] Allison Weeks: I've never been able to get on board with that concept, because invariably lights will go out and then you have to figure out which lights are out and then you have to replace them, and then I mean I guess I'm sure they've improved in the last several years from when they first came out.
[2:05] Allison Weeks: But call me old-fashioned.
[2:07] Allison Weeks: I am a put the lights on the tree kind of girl.
[2:10] Allison Weeks: So also that allows me to put as many lights as I want on the tree, and I put a lot of lights.
[2:16] Allison Weeks: So that is why I like to get a head start, because it does take me a couple of days usually to put all the lights on the tree.
[2:24] Allison Weeks: If you would like to see my process, I recorded a good bit of my decorating process last year and I put that in a story highlight on Instagram.
[2:36] Allison Weeks: So if you're not following the art of home on Instagram, why not?
[2:41] Allison Weeks: You need to go over there and do that right now.
[2:43] Allison Weeks: We are at the art of home podcast.
[2:47] Allison Weeks: I post there at least three posts per episode.
[2:52] Allison Weeks: I will give you an announcement when a new episode comes out.
[2:55] Allison Weeks: I will do a post about the favorite quotes and then I'll do a post about the Titus 2 advice that each one gives, and then I do other stuff.
[3:03] Allison Weeks: But oftentimes in stories I will just pop on and show you what I'm cooking for dinner or how I'm decorating the table or any number of things that I'm doing in my home making.
[3:13] Allison Weeks: So if you want to get a peek into my own home making practice, make sure that you're following over on Instagram.
[3:21] Allison Weeks: But anyway, back to the tree.
[3:22] Allison Weeks: So the tree is up.
[3:23] Allison Weeks: I'm so happy.
[3:25] Allison Weeks: All the lights are on and it's bare Other than the lights.
[3:30] Allison Weeks: There are no decorations on it right now and we do have quite a while until Thanksgiving.
[3:34] Allison Weeks: So I thought I'd try something a little different this year.
[3:36] Allison Weeks: I've never done.
[3:37] Allison Weeks: I know some people do like a whole full on Thanksgiving tree.
[3:41] Allison Weeks: They decorate the whole tree completely with fall themed things, thanksgiving themed things, and in the past we have done a thankful tree which is just basically a bare tree branch, and we did cut out leaves from construction paper and had a little Sharpie marker and we put it on a table in the foyer and anytime you walk by during the month of November and you wanted to write something down that you were thankful for, you could put it on the leaf and then hang it on the little tree.
[4:09] Allison Weeks: So I have done that a couple of times in the past when my kids were younger and still at home.
[4:14] Allison Weeks: So I wanted to sort of do something similar on the main tree.
[4:20] Allison Weeks: I have some gorgeous I would say it's like a coppery, colored velvet ribbon.
[4:25] Allison Weeks: It's really wide it's about, I think, two and a half inches wide that I got off of Amazon and I'm making bows with that to put on the tree.
[4:34] Allison Weeks: I have some I think they're plastic pumpkins but they look really realistic that I had gotten last year and use them on my porch decorations, which I did not do this year.
[4:46] Allison Weeks: So I am repurposing those and I'm just sticking them inside different parts of the tree.
[4:51] Allison Weeks: And then I ordered some plain craft paper tags from Amazon.
[4:57] Allison Weeks: They're just very simple little tags.
[4:59] Allison Weeks: They're about three inches long by maybe two inches wide.
[5:01] Allison Weeks: They came with little strings to hang them with and I'm going to do like like I did back in the day.
[5:08] Allison Weeks: I'm going to take all those little tags, put them in a basket with a sharpie marker or two and set that near the tree, so that, mainly, this will be a practice that I will be doing and my husband might participate, I don't know and then my kids when they come by, but it's a it's going to be mostly a practice for myself to every, every day, at least once a day, I'm going to write something that I am thankful for on one of those tags and I'm going to hang it on the tree.
[5:34] Allison Weeks: So I will report back and let you know how that goes and let you know if it was valuable for me.
[5:39] Allison Weeks: I'm sure it will be, and if anybody else decided to participate, it'll just give us something to look at on the tree for this entire month, without it just being bare, although it is beautiful all by itself with the lights.
[5:50] Allison Weeks: Okay, so since we're talking about Christmas, I did want to remind you that we have upcoming in.
[5:58] Allison Weeks: Let's see what day is that coming out?
[6:00] Allison Weeks: That is coming out November 29th.
[6:02] Allison Weeks: November 29th will be our very first episode of this year's holiday homemaking series.
[6:07] Allison Weeks: If you're new to the podcast, every Christmas, christmas season, I do a holiday homemaking series for episodes that are all holiday all the time, all things Christmas, and what I've done is, throughout the year, as I interview all the women that you've heard from, I do a little segment with them at the end of their main interview.
[6:26] Allison Weeks: We talk about Christmas for about 10, 15 minutes and then I took that part of the episode or interview away and then at the end of the year I compile each of those little segments into four different episodes and that is what makes up our holiday homemaking episodes.
[6:43] Allison Weeks: So it's going to be familiar voices, ladies that you've heard from this year, wonderful tips and ideas and recipes and great holiday memories that they share.
[6:52] Allison Weeks: I just love.
[6:53] Allison Weeks: This is one of my favorite things that I get to do for this podcast.
[6:56] Allison Weeks: I love putting these episodes together for you.
[6:58] Allison Weeks: If you want to get a sneak peek of what they will sound like, you can go back and listen to holiday homemaking 2021 and 2022.
[7:06] Allison Weeks: Just scroll down through your podcast player app back to those, those dates and you should be able to find those pretty easily.
[7:14] Allison Weeks: Or you can go over to our website, the art of home podcastcom, and you can go onto the podcast page and just search there in the search bar holiday homemaking and all eight of those episodes should come right up.
[7:28] Allison Weeks: We also do a special, special editions of our newsletter Homemaker, happy Mail.
[7:33] Allison Weeks: During the holiday homemaking season you will be getting all the recipes that you hear on those holiday episodes that will come up, that will come to you in the newsletter and some writing from some of our guests.
[7:49] Allison Weeks: Actually, I have reached out to some of the ladies who have been on the show in the past some from this year, some from years before and asked them to share some writings with us on the themes of Advent.
[8:01] Allison Weeks: So that's the other resource that I have available for you.
[8:04] Allison Weeks: Besides our holiday homemaking episodes, we have an Advent devotional guide that I put out last year.
[8:11] Allison Weeks: It is a very simple daily guide through the four weeks of Advent.
[8:17] Allison Weeks: In each week we focus on a different theme, a different theme of Advent hope, peace, joy and love and for every day there is a scripture.
[8:29] Allison Weeks: There's a truth that is stated about that particular thing, whether it's hope, and then there is a scripture to back up that truth.
[8:38] Allison Weeks: So I'm not just pulling this out of thin air.
[8:40] Allison Weeks: These are all based on scripture.
[8:41] Allison Weeks: There's usually two or three scriptures there to support that daily truth about hope or peace or joy or love.
[8:49] Allison Weeks: And then there is a suggested song that you can listen to, and I have companion playlists on Spotify that have all of the songs for each of the weeks and the idea is that you listen to the song all week long.
[9:03] Allison Weeks: When we're reflecting on hope, the week of Advent, where we talk about hope, which is the first week, you can pull up that Spotify playlist that has all kinds of songs some Christmas, some regular worship songs around the theme of hope to kind of help you fix your mind on that throughout that whole week and it's all linked together.
[9:23] Allison Weeks: It's very easy to follow and it's meant to be a super quick little devotional guide that you can just spend five or 10 minutes on.
[9:30] Allison Weeks: There's blank pages for you to write out your reflections and I will go through this a little bit more in detail.
[9:36] Allison Weeks: As far as how to use this guide, I might do a story, maybe on Instagram, or I might talk about it on the first holiday homemaking episode, but anyway, I will be putting out a new version of last year's, but it will be basically the same.
[9:50] Allison Weeks: All I'm going to be doing is adding.
[9:52] Allison Weeks: I noticed some edits as I was working through the guide myself last year, so I will be editing a few things and then I will be putting up the new one.
[10:00] Allison Weeks: But if you want to go ahead and get your hands on a copy of it right now, you can do that.
[10:04] Allison Weeks: It's on the website.
[10:05] Allison Weeks: Just go to the art of home podcastcom, slash Christmas, and it will pull up the little form.
[10:12] Allison Weeks: All you have to do is enter your email and then it should pop right up on the screen for you to download it, and then you can print it off and print as many copies as you would like.
[10:20] Allison Weeks: It's just a little gift from me to you to help you keep your mind focused on the main thing in this crazy season that's coming.
[10:28] Allison Weeks: That is well, almost already upon us.
[10:31] Allison Weeks: All right, so that's enough housekeeping.
[10:34] Allison Weeks: I'm going to get on to today's episode.
[10:36] Allison Weeks: I have another listener Homemaker Portrait for you.
[10:39] Allison Weeks: It is an in the trenches Homemaker Portrait of Brianna Wakefield.
[10:43] Allison Weeks: Brianna talks to me about the strong influence of her mom and her grandmothers on her homemaking.
[10:51] Allison Weeks: She's a full-time homemaker.
[10:52] Allison Weeks: Let me just say that she's a mom of two and a full-time homemaker.
[10:56] Allison Weeks: She did work outside the home for a while as a high school Spanish teacher until she had her first child, and so she does do this as a full-time occupation and she draws a lot on the influence and the teaching that she received from her mom and her grandmothers and we talk about that.
[11:14] Allison Weeks: We talk about the importance of focusing on the why and how.
[11:18] Allison Weeks: That can help us manage our expectations and help us to slow down and really soak in the joy of homemaking instead of getting so wrapped up and coming up with the perfect systems and getting the tasks done in a perfect way.
[11:31] Allison Weeks: It also frees us up to be more open with our hospitality, so we talk about that quite a bit.
[11:37] Allison Weeks: She shares really candidly with us her journey through to both of her pregnancies.
[11:42] Allison Weeks: She had some pretty severe complications related to her endometriosis diagnosis and then, with both pregnancies, she ended up with postpartum depression and we spend some time talking about that because if you've heard any of my story, you know that that's something that I struggled with.
[11:59] Allison Weeks: I dealt with postpartum depression with my third and fourth child, so we get into that a good bit and it's a great conversation and super encouraging.
[12:08] Allison Weeks: So I just encourage you to listen.
[12:10] Allison Weeks: Whether that's something you've had to deal with or not, you probably know someone who has.
[12:14] Allison Weeks: So this may be a good way for you to just enter into that experience a little bit so that you can sympathize and encourage those people in your life.
[12:22] Allison Weeks: Besides all of that, brianna has excellent tips and tricks and lots of ideas, and I know that you're going to learn a lot from her and be encouraged by this story.
[12:33] Allison Weeks: I so enjoyed my conversation with Brianna.
[12:35] Allison Weeks: We talked about lots of things even before we started the official interview and there was some great content in there and I didn't want to just erase it, so I tacked it on at the end of this episode as a little bit of bonus content.
[12:47] Allison Weeks: So make sure that you listen all the way till the end, because we've got that that bonus content at the end for your listening enjoyment.
[12:55] Allison Weeks: So thank you for joining us today and trusting me with some of your time.
[12:59] Allison Weeks: I know it's valuable and I know you have a lot going on in your home making life, so it's an honor that you would choose to spend some of it with me today and, brianna, whatever you are applying your hands to as you listen to this, I know you will enjoy Brianna's story of home.
[13:14] Allison Weeks: Welcome to the art of home.
[13:18] Allison Weeks: I'm here with my new friend Brianna.
[13:21] Allison Weeks: No, I'm here with my new friend Brianna Wakefield.
[13:26] Breanna Wakefield: You got it.
[13:26] Breanna Wakefield: You got it.
[13:27] Breanna Wakefield: I even wrote it down.
[13:29] Breanna Wakefield: It's hard, I know Okay.
[13:33] Allison Weeks: So Brianna is a in the trenches homemaker.
[13:37] Allison Weeks: We're going to hear all about that, but before we go back to the beginning and hear your story, why don't you just introduce yourself?
[13:44] Allison Weeks: Tell us a little bit about who you are today?
[13:46] Breanna Wakefield: Well, I am a wife to my husband of seven years.
[13:50] Breanna Wakefield: We just started year eight.
[13:52] Breanna Wakefield: Congratulations, thank you.
[13:55] Breanna Wakefield: It was a big one when you passed that year seven.
[13:57] Breanna Wakefield: It's exciting.
[13:59] Breanna Wakefield: I'm a mom.
[14:01] Breanna Wakefield: I have a three year old little boy and a one year old little girl, and I stay home with them, so I'm a full time stay at home mom and homemaker.
[14:11] Breanna Wakefield: But prior to having my children, I taught high school Spanish full time for six years, so then I stayed at home with them when I had my son.
[14:21] Breanna Wakefield: I've spent most of my life in a Midwestern state.
[14:26] Breanna Wakefield: I've been in multiple of them, currently in Ohio.
[14:30] Breanna Wakefield: I love the Midwest and in my limited free time I enjoy reading, I enjoy gardening, I love to cook and bake and I am very passionate about hosting people in our home.
[14:48] Allison Weeks: That's something I do frequently and often oh great, I can't wait to get to the hospitality section.
[14:54] Breanna Wakefield: Yes, awesome.
[14:56] Allison Weeks: All right, Well good.
[14:57] Allison Weeks: So okay, let's go back to the beginning.
[15:00] Allison Weeks: And why don't you tell us when did you first become a homemaker?
[15:04] Allison Weeks: And when you did, Did you have any skills?
[15:07] Breanna Wakefield: Yes, so I would say I officially became a homemaker when I got married.
[15:12] Breanna Wakefield: We got married when we were 23.
[15:13] Breanna Wakefield: Prior to that I had lived with college roommates, and then I moved in with my parents the year before we got married, because I had some siblings who were a lot younger than me and I just wanted some time with them.
[15:28] Breanna Wakefield: But, I definitely had skills.
[15:29] Breanna Wakefield: My mom was great at teaching us how to take care of all the different elements in the home.
[15:38] Breanna Wakefield: So we had a weekly chore rotations where we would draw one hard chore and two easy out of a jar and then we would do those for the week and then we would switch the next week.
[15:50] Breanna Wakefield: So I knew how to do the basics of laundry or dusting or cleaning.
[15:57] Breanna Wakefield: I think cooking was something that I had always watched.
[16:02] Breanna Wakefield: I knew kind of how to do it, but I hadn't ever assumed the full meal planning, prepping, cooking.
[16:13] Breanna Wakefield: Our first week of marriage I wasn't going to say this, but it's kind of funny Our first week of marriage I was so excited to have the grocery budget and I spent almost all of it on cheese.
[16:23] Breanna Wakefield: And my husband came home and he said oh, he was so sweet, you know.
[16:30] Breanna Wakefield: Oh, wow, that's a lot of cheese.
[16:34] Breanna Wakefield: And I'm like isn't it great we can have cheese and crackers?
[16:38] Breanna Wakefield: So I got a lot better at that I learned.
[16:41] Breanna Wakefield: I learned that very quickly, but yes, that was probably the the task I needed the most practice in.
[16:48] Breanna Wakefield: That's so funny, I know.
[16:51] Breanna Wakefield: Oh, my gosh.
[16:53] Allison Weeks: Okay, have a.
[16:54] Allison Weeks: I have a couple of questions.
[16:55] Allison Weeks: Okay, all right, I want to.
[16:57] Allison Weeks: I want to talk more about the cheese, but let's back up.
[16:59] Allison Weeks: And I love your mom's system of rotating with what you, because so every week you she had a list of chores hard chores, easy chores and then you would, each of you would pick one hard and two easy and those were your chores for the week.
[17:12] Breanna Wakefield: Yes, they were color coded.
[17:14] Breanna Wakefield: So there was a.
[17:15] Breanna Wakefield: It was like a glass jar and the hard chores were written on the back of a red envelope and the easy ones were on a yellow envelope.
[17:22] Breanna Wakefield: So a hard chore might be clean the entire bathroom, like you need to and she would.
[17:28] Breanna Wakefield: She would teach you how to do it the first time, right, and then she'd come in at the end and kind of show you like, oh yeah, you did a really great job on the counter.
[17:37] Breanna Wakefield: But like, make sure you go all the way to the corner with the rag, or, yes, you index the mirror, but here's how you really get the spots off.
[17:44] Breanna Wakefield: And then an easy chore might be like dust the we all wanted dusting because it was like there wasn't a lot to dust.
[17:54] Breanna Wakefield: So that was like if you got dusting for the week, that was the best.
[17:59] Allison Weeks: That was great.
[18:00] Allison Weeks: Yeah, cool, okay.
[18:03] Allison Weeks: Yes, I was wondering what were some examples, so that's really good.
[18:06] Allison Weeks: Are you going to?
[18:07] Allison Weeks: Are you implementing, thinking about implementing that in your?
[18:10] Breanna Wakefield: household.
[18:10] Breanna Wakefield: I think it was really helpful.
[18:12] Breanna Wakefield: I think because, you know, it didn't make any of us feel like one of the four of us had to carry all of the weight Probably my brother, who's closer in age to me.
[18:26] Breanna Wakefield: We maybe did more of the cleaning of the bathrooms initially, but once the younger ones were older, we were able to all share that.
[18:34] Breanna Wakefield: So I think it's a good system.
[18:36] Allison Weeks: Yeah, it's a really good system.
[18:39] Breanna Wakefield: And then we would get paid half our age for our chores.
[18:43] Breanna Wakefield: So we didn't have allowance but you would get half of your age.
[18:47] Breanna Wakefield: So that was kind of yeah, it was, so it was easy and probably vacuuming looked better from a 12 year old than an eight year old.
[18:57] Breanna Wakefield: So we need a little bit more money for our vacuuming that week.
[19:02] Allison Weeks: Yeah, good system.
[19:03] Allison Weeks: I like that a lot.
[19:04] Allison Weeks: Okay, and so I'm assuming cooking is the thing you had the steepest learning curve for or I don't think it was the steepest learning curve, because I enjoyed it.
[19:15] Breanna Wakefield: I think this, I think it became my hobby that coincided with my first year of full time teaching.
[19:25] Breanna Wakefield: I had taught part time there before, so I would get home two hours before my husband and I would just open up, you know, a cookbook that we got for our wedding and I would just try something probably way too complicated, but I loved it and it would just transition my mind from everything that had gone on at work that day to my husband's going to be home.
[19:52] Breanna Wakefield: We're going to have this evening together.
[19:53] Breanna Wakefield: We're going to share this meal.
[19:55] Breanna Wakefield: I think the steepest learning curve was putting all the pieces together.
[19:59] Breanna Wakefield: I think the time management is what I've heard a lot of people label that as, but I think even more than that, finding systems that work when life changes, because that happens a lot, and at least for me.
[20:17] Breanna Wakefield: We've been married for seven years but we have had five different homes during that time, so I have had to change my systems quite frequently and relearn that in a new space or with a new child or in a new state.
[20:35] Breanna Wakefield: So I think that's always been the hardest learning curve and.
[20:42] Breanna Wakefield: I've had to learn it a lot.
[20:44] Breanna Wakefield: Often yes Every time, I think it's hard.
[20:48] Allison Weeks: But yeah, I mean I think you're gonna.
[20:52] Allison Weeks: Well, no, I don't think I know you will have to continue to do that.
[20:55] Allison Weeks: Yes, but I think your adaptability improves.
[20:59] Allison Weeks: You know the way that you're able to.
[21:02] Allison Weeks: It's not quite so painful.
[21:05] Breanna Wakefield: Yes.
[21:06] Allison Weeks: Every time there's a change and then you have to adapt your systems or start over and create new systems.
[21:12] Allison Weeks: That muscle, the more you use it, it just it becomes stronger and I think it's a little less painful to do the shifting and changing.
[21:24] Breanna Wakefield: Yes, I think that is true, but I'm hoping it does continue to get easier.
[21:28] Breanna Wakefield: Yes, because it is cyclical.
[21:30] Breanna Wakefield: I do think it's gonna come back.
[21:31] Allison Weeks: Oh yeah, for sure.
[21:32] Allison Weeks: Well, so who or what has had the most influence on your homemaking?
[21:37] Allison Weeks: What did you say?
[21:38] Breanna Wakefield: I think my mom probably just had the greatest years of impact.
[21:43] Breanna Wakefield: She was passionate about keeping her home.
[21:47] Breanna Wakefield: She was proud of her home.
[21:49] Breanna Wakefield: My mom taught us all those skills which we've talked about, but I think beyond that, she was very resourceful.
[21:56] Breanna Wakefield: I grew up in a pastor's family.
[21:59] Breanna Wakefield: I'm a pastor's kid, and so there were often seasons where we didn't have a lot of resources and my mom could make the smallest thing fun.
[22:12] Breanna Wakefield: She could just.
[22:14] Breanna Wakefield: She just was so good at using free things in her community or making things stretch, and she was very passionate about teaching us that.
[22:23] Breanna Wakefield: I remember her giving me all her coupons and envelope, her grocery list, and saying this is what the total should be.
[22:31] Breanna Wakefield: You try, see if you can match it all up, see if you can find the items.
[22:36] Breanna Wakefield: It's okay.
[22:36] Breanna Wakefield: If it doesn't work, it might be over, it might be under, but try that.
[22:40] Breanna Wakefield: And those were so valuable.
[22:43] Breanna Wakefield: That was so valuable for me when we first got married and also we're living on a very limited budget.
[22:50] Breanna Wakefield: But my grandmothers were also super influential.
[22:55] Breanna Wakefield: I think a lot in my hospitality now we didn't live by them, so we were some of the only grandchildren that got to stay in their home.
[23:07] Allison Weeks: Oh, okay.
[23:09] Breanna Wakefield: And we would stay for a long time.
[23:11] Breanna Wakefield: And one of my grandmas was just the most amazing cook baker like she could make.
[23:17] Breanna Wakefield: I remember at Christmas she would make a real gingerbread house with stained glass life windows.
[23:24] Breanna Wakefield: Oh, that's like what you would see in a bakery and that would be waiting on the buffet and she had super special china tea cups and we would have special spoons that we used and candlelight teas.
[23:38] Breanna Wakefield: And then my other grandma just had this passion for having people in her home and it brought her so much joy to have the whole family over and because I was always there before the holiday would start, I would get to see her make those preparations to have everyone in and she would invite me into that.
[23:59] Breanna Wakefield: So she'd be like Brianna, let's go down to the she lived in the woods let's go down to the meadow and we're going to pick a bunch of wildflowers and we're going to make up.
[24:07] Breanna Wakefield: Ok, for every single one of your aunts.
[24:09] Breanna Wakefield: Do you want to help me?
[24:10] Breanna Wakefield: Or let's go water the flowers, they're beautiful.
[24:14] Breanna Wakefield: Or let's arrange the fruit in a star for the 4th of July.
[24:18] Breanna Wakefield: And I think they had a lot of special little touches that they would put in their home and I think I'm very similar to that in my own home when people stay or visit.
[24:35] Allison Weeks: That's so, that's so cool.
[24:36] Allison Weeks: I mean, you remember a lot of that was very impactful.
[24:39] Allison Weeks: You're very observant, you were an observant kid.
[24:43] Breanna Wakefield: I was, I think I think I'm very.
[24:47] Breanna Wakefield: I don't know if you've taken the strength finders test, but one of my top strengths is ideation, and so I love gathering ideas and I think as a kid I was that way to just enjoyed, enjoyed seeing how people did things and thinking about what that might look like In my own, in my own home.
[25:13] Breanna Wakefield: I don't know that I realized I was doing that till.
[25:15] Breanna Wakefield: I had my own home.
[25:16] Allison Weeks: Right.
[25:17] Breanna Wakefield: But that was so consistent in their practice that it was always how it was to visit them, so it left a deep impression.
[25:27] Allison Weeks: Oh, that's such a great testimony, not only to your grandmothers, but just to the power of homemaking To make an impression and impact somebody's life for the rest of their life.
[25:38] Breanna Wakefield: So oh yeah, for sure.
[25:40] Allison Weeks: That's great.
[25:41] Allison Weeks: Let's talk about expectations.
[25:43] Allison Weeks: What are some things that surprised you about homemaking Things, good or bad, just what?
[25:49] Allison Weeks: What did you not expect?
[25:51] Breanna Wakefield: I think something I didn't expect is that the why of what you're doing is almost more important than the how.
[26:00] Breanna Wakefield: So I think that I I think I knew how to do a lot of things.
[26:06] Breanna Wakefield: I think when all of a sudden, all those things become your responsibility, I definitely felt that word drudgery that you use a lot, and I think where it changes to a feeling of dignity is when you step back and go.
[26:25] Breanna Wakefield: Why am I doing this?
[26:26] Breanna Wakefield: You know why?
[26:27] Breanna Wakefield: Why there are always dishes to wash, there's always laundry to do, there's always a mess, especially with two toddlers.
[26:35] Breanna Wakefield: I mean, it is, it is constant.
[26:37] Breanna Wakefield: Sometimes you go what?
[26:39] Breanna Wakefield: What is the point of picking this up?
[26:42] Breanna Wakefield: It's going to come right off the shelf.
[26:44] Breanna Wakefield: But I think for me, the thing I didn't expect is that when that drudgery really rubbed up against my personality and I started to hate it, like I have to do the dishes again tomorrow, oh, the way that I think the Lord changed my heart was helping me with some of those why questions.
[27:09] Breanna Wakefield: You know, and I don't love doing the dishes Anyone who knows me well knows that about me but I do them because it feels nice to have a clean home at the end of the day and it's special to eat on nice plates.
[27:28] Breanna Wakefield: And when someone comes into the home randomly unexpectedly during the day, I want to be ready for them.
[27:34] Breanna Wakefield: So I think I didn't expect that it wasn't going to just be.
[27:40] Breanna Wakefield: Oh, I get married and I have home and I just magically love doing everything.
[27:45] Breanna Wakefield: I think I think it was a hard reality check that maybe my heart and my own selfishness needed to be really addressed through the monotony of some of those tasks, making maybe love more of an action than a feeling.
[28:08] Allison Weeks: I think yeah, that's a good way to put it.
[28:13] Breanna Wakefield: That's not original.
[28:14] Breanna Wakefield: No, I read that somewhere.
[28:16] Allison Weeks: I know, but it's good to think of that in the context of what we're talking about Love being an action, and that means washing the dishes for the fifth time today.
[28:27] Breanna Wakefield: Yes, exactly.
[28:28] Allison Weeks: That's a good perspective.
[28:29] Allison Weeks: Well, how about an expectation that you had to release, something that, whether it might have been a good expectation, but you've just had to put it in the ground and bury it?
[28:41] Breanna Wakefield: I think that it's not always going to be what you want it to be right away.
[28:46] Breanna Wakefield: I think that I do have very strong memories of visiting family or growing up or even visiting friends' houses.
[28:58] Breanna Wakefield: In my mind it's like oh, it was always clean and it was always beautiful and the food was always hot and ready.
[29:05] Breanna Wakefield: In this season I've had to really go.
[29:09] Breanna Wakefield: Was it always that way, or was I just nine?
[29:12] Breanna Wakefield: I didn't see the time that they had to work through that.
[29:18] Breanna Wakefield: I've actually gone back to some of those women and said was your house always clean?
[29:22] Breanna Wakefield: And they're like oh, no, no, no, you should have seen when we had little ones.
[29:27] Breanna Wakefield: But I think I am the type of person who likes to quickly finish something and it is hard when you can spend all day trying to accomplish a task like folding laundry and at the end of the day it's like there really were 10 valid reasons that this did not get done and it's still here and it will get done and being OK with that.
[29:56] Breanna Wakefield: So I think I've had to let go of interruptions and things taking longer being OK for the well-being of my family.
[30:06] Breanna Wakefield: So I'm not frustrated at them when they have legitimate needs that are more important than maybe the task list that I had set out for the day.
[30:18] Allison Weeks: Well, that goes back to what you said and, answering the first question, that the why is more important than the how, and to me how quickly it gets done falls under the category of how.
[30:31] Allison Weeks: Yes, exactly.
[30:34] Breanna Wakefield: And there are ways to make that faster, and I think it's hard to always know.
[30:39] Breanna Wakefield: Is this just I need to reorganize how I'm approaching this or where I'm putting it in the day, or is this a season where there just are a lot of interruptions and it's not always going to be that way?
[30:53] Allison Weeks: Right right, that's a good exercise to ask those questions and decide is there anything I can do about this, or is this more of a matter of acceptance?
[31:02] Allison Weeks: That's really good.
[31:03] Allison Weeks: Well, let's move on and talk about those lovely children.
[31:08] Allison Weeks: That are not interruptions, those are opportunities.
[31:14] Allison Weeks: That's how I like to think about it.
[31:16] Allison Weeks: So we'll talk about how parenting has affected your, your home making.
[31:20] Allison Weeks: How, how would you say, that bringing your children into the home has challenged which we've already touched on a bit but challenged and enriched your home making?
[31:29] Breanna Wakefield: I think I want to start with enriched.
[31:31] Breanna Wakefield: I think that they are just almost like these little.
[31:40] Breanna Wakefield: Just when I think about them, I think of the word just wonder.
[31:44] Breanna Wakefield: You know they're these little wonders like they, getting to see them experience everything for the first time.
[31:50] Breanna Wakefield: My daughter the other day we were out on our front porch and she had never seen a gigantic grasshopper and it just happened to be right there on the on the trim piece and she watched that and watched it hop and fly and tried to catch it for five minutes and I thought I don't know the last time I spent five minutes just just watching it, watching a grasshopper and, I think, just slowing down and getting to see the world through their eyes and also just the ways that they they humble you.
[32:24] Breanna Wakefield: My son is, I think, kind of abnormally communicative for his age.
[32:30] Breanna Wakefield: He's very verbal and he can express a lot of deep thoughts for a three-year-old.
[32:36] Breanna Wakefield: And the other day I had gotten frustrated with him and I said you know, buddy, I'm sorry, mommy was frustrated with you.
[32:46] Breanna Wakefield: I should have talked to you that way, will you forgive me?
[32:49] Breanna Wakefield: And he was like, oh, it's okay, mommy, you just turned like your frustration into meanness, because we talk about that a lot with him, like you're frustrated but you're being mean, or yourself but you're being mean.
[33:03] Breanna Wakefield: And he turned it around and used that language on me and it was so convicting in my own heart of, oh Lord, like you are working and you are teaching him.
[33:15] Breanna Wakefield: But yeah, I needed that reminder too.
[33:18] Breanna Wakefield: I don't have this all figured out.
[33:20] Breanna Wakefield: So they, they're a joy, they're a lot of energy and time, but they are very precious and I think, in terms of the challenges do you want me to go into that yeah, my expectation, I think, when we had kids was like, okay, we're ready to have kids, we will get pregnant and we will, you know, have this baby and I'm going to just hold them right away.
[33:52] Breanna Wakefield: And I've spent so much time with kids I was a teacher, I was certified K-12.
[33:58] Breanna Wakefield: I was a nanny before I was a teacher.
[34:00] Breanna Wakefield: Like, I am ready for this, I have got this, and I think that our whole journey with our children actually coming into the world just really was a lesson in how little they are ours and how much they belong to the Lord.
[34:18] Breanna Wakefield: I had always struggled physically and wondered if I had endometriosis and prior to my son being born, I actually had surgery to find out if I did and I was confirmed with that diagnosis, which can impact your fertility in a lot of ways.
[34:38] Breanna Wakefield: And so, after they do some of the different procedures to remove it, they kind of tell you okay, you have six months to get pregnant and then, it might regrow and it could be in a different place where you could lose an over year.
[34:53] Breanna Wakefield: You could have just some challenges to your fertility and fortunately where mine was did not cause complications with my fertility.
[35:01] Breanna Wakefield: We were able to get pregnant with my son but very quickly in the start of the second trimester I started to have some bleeding with him.
[35:13] Breanna Wakefield: And it was a result of something that can be can end a pregnancy or it can exist like your whole pregnancy and nothing will happen to the baby and it's just a wait and see.
[35:24] Breanna Wakefield: In the case of my son, I stopped bleeding, but I had regular ultrasounds where I had to see that that thing was still there until he was born.
[35:38] Breanna Wakefield: So it was this challenge of wanting to feel joyful but also feeling very afraid of is this life going to make it.
[35:49] Breanna Wakefield: It was also 2020, in the very beginning of the pandemic, and so I think that that fear of something happening to my pregnancy caused me to be very isolated from my community and when he was born, my one goal had been okay, I'm gonna isolate so that when he is born, I will hold him.
[36:11] Breanna Wakefield: And when I held him, he was immediately rushed to the NICU within five minutes and I didn't know for about 40 minutes if he was okay, if he was alive, what was wrong.
[36:25] Breanna Wakefield: I was just kind of left there in the delivery room, kind of stitched up, and my husband was gone with him and I didn't know if my baby was okay or where my baby was and he had some normal breathing complications that resolved after about 13 days.
[36:48] Breanna Wakefield: But it was a terrifying introduction to see your child for the first time on feeding tubes and breathing tubes and all kinds of IVs and not be able to hold them, and it really stoked, maybe, some of that fear.
[37:06] Breanna Wakefield: I already was having, and so that was a process for me of really realizing that I wasn't in control.
[37:17] Breanna Wakefield: And soon after that I was diagnosed with postpartum depression and anxiety and went through a long, almost year, of counseling and medication to just work through some of what had happened.
[37:32] Breanna Wakefield: A lot of it was working through how my expectations had maybe hurt some of that reality.
[37:42] Breanna Wakefield: So when I got pregnant with my daughter, I thought, oh okay, new pregnancy or through some of the more intense COVID years.
[37:52] Breanna Wakefield: We were living in a different state at the time.
[37:56] Breanna Wakefield: I had different doctors, we had moved, far from family, but I was feeling really good.
[38:01] Breanna Wakefield: And nine weeks into my pregnancy I started bleeding and it was so much that when I described to the doctor they said I really think you're having a miscarriage.
[38:11] Breanna Wakefield: The hospitals are so overrun right now, why don't you stay home and we'll see on Monday if there's anything we need to do.
[38:20] Breanna Wakefield: And that Monday we went in fully expecting, after four days of intense bleeding, to not see anything.
[38:30] Breanna Wakefield: And her heart was beating and we had just had an ultrasound the week before.
[38:36] Breanna Wakefield: So there was only ever one baby.
[38:40] Breanna Wakefield: And she made it and she had the same thing that my son did in the pregnancy we had the same complication that caused the bleeding, but hers resolved during the pregnancy and I was able to have a much more peaceful second half.
[38:55] Breanna Wakefield: But then the same thing 12 hours after she was born had very serious breathing complications that sent her to the NICU, and so that was hard.
[39:06] Breanna Wakefield: It was totally unexpected.
[39:08] Breanna Wakefield: They were both full term pregnancies.
[39:11] Breanna Wakefield: There were no indications of that, so I think that maybe were just some special health challenges I had to deal with with both of them, of just seeing how fragile life was so well, you're also just trying to be a new, brand new mom.
[39:32] Allison Weeks: Yeah, so that's hard enough, and then layer all of this other stuff on top of it.
[39:38] Breanna Wakefield: Did you?
[39:38] Allison Weeks: have postpartum depression with your daughter as well, or just with your son.
[39:43] Breanna Wakefield: But it didn't appear as early with my son.
[39:46] Breanna Wakefield: Something that I didn't know is that you can have that while you're pregnant.
[39:52] Breanna Wakefield: So even though they were filling out the questionnaires, I think that I thought what I was feeling was just normal consequences of being pregnant in a pandemic where, really, having experienced it twice now, I can go back with my son's pregnancy and say, no, that probably started around month six.
[40:12] Breanna Wakefield: With my daughter, I didn't at first have any symptoms of postpartum depression, but nursing wasn't going well and I had to make a decision about six weeks after she was born to switch to bottle feeding her.
[40:30] Breanna Wakefield: She had a milk allergy and there were some other problems with her latching, and so I weaned her way too quickly, just like in a week, tried to cut my supply and that caused a huge hormonal imbalance.
[40:49] Breanna Wakefield: That definitely brought that postpartum depression forward very quickly and I knew what it was.
[40:57] Breanna Wakefield: So I gave it about two weeks and was like, no, this is different than being sad or being stressed For me.
[41:08] Breanna Wakefield: I felt very hopeless in a season where my normal would have been very joyful, and so I went to my OB right away and did get on medication quickly, and that was very helpful for me, I think, a lot of people can feel afraid of that because it's vulnerable.
[41:28] Breanna Wakefield: It's hard to go in in this season when you do not want that to happen to you and you're very happy to have this new child, but sometimes at least in my case I needed a little extra help.
[41:41] Allison Weeks: Yeah, no, I can relate, I did as well.
[41:44] Breanna Wakefield: Yes, yes.
[41:45] Allison Weeks: A lot of times, what I tell people is the medication.
[41:49] Allison Weeks: At least, this was my experience with postpartum depression and anxiety, which they're like cousins or like step brothers.
[41:57] Breanna Wakefield: I mean they go off and go hand in hand.
[42:01] Allison Weeks: And so it was so bad that the coping mechanisms that I would learn with a counselor and a Christian counselor who was going to use scripture to help me, all of those things I had to get to a baseline level where I could even use those tools effectively.
[42:21] Allison Weeks: And that was where medication brought me up, like, say, if I was way down here, real low, where I needed the medication just to stabilize me I guess maybe that's the best word because I was so unstable and then from that point of being stabilized, then I was able to do the hard work with my counselor to use scripture to transform my mind and help me figure out what lies I was believing and all of that kind of stuff, and eventually I was able to get off of the medication because I had the coping skills that I needed to be able to not just function but to thrive.
[42:56] Allison Weeks: So that's my experience.
[42:59] Breanna Wakefield: I would 100% agree with that.
[43:01] Breanna Wakefield: I think just getting an ability to be able to breathe again and slow your thoughts down and be able to discern this is something I'm actually thinking and this is just something very out of left field.
[43:16] Allison Weeks: Yes.
[43:17] Breanna Wakefield: Is from that depression or that anxiety.
[43:19] Breanna Wakefield: And, yes, medication was very helpful for me with that process too.
[43:25] Breanna Wakefield: And then combining it with counseling, I think the second time I had so much and so many of those tools from my son that once the medication started working with my daughter it was like, okay, now I have the tools and now I can start building on them and getting back to a place of health.
[43:45] Allison Weeks: Yes, and that's so helpful because when you're in it you feel like I would describe it you feel like you're in a tunnel and you can't see any way out, Like you can't see a light, you cannot see it.
[43:59] Allison Weeks: So when you've been there before, you can start to recognize when you can see little bits of light ahead, and that is so helpful.
[44:10] Allison Weeks: And then it's also helpful to ask your husband.
[44:14] Allison Weeks: So, like my husband, he's also had some issues.
[44:17] Allison Weeks: He struggled with some depression, anxiety.
[44:19] Allison Weeks: So we were speaking the same language Thankfully, praise the Lord, not ever at the same time but to have him tell me truth and tell me that I will eventually come out of this tunnel.
[44:31] Allison Weeks: Because that's what's really hard is, when you're in that place you think I am never gonna get out of this.
[44:36] Allison Weeks: I'm never gonna see the other side of this and to have someone who you trust tell you yes, you will.
[44:42] Allison Weeks: I know it doesn't feel like it right now, but you will come out the other side.
[44:46] Breanna Wakefield: And my husband was a huge catalyst for me as well, I think, just recognizing I almost needed someone to tell me this is not you Cause I felt so guilty.
[44:55] Breanna Wakefield: Here I am with this beautiful child who made it through this terrible, scary pregnancy and the NICU and they are just looking at me and smiling and I am their whole world and I'm feeling just totally not what I expected to feel in this season.
[45:13] Breanna Wakefield: And having that person who knows you the best and so intimately when he would just say to me honey, this is not you.
[45:22] Breanna Wakefield: And in a lot of ways that helped me get help the first time to realize, oh, he's right.
[45:33] Breanna Wakefield: Like this is not me, and it helped me have grace with myself to say I still do have joy in this season and I still do love this new baby and I just need help getting to a baseline again.
[45:50] Breanna Wakefield: My counselor had me with my son right out at the end of our whole months of sessions together, right out just my birth story with him.
[46:00] Breanna Wakefield: But she was like but the lens I want you to look at it through is like, how was God merciful to you?
[46:05] Breanna Wakefield: And that was really a hard and good question, but it took a lot of.
[46:15] Breanna Wakefield: I couldn't even have answered that without going on medication or without the months of work that had happened before that.
[46:24] Breanna Wakefield: And now I look back and I go.
[46:26] Breanna Wakefield: I felt alone or I felt scared or I felt hopeless.
[46:30] Breanna Wakefield: But you were there, lord, and I hope that my kids, when they're older, if my son's wife or if my daughter ever goes through that same experience, that that can be something that hopefully they can know, like that their mom did go through that, but that God was merciful to me in delivering me out of it now yes, yeah, that is a great question to ask, very, very good.
[47:03] Allison Weeks: Well, thank you for sharing so much about that.
[47:06] Allison Weeks: I think it's something that we just we need to talk more about it.
[47:10] Allison Weeks: Yeah, because it's so scary when you're in it.
[47:14] Allison Weeks: It is, it's very scary, and I hope that people, whoever's listening, if you're struggling with this, please know, like you just said, it's not you and you need to seek some help and you will come out the other side with the right help.
[47:31] Breanna Wakefield: And asking for help isn't a bad thing.
[47:33] Breanna Wakefield: No, we all need help, and maybe that feels like the help you never wanted to need but, it's okay to need it to get back to who you wanna be.
[47:43] Allison Weeks: Right, right.
[47:44] Allison Weeks: So how do you encourage your kids now that you've come out of all of that?
[47:50] Allison Weeks: Yes, they're older.
[47:51] Allison Weeks: Now You've got this very active three-year-old boy, I'm sure, and you've got a little toddling one-year-old girl.
[47:58] Allison Weeks: So how, in their little ways, do you allow them to contribute to the home making?
[48:05] Breanna Wakefield: Well, I think that it's really important when I ask myself those whys of my own home you know, why am I doing this?
[48:11] Breanna Wakefield: But also, I think sometimes I've asked myself the question of, like, why do I want my children to remember?
[48:17] Breanna Wakefield: What do I want them to feel around these tasks?
[48:20] Breanna Wakefield: You know, are they things that mom is doing from a joyful heart or from a frustrated heart?
[48:27] Breanna Wakefield: And so I try to explain to them the purpose of what we're doing in very simple ways.
[48:33] Breanna Wakefield: So if they're playing upstairs and I'm folding laundry on the couch, it might be oh yep, mommy's doing laundry and I'm just gonna fold this pile really quick, because isn't it so nice that we have clean clothes to wear.
[48:44] Breanna Wakefield: Like, what a blessing that we have clean clothes and we can do laundry.
[48:49] Breanna Wakefield: And my son thinks it's so fun to put the hangers in the shirt.
[48:54] Breanna Wakefield: So it takes triple the time, but I will hold open the shirt collars for him, and he is just so proud that he can get the hanger in the collar.
[49:05] Breanna Wakefield: And sometimes it doesn't go the right way.
[49:07] Breanna Wakefield: And that's okay, like it's gonna get in a closet.
[49:10] Breanna Wakefield: We're gonna wear it again, but I try to invite them.
[49:14] Breanna Wakefield: My daughter's a little little still, but my son, if he shows interest in something, I really celebrate that.
[49:22] Breanna Wakefield: So he loves to cook and he I.
[49:26] Breanna Wakefield: Literally if I get open a drawer in the kitchen he hears it from wherever he is in the house and he will come running.
[49:35] Breanna Wakefield: He comes running, he comes running and he pushes his little chair up and it's.
[49:38] Breanna Wakefield: Can I help mom?
[49:40] Breanna Wakefield: So I try to pick recipes during the week when my husband is working that I actually can let him help with.
[49:48] Breanna Wakefield: That aren't going to be frustrating to me To like they're not complicated.
[49:55] Breanna Wakefield: So during the week it's things he can help with.
[49:57] Breanna Wakefield: On the weekend it's more complicated.
[49:59] Breanna Wakefield: I can do it by myself.
[50:00] Breanna Wakefield: He also thinks that the spin mop is the coolest thing.
[50:07] Breanna Wakefield: He loves pushing the pedal and we got him the little Melissa and Doug like wooden cleaning tools.
[50:14] Breanna Wakefield: That are all kids size, so he dips his little mop in there and he spins it and he mobs the floor.
[50:19] Breanna Wakefield: So I try I.
[50:21] Breanna Wakefield: You know I'm like you know what.
[50:22] Breanna Wakefield: I can always get the spot later, but if he's excited about it I'm going to encourage that.
[50:31] Allison Weeks: Absolutely, absolutely.
[50:33] Allison Weeks: Oh, that's so great.
[50:34] Allison Weeks: Okay, we're going to jump ahead and talk about a little bit about priorities.
[50:38] Allison Weeks: I would love to know one or two practical steps that you take to help you set and keep your priorities in the right order.
[50:45] Allison Weeks: Mm-hmm.
[50:47] Breanna Wakefield: So I think, with my faith, I had to find kind of the right time of the day.
[50:54] Breanna Wakefield: I think I thought, oh, you have to get up at the morning and do a quiet time, but for me it's really the evening, after the house is calmed, after everyone is in bed, and I have an unlimited time to read something.
[51:08] Breanna Wakefield: So during the day, I would say, begin most mornings, a lot of mornings.
[51:14] Breanna Wakefield: I'll say to my husband could you get up and get you know whichever child woke up first?
[51:19] Breanna Wakefield: And I will, can I just have five minutes?
[51:21] Breanna Wakefield: And I'll take that five minutes to just lay in my bed and think about the day and I'll pray and I'll just invite the Lord into the things that I'm worried about, the things I feel overwhelmed by.
[51:33] Breanna Wakefield: I try to take time in the morning to think about my responses to my kids, maybe what didn't go as well the day before, how I want to be better at discipling them today and inviting the Lord into that, and it's just a constant conversation.
[51:48] Breanna Wakefield: I think, prayer doesn't have to be a formal time, it can be something that's going on throughout the day and I really enjoy there's these songs that are made around the catechism, like just the basic tendons of the faith that were written for children, and so we play those during the day and I just find that God can minister to a mom's heart in the simple Bible stories in the children's Bible that you're reading, or explaining gospel truths for the first time in a very long time, in the first time in a very simple way.
[52:27] Breanna Wakefield: That's actually a hard theological exercise.
[52:30] Allison Weeks: It is very hard, it is very hard, and it is stretching.
[52:34] Breanna Wakefield: So that's how I prioritize my faith, I think, probably of the other priorities that were listed, I think my marriage is something that I feel like is really a huge priority for my husband and I.
[52:53] Breanna Wakefield: We live far from all our families, so we spent five years living near my parents and then moved out to Ohio for a new position for my husband and his job, so we're four hours from his parents and 12 hours from mine.
[53:10] Breanna Wakefield: We have no siblings that live in the area, and I think it's our teamwork is probably one of the things that's the most important to our whole household thriving, and when we make time for our marriage, everyone in the house does better.
[53:30] Breanna Wakefield: So, yeah, some of the ways we do that is we try to have a real conversation once a day.
[53:35] Breanna Wakefield: You know where we are looking at each other, where there are no distractions.
[53:41] Breanna Wakefield: Sometimes it's 10 minutes and sometimes it ends up being two hours, but we try to just talk to each other.
[53:48] Breanna Wakefield: We also frequently send each other podcasts or books or articles that we can discuss later and that just enriches our conversation.
[53:59] Breanna Wakefield: And then we do a lot about home date nights and then we bring back like some appetizers or dessert and then we make them all after the kids go to bed and that's one of our favorite days, that is fun.
[54:16] Allison Weeks: It's always a surprise, Is it always?
[54:18] Allison Weeks: Is it cheese?
[54:19] Allison Weeks: Are you bringing home cheese?
[54:20] Breanna Wakefield: I am always bringing home cheese, yes, but I.
[54:24] Breanna Wakefield: But now he has a much stronger palate for cheese.
[54:28] Breanna Wakefield: He's very knowledgeable.
[54:29] Breanna Wakefield: That's good.
[54:31] Breanna Wakefield: Yes, there's always cheese.
[54:33] Breanna Wakefield: Yes, that's our requirement.
[54:36] Allison Weeks: Those are some good and very practical suggestions.
[54:39] Allison Weeks: I love that.
[54:40] Allison Weeks: I do.
[54:41] Allison Weeks: We do that too.
[54:42] Allison Weeks: We are always sending articles and podcasts back and forth to one another and you know talking about that, talking about them later on whenever we both have a chance to listen, and it is great, it's a great way to facilitate discussion and so, especially because I know, like date night rule number one is supposed to be don't talk about the kids, right, and I have to say I mean sometimes you just need to talk about the kids because you've got you've got to talk about some things like, okay, what are we going to?
[55:14] Allison Weeks: Especially as they get older and you're dealing with bigger, bigger kids bring bigger problems to work through.
[55:21] Allison Weeks: So we need to have like some strategic time to talk about how are we going to handle this and what do you?
[55:26] Allison Weeks: What do you think about that?
[55:27] Allison Weeks: So I think it's there's value in discussing the kids, but there's also value in talking about other things, because you won't always have that responsibility when the kids leave and you know you want to make sure you still have things in common.
[55:45] Breanna Wakefield: Yeah, we talk about that a lot of.
[55:47] Breanna Wakefield: We often say to each other you know, we, this is the relationship that is going to continue after they're gone, and I want to not wake up after our last one is in college and go.
[56:01] Breanna Wakefield: What do we like to do together?
[56:03] Breanna Wakefield: You know, like I want to have been doing that all through.
[56:06] Allison Weeks: Yes, yeah, throughout this time.
[56:10] Breanna Wakefield: So I think that's that's good.
[56:12] Breanna Wakefield: It is good to hear that there is permission to talk about your kids.
[56:15] Breanna Wakefield: It is important you know need to be on the same page, otherwise to them it kind of coming from a high school background yes, of teaching, yes, bigger kids there are bigger.
[56:28] Breanna Wakefield: They just have bigger consequences sometimes.
[56:31] Allison Weeks: Yes, absolutely so they're problems.
[56:33] Breanna Wakefield: They can be more permanent decisions.
[56:34] Breanna Wakefield: So my husband's always like, okay, when we get to high school, like you're at that, honey, like I am here and I am supporting you, but you love high schoolers so You're the resident expert.
[56:48] Breanna Wakefield: Maybe I mean it'll be a lot of years between when I taught to when our kids are in high school, but I do love that age.
[56:55] Breanna Wakefield: Oh, that's good, they're really, really special people.
[56:59] Allison Weeks: Yeah, I mean it is.
[57:00] Allison Weeks: It's a fun age if you, if you can have the right perspective, yeah Well, how about media in your household?
[57:08] Allison Weeks: How do you manage media exposure for yourself, for your kids?
[57:14] Breanna Wakefield: Specifically social media or all media.
[57:16] Breanna Wakefield: Both and you know, in terms of media, I think we my husband and I are the same age, so probably I think when we could, when we were teenagers, there were already was social media.
[57:35] Breanna Wakefield: So I maybe am one of the guests on the show who I have had social media since I was a teenager and I grew up when I don't think we knew the effects of it at the time Right.
[57:47] Breanna Wakefield: And I was like, well, this is kind of a way to not be socially awkward and connect with your friends.
[57:51] Breanna Wakefield: So, like you should, you should probably have this and I think, growing up in that with it, as a teenager, as a college student, as a young professional, married, I guess I have a different relationship with it in my 30s than I did in my teens and 20s.
[58:11] Breanna Wakefield: When it comes to social media, I think one of the biggest challenges is that, because of the algorithms, you are often fed content from people that are in your same life stage or have your same interests or your same opinions on things, and I feel like there's a lot of wisdom and surrounding yourself with people who are older than you or people who have a different life perspective, and so for my own kids, I think it will be very challenging to convince me that that's something they should have when they're teenagers, and I think in my own life because that is my hope for them to have that as delayed as possible.
[58:55] Breanna Wakefield: I try to not be on it in front of them.
[59:00] Breanna Wakefield: I know that I do not like to have the apps on my phone.
[59:04] Breanna Wakefield: There are times where if I feel like I've been on it a lot, or sometimes it can be an escape.
[59:09] Breanna Wakefield: You know like, yeah, I get all these beautiful happy things while I'm like do not want to go sweep the floor.
[59:18] Breanna Wakefield: This sounds much more enticing and enjoyable, so I sometimes will even set it as a restricted website on my phone where even if I were to try to go there, I can't open it, so it's really something that I just have on my computer on my laptop and I don't access my computer every day, so that helps me set limits In terms of just media.
[59:43] Breanna Wakefield: My husband is a graphic designer, so computers and he's a web designer actually, more than anything, that's probably his specialty and he designs his whole job is designing digital products as well.
[59:57] Breanna Wakefield: So we we are very accustomed with how the internet and media are a huge tool and can be very helpful.
[1:00:05] Breanna Wakefield: But I think we have the discussion a lot as a couple about what are we giving our children when we let them watch a show.
[1:00:16] Breanna Wakefield: They do watch a show, maybe like once one 30 minute show or one 20 minute show, but that we want to teach them that you need to have limits on some of those things and that tools are good and bad, so you need to know the purpose of using them.
[1:00:35] Breanna Wakefield: So that's a frequent discussion that we have between ourselves.
[1:00:39] Breanna Wakefield: I don't know exactly how that's going to play out when they're older.
[1:00:42] Breanna Wakefield: I think it has to be a balance, but maybe we're a little more restrictive than some parents on on media especially, I think.
[1:00:53] Allison Weeks: I think you're not unusual for your generation because you grew up with it and you're, you've sort of been, you were sort of the guinea pig generation actually, and I just I think you guys are way more cautious about that when it comes to your own kids.
[1:01:09] Breanna Wakefield: Yeah and I don't.
[1:01:10] Breanna Wakefield: I don't share a lot about them either on.
[1:01:15] Breanna Wakefield: Like if I share something about them is kind of rare, because I I feel like it's also their story and I don't want them to be 10 or 15 or go, mom, like you posted that embarrassing thing about when I was body training and like right, like maybe that was helpful for you to vent.
[1:01:38] Breanna Wakefield: But I try to be really careful of like if I'm going to share something about them, I want it to be something that hopefully, like wasn't embarrassing, wasn't super personal or that when they look back on it later doesn't cause conflict in our relationship.
[1:01:55] Allison Weeks: That's why I try to keep that in mind.
[1:01:58] Breanna Wakefield: That is very wise, yeah, yeah, I don't think you can't post about them, but I am very careful about what I I post.
[1:02:07] Allison Weeks: Yeah, because things on the internet live forever.
[1:02:10] Breanna Wakefield: Yes.
[1:02:11] Allison Weeks: And there will.
[1:02:12] Allison Weeks: They will see that possibly, yeah, so yeah for sure that's good to think about it that way.
[1:02:16] Allison Weeks: Okay we're going to jump ahead a little bit because I want to make sure we get the hospitality.
[1:02:20] Allison Weeks: Yes, let's talk about that, because I know this is the passion of yours, as you mentioned in the beginning.
[1:02:25] Allison Weeks: I want to hear about how do you show hospitality in your home, making Well I I'm very similar to my grandmothers.
[1:02:37] Breanna Wakefield: I just love having people in my home, and I think one of the things that I had to get over very quickly is that in different seasons of life, special might not mean that my house is perfectly clean before I have you over or that I bought something expensive to put on the table.
[1:02:58] Breanna Wakefield: So special is more how you feel when you enter the home and you get to be with people that you love, and so there are many times that I have someone over and right before they walked in the door like something got spilled all over the floor and they're walking into into chaos, and I want to let something that happens in everybody's house stop me from opening the door and having a relationship with people.
[1:03:30] Breanna Wakefield: Everybody has messes in their house, everyone has times where it isn't perfectly put together and everyone has seasons where there's more that you can give and there's less that you can give.
[1:03:40] Breanna Wakefield: So I think when we were first married, I thought that hospitality had to look like okay, I make like three appetizers and I have all these things and my husband's like honey, we, I love you and this is so great, but we can't afford this.
[1:03:55] Breanna Wakefield: And I had to go.
[1:03:57] Breanna Wakefield: Oh, and I remember the first time I put like one thing on the table and friends came in and no one cared, they were happy to be together and they ate whatever it was, and there probably was some leftover and it was fine and it was.
[1:04:14] Breanna Wakefield: So I think I really try to be creative and resourceful, like my mom taught me.
[1:04:22] Allison Weeks: Yeah.
[1:04:23] Breanna Wakefield: Like when my kids friends come over, I try to pay attention to what they liked to play with the last time they were there, so I'll have that all set up when they first come in.
[1:04:33] Breanna Wakefield: So one of his friends loves trains, so every time he comes in in the morning I will have built a special train track for him and it's something I already have, but it's just, it's special.
[1:04:44] Breanna Wakefield: I know he's going to feel comfortable coming in and having something he can play with right away.
[1:04:50] Breanna Wakefield: Or I always buy my mother-in-law's favorite coffee creamer when she comes to stay with me.
[1:04:56] Breanna Wakefield: Or I know that sometimes a value for certain guests is like when the floor is vacuumed.
[1:05:05] Breanna Wakefield: So it's like I'm going to vacuum right before they come the guest room.
[1:05:08] Breanna Wakefield: So even though I did it two days ago, like the lines are fresh and they get to feel special.
[1:05:14] Breanna Wakefield: Sometimes it's just little things like that I love, but I love having people over and because we don't live by family, we have quite a lot of house guests.
[1:05:23] Breanna Wakefield: So there are a lot of times that people are from our family, are visiting us from out of town almost once a month A cousin or an aunt and uncle, or it's not even our parents, like our siblings.
[1:05:36] Breanna Wakefield: We almost always have an out of town guest once a month, so I'm constantly turning the house over for that that is a lot.
[1:05:45] Allison Weeks: Yeah, it's a lot, it's a lot.
[1:05:46] Breanna Wakefield: A lot of washing sheets and towels and yes, I have a lot of extra sets of sheets and towels that if I don't get to all of them, I'm not.
[1:05:55] Breanna Wakefield: I'm not behind, you know to find those things.
[1:05:58] Breanna Wakefield: I have a lot of extras.
[1:06:00] Allison Weeks: That's so.
[1:06:00] Allison Weeks: That makes me happy to hear that and my mother-in-law, do yourself a favor, get some extras.
[1:06:07] Breanna Wakefield: And my, my mom and my mother-in-law are so sweet whenever they stay, just as like a little they know we have a lot of people stay with us they always do all of the bedding before they leave and like remake the bed, and I just think it's so nice of them, like every time I don't ask them to do it, I never did, they don't know each other does it, but both of them whenever they stay at my house, like I always hear my washing machine go, and then they'll be like as they leave they always say, okay, the bed's all made for you, for your next guest, you know you don't have to do the sheets.
[1:06:41] Breanna Wakefield: That's awesome, I know it's.
[1:06:43] Breanna Wakefield: It's really a special unexpected thing when they stay so nice.
[1:06:48] Allison Weeks: That is really sweet of them to do that.
[1:06:50] Allison Weeks: I I appreciate it when they make the bed, yes, before they leave, just because I may not get to it.
[1:06:59] Allison Weeks: And our guest room is right when you walk in that you can see it.
[1:07:02] Allison Weeks: And it's on the way to the guest bathroom.
[1:07:04] Allison Weeks: So if anybody is visiting for the day or for dinner, you can see right into that guest bedroom.
[1:07:08] Allison Weeks: And if I might not get to change those sheets right away, Right when they make the bed before they leave.
[1:07:13] Allison Weeks: That's super helpful.
[1:07:15] Breanna Wakefield: It's so helpful, but to have them back to back guests, so it's very helpful.
[1:07:19] Allison Weeks: Yeah, to have them change the sheets and put the new ones on, that's just awesome, it's so nice and then with my children.
[1:07:26] Breanna Wakefield: It's very important to me that there's a balance between, you know, having a lot of people over I'm an extra red, I like to have people over but also giving them space.
[1:07:34] Breanna Wakefield: This is their home too.
[1:07:36] Breanna Wakefield: We need time, that the calendar doesn't have anyone coming for the weekend and time that it's just us.
[1:07:42] Breanna Wakefield: And so one of the things that I started doing with my son is we have a almost daily like tea time together and we have tea and fancy cups.
[1:07:54] Breanna Wakefield: He's the best little three year old at holding fancy cups.
[1:07:57] Breanna Wakefield: We get out the pitcher and the tea pot, all the things, and we have tea or hot chocolate and we read books and we talk, and it's usually while his sister is in a nap, and I think that also just gives me a chance to know his heart, how he's feeling, what he's thinking, as best as he can express it and just show him hospitality.
[1:08:18] Breanna Wakefield: And if we haven't done it, he'll be like Mommy, when are we having tea time?
[1:08:23] Breanna Wakefield: Like when's when's tea time?
[1:08:25] Breanna Wakefield: And a neighbor came over the other day and he said they're like oh, I hear some cookies.
[1:08:30] Breanna Wakefield: And he goes oh, no, no, no, that's for tea time.
[1:08:33] Breanna Wakefield: We have to wait.
[1:08:34] Breanna Wakefield: We haven't had tea time today.
[1:08:35] Breanna Wakefield: That's what we have cookies.
[1:08:36] Breanna Wakefield: So no fun.
[1:08:40] Allison Weeks: Oh, that's fun.
[1:08:40] Allison Weeks: I love that.
[1:08:41] Allison Weeks: That's a really great way to connect with with your son.
[1:08:45] Breanna Wakefield: Yes.
[1:08:47] Allison Weeks: Okay, you have given us some really great ideas on hospitality there, so thank you for that.
[1:08:51] Allison Weeks: Yes, I want to hear about your biggest homemaking fail.
[1:08:55] Breanna Wakefield: Oh, it was this year.
[1:08:56] Breanna Wakefield: It was so bad, alison, I had just had our daughter and I had a C section with my daughter, so I had help for a long time, just because I couldn't lift them.
[1:09:07] Breanna Wakefield: So all our parents had left and I was just getting back on my feet to all my own responsibilities and I thought I'm going to make a roast for dinner, like I'm going to make a pot roast and put it in the crock pot overnight.
[1:09:22] Breanna Wakefield: And I took the roast out of the fridge and it just hadn't fully thawed to go in the in the crock pot and I thought, okay, I'm going to just start it on the stove and a little bit of broth, just start cooking it.
[1:09:35] Breanna Wakefield: I fell asleep.
[1:09:37] Breanna Wakefield: I fell asleep and I woke up in the middle of the night to just hazy smokey kitchen.
[1:09:50] Breanna Wakefield: Everything smelled like burnt roast.
[1:09:53] Breanna Wakefield: It was so bad.
[1:09:55] Breanna Wakefield: It woke my husband up upstairs and he came downstairs and was like where's the fire?
[1:10:01] Breanna Wakefield: Oh, no.
[1:10:04] Breanna Wakefield: And I just was.
[1:10:05] Breanna Wakefield: So I've never done that.
[1:10:06] Breanna Wakefield: I've never burnt something to the point that it is literally you had to throw the pan away, Like there was no salvaging any of it.
[1:10:16] Breanna Wakefield: Thankfully, the house didn't burn down, but that was probably my biggest ever fail, just try it.
[1:10:23] Allison Weeks: Okay.
[1:10:23] Allison Weeks: Well, just listen to make you feel a little bit better.
[1:10:25] Allison Weeks: I did another interview earlier this morning and so you'll hear this.
[1:10:31] Allison Weeks: This is Michelle's.
[1:10:32] Allison Weeks: Michelle is laughing right now and she's listening to this because she just told me a story about how she was browning some ground beef and she had read something recently that the ground beef does better if you let it sit, while it kind of just don't bother it, I guess.
[1:10:46] Allison Weeks: So it develops a crust, you know, and then stir and brown it.
[1:10:50] Allison Weeks: So she was like, okay, I'm gonna let it sit.
[1:10:52] Allison Weeks: Well, she walked away from the stove and somebody pulled up to the house.
[1:10:56] Allison Weeks: They raised horses and so she needed to go see what the customer needed.
[1:10:59] Allison Weeks: And she walked outside and went down to the barn and totally forgot about it, left the ground beef sitting on the stove browning, and when she finally came back an hour later, her husband had just pulled up and there's smoke coming out of the eaves of the house.
[1:11:15] Breanna Wakefield: And the beef was on fire.
[1:11:16] Breanna Wakefield: Like the beef was on fire yeah, thankfully we didn't get to that point, but like it was very close.
[1:11:23] Allison Weeks: It was almost there.
[1:11:24] Breanna Wakefield: So yes, I understand.
[1:11:25] Allison Weeks: So, once again, as I said on Michelle's episode, the lesson here is when you're browning or sauteing something, do not walk away from the stove.
[1:11:33] Allison Weeks: Do not walk away stay right there.
[1:11:36] Breanna Wakefield: Don't do it when you're tired and just had a baby either.
[1:11:38] Allison Weeks: Exactly exactly.
[1:11:40] Allison Weeks: Okay, how about a home-making win?
[1:11:42] Allison Weeks: Let's redeem your story here.
[1:11:45] Breanna Wakefield: Okay, I actually have to think about this one, because so I might need a minute when I had put down.
[1:11:51] Breanna Wakefield: Oh, okay, I remember.
[1:11:53] Breanna Wakefield: Now we have just reached the point where we all eat the same dinner and my daughter just started eating completely solid foods and graduating from formula, and that is like the biggest win.
[1:12:06] Breanna Wakefield: When it's like, okay, we're all at the table at the same time Eating the same thing, that is amazing.
[1:12:18] Allison Weeks: That's a big win.
[1:12:19] Allison Weeks: It's a big win, congratulations, thank you.
[1:12:23] Allison Weeks: Okay, tell me a home-making product or resource that you're loving right now.
[1:12:29] Breanna Wakefield: The pancake batter dispenser.
[1:12:31] Allison Weeks: Ooh, I don't have one of those.
[1:12:33] Allison Weeks: You like it?
[1:12:34] Breanna Wakefield: I love it.
[1:12:34] Breanna Wakefield: It is just a little dispenser.
[1:12:38] Breanna Wakefield: You can get it on Amazon and you fill it with your batter and then you squeeze it and it makes perfect circles and it stops the batter right, Like as soon as you squeeze it stops it.
[1:12:48] Breanna Wakefield: So you don't get all the drippy pancake batter everywhere, and I even tried it with cupcakes and it worked.
[1:12:56] Breanna Wakefield: Just to get like I think if your batter was too fluffy, you know, probably wouldn't seep through as quickly, but if you were impatient and didn't have the fluffy cupcake batter, it probably would work for that too.
[1:13:11] Allison Weeks: Is it easy to clean?
[1:13:12] Breanna Wakefield: So a dishwasher, oh bonus, and it has two parts.
[1:13:17] Breanna Wakefield: You just take the lid off, put it in the dishwasher.
[1:13:19] Breanna Wakefield: Done, love it.
[1:13:21] Breanna Wakefield: It's amazing.
[1:13:22] Allison Weeks: Okay, that's a good one.
[1:13:23] Allison Weeks: All right, how about your favorite home-making hack or tip?
[1:13:26] Breanna Wakefield: I really like doing a toy rotation with my kids toys so I do not have all of their toys out in the house at the same time and it is so helpful because they know where things go.
[1:13:40] Breanna Wakefield: And then about every month I change the toys out.
[1:13:44] Breanna Wakefield: So I keep toys in the basement that I then bring up or about every month.
[1:13:50] Breanna Wakefield: So some of them are seasonal, like maybe there's like ones that are more Christmas related, or so I always try to have a puzzle or I always try to have something musical or something open ended, like magnet tiles.
[1:14:02] Breanna Wakefield: But I might not have magnet tiles and lego's out on the same floor at the same time, so it's less to clean and it keeps it fresh for them.
[1:14:12] Allison Weeks: That is a great tip.
[1:14:13] Allison Weeks: I love that, and they have not figured out yet that there are extra toys in the basement.
[1:14:18] Breanna Wakefield: That they do know that.
[1:14:20] Breanna Wakefield: My son figured that out and he calls it shopping.
[1:14:24] Breanna Wakefield: He'll say, mommy, can we go shopping in the basement?
[1:14:27] Breanna Wakefield: Oh, I'm going to go shopping for another toy and I'm not like a stickler on it, like, if he's like, I really miss that dump truck.
[1:14:34] Breanna Wakefield: You know, I don't always realize they had such a strong connection.
[1:14:38] Allison Weeks: Like favorite, it's one object that.
[1:14:41] Breanna Wakefield: So it's fine, but I do try to keep it under control.
[1:14:45] Breanna Wakefield: And then in the basement we keep some of the toys out down there, so it's just another space that we can play.
[1:14:51] Breanna Wakefield: But one of the ways they don't see all the toys is I have a shelf with just some tote bins.
[1:14:56] Allison Weeks: And I can't see what's in there.
[1:14:57] Allison Weeks: So that helps.
[1:14:59] Breanna Wakefield: There's some out down there, but not all they're not all visible.
[1:15:03] Breanna Wakefield: Yeah, that's a good that's a good tip.
[1:15:07] Allison Weeks: All right, tell me what is your signature dish.
[1:15:10] Breanna Wakefield: I had to ask my family for this and my sister-in-law was like I think it's your buttercream frosting.
[1:15:16] Breanna Wakefield: Oh, and it is an adapted recipe.
[1:15:19] Breanna Wakefield: It wasn't originally mine but I tweaked it a little bit.
[1:15:21] Breanna Wakefield: But I started making that for her.
[1:15:24] Breanna Wakefield: It was for her baby shower and it just became like the favorite family frosting, to the point that, like, if someone makes cupcakes, it is like, is this Brianna's frosting?
[1:15:36] Breanna Wakefield: If it's not, like I'm going to eat more dinner because I want to save room for, like, if it's Brianna's, I'm going to eat two cupcakes.
[1:15:43] Breanna Wakefield: So now that is the frosting that is made for, like any family celebration if I'm in town, or what I do for all my kids' cakes.
[1:15:51] Breanna Wakefield: And it's really easy.
[1:15:53] Breanna Wakefield: It's such an easy thing.
[1:15:56] Allison Weeks: Is it like a standard American buttercream?
[1:15:58] Breanna Wakefield: Yeah, it's just a vanilla buttercream, but I think that what maybe makes it special is that I put in a little bit of extra vanilla and I use salted butter so that it cuts a little bit of the powdered sugar, it's not so sweet yeah.
[1:16:12] Breanna Wakefield: Yeah, it's sweet, but there's definitely the little salt that cuts through.
[1:16:17] Allison Weeks: I like that.
[1:16:17] Allison Weeks: I like that.
[1:16:19] Breanna Wakefield: That's probably the most requested thing in family gatherings.
[1:16:25] Allison Weeks: Well, maybe you can share that with us.
[1:16:26] Allison Weeks: Sure, even though it's a tweaked recipe, it's always good to have like amounts, so we can make sure we're getting it right?
[1:16:32] Breanna Wakefield: Yes, yes, and I do.
[1:16:32] Breanna Wakefield: I have figured out the exact way that I make it every time, so oh good.
[1:16:38] Allison Weeks: Because, I don't have so many of my recipes I'm like.
[1:16:40] Allison Weeks: My kids ask me like I don't know, Come over and watch me make it and take notes, because I have no idea.
[1:16:45] Allison Weeks: I had to write it down because it you know when I tweaked it.
[1:16:49] Breanna Wakefield: I've tried.
[1:16:50] Breanna Wakefield: I've made it many, many, many times and it's like exactly the right ratio now.
[1:16:55] Breanna Wakefield: So Awesome.
[1:16:56] Breanna Wakefield: I can give that to you.
[1:16:58] Allison Weeks: Okay, great, let's talk about the art of home, and I'd love to know how you see homemaking as an art and where are you finding beauty in your homemaking?
[1:17:09] Breanna Wakefield: Well, I think, being married to an artist, my husband also dabbles in fine art.
[1:17:14] Breanna Wakefield: He's quite a good painter and photographer and so we spent a lot of time in art museums.
[1:17:21] Breanna Wakefield: That was something we both enjoyed before we were married.
[1:17:25] Breanna Wakefield: But I think when you walk into a museum, if you've been in enough of them or you've studied art, it becomes very apparent when you are in front of a masterpiece and when you know you know this is a Monet or this is a Picasso, like it's very specific styles, and I think that when you walk into someone's home, it's a very similar thing.
[1:17:47] Breanna Wakefield: You know, when I walk into my mom's house, it is her house and I couldn't always put into words why I would know that room my mom designed versus this one her friend designed.
[1:18:01] Breanna Wakefield: Or that dinner was something that was so special because this person made it, and this is how they always have dinner at their home and what I feel when I leave.
[1:18:12] Breanna Wakefield: And so I think that it's so personal and it's so informed by your struggles and your limitations and also your gifts and your talents, and it's this beautiful mix of growing.
[1:18:30] Breanna Wakefield: It's always something that's growing and progressing.
[1:18:33] Breanna Wakefield: You have kind of your early works as a homemaker that then get better with time, maybe some that you would like to throw away, but I think it's something.
[1:18:43] Breanna Wakefield: It's always growing and it's always getting more beautiful.
[1:18:46] Breanna Wakefield: And I think that's hard to see when you're in progress, maybe especially when you're in like that very early homemaking season, unless you just naturally look like are so good at it right away.
[1:18:59] Breanna Wakefield: But even in my season, like I have to remind myself, like yes, I don't have things on every wall, but that's because it's really important to me what hangs on them and it takes me time to pick that out or save for it or, you know, make it.
[1:19:17] Breanna Wakefield: So I think I think just the ongoing progress for me is maybe the art piece I don't know- yeah, that's a great answer.
[1:19:30] Breanna Wakefield: Okay, that's good.
[1:19:32] Allison Weeks: Yes, absolutely so.
[1:19:34] Allison Weeks: What's something about homemaking that you're thankful for?
[1:19:38] Breanna Wakefield: I'm thankful that it's a slow build.
[1:19:41] Breanna Wakefield: I think that where I used to hate that, where I used to just get so frustrated like I still haven't found my system for laundry, I think now I see the beauty in how we are being formed more and more into the image of Christ, into the image of our Creator and he is a creative God and the ability to reflect his image in what we are making with our own hands, whether that's, you know, dinner, or whether that's a hug and creating a deeper relationship with your child, or reading a book, or.
[1:20:28] Breanna Wakefield: I'm thankful that it's something that's always growing and that there's always room to say that didn't work.
[1:20:36] Breanna Wakefield: I can change it, like I'm not okay, that did not work, like move on, try something different, and there's so many options to choose from.
[1:20:47] Breanna Wakefield: So I think that the in progress and the creativity are things I'm very thankful for now.
[1:20:54] Allison Weeks: Yeah, that's a good perspective.
[1:20:56] Allison Weeks: Let's end our time talking to the other women.
[1:21:01] Allison Weeks: You're right in the middle, so we're going to talk to the older ladies and we're going to talk to the younger ladies.
[1:21:06] Allison Weeks: Let's talk to the older ladies first.
[1:21:08] Allison Weeks: What would you like them to know about your experience as a homemaker that would help them know how to come alongside you and help you and encourage you.
[1:21:19] Breanna Wakefield: I thought I'd start that question with some things some older ladies have done for me.
[1:21:23] Breanna Wakefield: Sure, that I have found really helpful.
[1:21:25] Breanna Wakefield: Yeah, yeah, I have been blessed with the most amazing neighbors.
[1:21:32] Breanna Wakefield: One in front of me was about 10 years ahead of me and one to the side is about 20 years ahead of me and, by God's provision, in moving to a state where I knew nobody, he put two Christian women on either side of me who have often taken time to say oh, I remember that, I remember that season, I remember what that felt like and have looked for really practical ways to just bless me.
[1:22:01] Breanna Wakefield: So one of them will just show up randomly Like I made you dinner.
[1:22:06] Breanna Wakefield: Here's a lasagna, you can eat it or you can freeze it, but like it's done.
[1:22:10] Breanna Wakefield: And there's salad and bread and I didn't ask for it.
[1:22:14] Breanna Wakefield: I wasn't necessarily having a hard week, but just being seen by someone who remembers so well just those little years and who took the time to make you dinner.
[1:22:27] Breanna Wakefield: And my other neighbor knows that I have a lot of company come and she is a very gifted cleaner and she actually owned her own cleaning business and she just loves to come and see my kids and hold them and keep me company sometimes during the day.
[1:22:47] Breanna Wakefield: And she came over on one particular day and I had some people staying and I was really behind and she said would it be all right with you if I, if I help you clean your kitchen today?
[1:22:56] Breanna Wakefield: And she just took the time to like do all the things I would not have gotten to, like wipe down my cabinets and get like all the little grooves in the tile of where sauce had splashed.
[1:23:09] Breanna Wakefield: And it just meant so much to me because she has been in my home.
[1:23:14] Breanna Wakefield: She's one of those people.
[1:23:16] Breanna Wakefield: Both my neighbors have seen my home a complete disaster and a beautiful like masterpiece.
[1:23:21] Breanna Wakefield: They've seen all of it.
[1:23:22] Breanna Wakefield: They live right next to me and they just humbly enter into my season, not from a place of judgment or wow, bri, and I can't believe like you've had pasta sauce on your cabinet for five weeks Like it was very much from a place of like I know some people are coming to visit you and that if you had the time you would hit that pasta sauce.
[1:23:46] Breanna Wakefield: So like I do have the time and I'm going to meet that for you.
[1:23:49] Breanna Wakefield: So I think those are just some practical things people in my life that are older than me have done and I think on a on a deeper level, I think that women in my generation are inundated with so much information about every choice we could make in a day.
[1:24:10] Breanna Wakefield: There are just so many tips and so many ideas.
[1:24:14] Breanna Wakefield: And what I just find so helpful is when older women will, when I may be spinning and oh, should I send them to the school or should I do this at home or when they stop me and have said and I've had multiple older women do this, family members, friends and say, like you know, I remember when I was making that decision and it was really hard and this is how God met me in the process, and they didn't necessarily prescribe what I should do, like they didn't add five more ideas to my already swirling menagerie, but they said like God's going to be there and he's going to meet you in that season, and this is how he met me.
[1:24:59] Breanna Wakefield: And if you want to talk about practically what that looked like, I'm here for you, but know that I'm praying for you.
[1:25:06] Breanna Wakefield: I just find those conversations to be just ones I replay over and over again.
[1:25:17] Allison Weeks: Yeah, that's great.
[1:25:18] Allison Weeks: How about the younger women?
[1:25:20] Allison Weeks: What would you say to them?
[1:25:22] Allison Weeks: Maybe some advice, some encouragement, a warning?
[1:25:25] Allison Weeks: How would you?
[1:25:26] Allison Weeks: What would you say?
[1:25:28] Breanna Wakefield: I think that in all the seasons of life that are ahead of you, you probably have some expectations of what they're going to be like, just like when I shared my story of I thought I would hold my son after he was born for an hour and he was gone.
[1:25:44] Breanna Wakefield: And I think what I find very valuable is maybe writing those down and going when I get married or when I have my own house or when I have a child.
[1:26:00] Breanna Wakefield: This is what I think it's going to be like.
[1:26:03] Breanna Wakefield: And looking at that list and going maybe, maybe that will happen and it would be awesome if it does.
[1:26:12] Breanna Wakefield: I hope that some of those dreams happen for you, but asking God to help you be okay if they don't to help you to see that maybe he's doing a different work in you, that maybe he has a different plan than you had, and to realize that life is much more fluid than fixed.
[1:26:33] Breanna Wakefield: It's going to change, it's going to you're going to ride mountaintops and you're going to hit deep valleys and if you haven't had that yet, they are coming.
[1:26:46] Breanna Wakefield: But just like my counselor said, he will be merciful and he will be with you.
[1:26:51] Breanna Wakefield: So maybe checking those expectations before the season is upon you, I think, would have made some of those a lot easier transitions for me.
[1:27:04] Allison Weeks: Yes, life is a lot more fluid than fixed.
[1:27:07] Allison Weeks: I like that so much that is very true, Very true Well it is Brianna.
[1:27:12] Allison Weeks: Thank you so much for being here and sharing your story.
[1:27:17] Allison Weeks: Yes, it was such a joy to get to spend some time with you and hear your story of home, and I can't wait to share it with everybody.
[1:27:24] Breanna Wakefield: Oh, I hope it is helpful and a blessing to some other people and makes it a little bit easier for them.
[1:27:30] Breanna Wakefield: Hold on.
[1:27:31] Allison Weeks: Yes, I'm sure it will be Okay.
[1:27:33] Allison Weeks: Thanks.
[1:27:34] Breanna Wakefield: Thank you.
[1:27:37] Allison Weeks: Thank you so much for listening to this in the trenches.
[1:27:40] Allison Weeks: Homemade portrait of Brianna Wakefield.
[1:27:42] Allison Weeks: I hope it's been inspiring and encouraging for you today and I hope you found some things, some little nugget or idea that you can take right now and apply in your practice of the art of home.
[1:27:53] Allison Weeks: Don't forget to sign up for our newsletter, homemaker Happy Mail, if you are not already signed up, because that's where you're going to get the top takeaways from today's conversation with Brianna, including her recipe for her famous buttercream frosting and the resources and tips and ideas that she shared with us.
[1:28:13] Allison Weeks: That's also how you get your hands on the newsletters that go along with our holiday homemaking episodes that are going to be coming up later at the end of this month.
[1:28:23] Allison Weeks: So if you want to subscribe to this free newsletter, just go to theartofhomepodcastcomcom.
[1:28:29] Allison Weeks: If you have found value in today's episode, you can say thanks in a couple of different ways.
[1:28:36] Allison Weeks: First of all, please share this episode with someone that you know who could use this kind of encouraging content.
[1:28:42] Allison Weeks: Maybe it's your sister, maybe it's your next door neighbor, maybe it's your mom.
[1:28:47] Allison Weeks: Anybody who you think would value Brianna's story and value the kinds of content that we are creating here on the art of home.
[1:28:57] Allison Weeks: Would you just send this along their way and help us grow organically?
[1:29:01] Allison Weeks: That is just the most important thing you can do.
[1:29:03] Allison Weeks: So thank you.
[1:29:04] Allison Weeks: Secondly, you can leave us a rating and a review on your podcast listening app.
[1:29:09] Allison Weeks: We love five star ratings and we love reviews that talk about what is it that you love about the art of home?
[1:29:18] Allison Weeks: It's encouraging to me personally, but it also is really helpful when people are searching on their podcast app for homemaking podcasts and they come across a list of different ones and I don't know about you, but I tend to scroll down and read the reviews so I can decide if a podcast is something I might want to invest in or not.
[1:29:35] Allison Weeks: So it's helpful for those who are searching and it does encourage me to see your reviews for the show.
[1:29:41] Allison Weeks: So thank you for that.
[1:29:41] Allison Weeks: And then finally, if you would like, you can leave us a tip in our virtual tip jar.
[1:29:47] Allison Weeks: Buy me a coffee.
[1:29:48] Allison Weeks: Tips are given in five dollar increments and you can give one, two, three, four, five, ten, as many as you would like or as few as you would like.
[1:29:56] Allison Weeks: I appreciate all of it, and any of our tips that we receive go straight towards offsetting the cost of production for this podcast and all of the resources that we have available for free to listeners.
[1:30:09] Allison Weeks: So thank you very much for your support in any and all fashion.
[1:30:13] Allison Weeks: You can leave us a tip at buy me a coffee.
[1:30:16] Allison Weeks: Dot com slash the art of home.
[1:30:18] Allison Weeks: You can also go to our support page on the website and it'll tell you in detail all of the different ways that you can support the show by sharing or by reviewing or by giving Go to the art of home podcast, dot com slash support.
[1:30:33] Allison Weeks: Well, that is all for this week's episode.
[1:30:35] Allison Weeks: I'm going to be back next week.
[1:30:37] Allison Weeks: I know this is episode six and you might be thinking, oh wait, we only ever do six episodes in a season, but if you hadn't been in tuned in for a while, I'm calling this season 16 plus because you're getting eight episodes this season.
[1:30:52] Allison Weeks: So I'll be back next week with episode seven.
[1:30:54] Allison Weeks: It's another homemaker portrait of a listener just like you.
[1:30:58] Allison Weeks: You, until then, keep practicing your art of making a home.
[1:31:02] Allison Weeks: Okay, great, all right.
[1:31:06] Allison Weeks: So first of all, I would love to know how you and I apologize if you wrote this on your application.
[1:31:13] Allison Weeks: I had to go through a lot of applications, so how did you find the podcast?
[1:31:18] Breanna Wakefield: Well, I had just moved to Ohio about two years ago and we had moved from where I'd grown up in Minnesota and I was staying at home with my son and I just was lonely.
[1:31:31] Breanna Wakefield: I didn't have a lot of friends yet and I was just looking for ways that I could feel just encouraged in what I was doing.
[1:31:40] Breanna Wakefield: I had transitioned from a lot of years of working as a full time teacher to now having a baby and being at home, and so I literally searched homemaking podcasts and that and yours came up, and I don't remember if it was like in a recommended list, I think it just came up on Apple podcasts and I started listening, I think right at the beginning, because I think there were only a few homemaker portraits and I kept telling people, I kept saying there's just all these dear older Texas women that are just pouring out wisdom to me and encouraging me.
[1:32:20] Breanna Wakefield: And I have not stopped listening and it has just been such an encouragement in this season of making this my full time job.
[1:32:33] Allison Weeks: Oh.
[1:32:33] Allison Weeks: I love hearing that.
[1:32:34] Allison Weeks: Thank you for sharing that.
[1:32:37] Breanna Wakefield: I recommend it to everybody that is transitioning, or even my mom.
[1:32:42] Breanna Wakefield: The other day.
[1:32:42] Breanna Wakefield: I was like mom, you have to listen to this podcast.
[1:32:46] Breanna Wakefield: There are all these older women that are going through their kids leaving home or another child getting married, and they're like there's so much wisdom.
[1:32:56] Breanna Wakefield: You got to listen, mom, so getting some, some older listeners for you too.
[1:33:02] Allison Weeks: Oh, that's awesome, Thank you, thank you.
[1:33:05] Allison Weeks: Thank you.
[1:33:06] Allison Weeks: Well, you're welcome, yeah, and have fun.
[1:33:14] Breanna Wakefield: Thanks.
[1:33:15] Breanna Wakefield: I thank you so much for inviting me to have this opportunity.
[1:33:20] Breanna Wakefield: I, when I saw the application come out, I thought I don't, should I apply for that?
[1:33:25] Breanna Wakefield: And I thought you know, I just really my daughter is one and my son is three and I just thought, oh, they could have like this snapshot of me at 30.
[1:33:37] Allison Weeks: I know, and it's like it makes me cry because, like, that's just so valuable.
[1:33:43] Breanna Wakefield: Yes, I have some of my mother-in-law's writings from when she was the same age as me and I like treasure them.
[1:33:52] Breanna Wakefield: I read them every year, so that's a big reason why I did that.
[1:33:56] Breanna Wakefield: I love it.
[1:33:57] Breanna Wakefield: I love that you recognize that because that's.
[1:33:59] Allison Weeks: That was something that I thought about early on, because my so my sister-in-law.
[1:34:04] Allison Weeks: I don't know if I've told this story on the podcast before, but my sister-in-law.
[1:34:07] Allison Weeks: this is many years ago.
[1:34:08] Allison Weeks: She had the foresight to go to her grandmother, my husband's and hers grandmother and just, she took a tape recorder and she sat down with her and she said okay, ma'am, tell me your story.
[1:34:23] Allison Weeks: Wow, she recorded her on like one of those little ones that you would, you know back in the day you're maybe too young for that, but anyway, then she brought it home and she transcribed it and typed it up exactly the way that she spoke it, which was very deep south, you know.
[1:34:38] Allison Weeks: So it was kind of she tried to get her accent in there and it was and then gave all of us copies.
[1:34:45] Allison Weeks: Oh and I was like that and I treasure that, and so that was a big inspiration for me wanting to do this show.
[1:34:54] Allison Weeks: So I thought, even if nobody else really listens, if it doesn't, you know, blow up or grow or anything, I I just feel like it's so valuable for you to have that to give to your children and your grandchildren.
[1:35:07] Breanna Wakefield: Yes, and your great-grandchildren.
[1:35:08] Breanna Wakefield: Thank you, thank you for inviting me to do that, because that is a huge gift that you're giving my family, hopefully it is my pleasure, okay.
[1:35:22] Allison Weeks: Okay, am I saying your name right?
[1:35:23] Allison Weeks: Is it Brianna or Brianna, or Brianna, brianna, brianna.
[1:35:28] Breanna Wakefield: Brianna.
[1:35:28] Breanna Wakefield: Yes, my, my dad's name is Brian, so his is with an I.
[1:35:34] Breanna Wakefield: So they made mine with an E so that it would be different from his, and they made it with the Ianna so that it would be just separate from this.
[1:35:43] Breanna Wakefield: I like that, but our names mean the same thing, dude what is it?
[1:35:48] Allison Weeks: What does it mean?
[1:35:49] Breanna Wakefield: It means strong and each of our first names.
[1:35:52] Breanna Wakefield: I have three siblings, three younger brothers.
[1:35:55] Breanna Wakefield: All our first names are a promise or a prayer our parents had for what our spiritual life would look like, and our middle names are a family name.
[1:36:06] Breanna Wakefield: So my first name is mean strong, because they prayed that I would be strong in my faith, and it's also the same meaning as my dad, which was really special growing up.
[1:36:17] Allison Weeks: I love that.
[1:36:18] Allison Weeks: I love that.
[1:36:19] Allison Weeks: That's so great.
[1:36:20] Allison Weeks: I love to hear people's name name stories.
[1:36:22] Breanna Wakefield: Yes, Okay, you ready, I'm ready, let's do it All, right, so exciting.

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