I’ve spent the last five years making our first house a home. Then my husband took a new job and suddenly we had four days notice to move our family 1300 miles across the country. I loaded our SUV with all the things I thought were “important” with the rest of our things scheduled to arrive a couple of weeks behind us. Within a day we found the place we would be calling home for at least the next year, according to the lease we signed.
As I sat in our living room with my husband and daughter, eating one of our favorite cheesy pasta dishes on our sole piece of furniture (a rapidly deflating twin air mattress), I looked around and felt at home. The thought caused me to laugh at myself as I looked at the bare walls with nary a single piece of my daughter’s artwork or a framed photograph of us. There wasn’t an overflowing bookshelf or my favorite throw blanket in sight. There were none of the things I had thought made a house a home.
Soon enough, the artwork and photographs would once again fill the walls and the smell of my favorite books would permeate the entryway of our home. All of those things would come in time but what really made our house, these four bare walls, a home were the people inside it and the memories we were already making. It’s about being happy together, cooking one of our favorite dishes and eating it on an air mattress with only each other for entertainment – a story that would someday soon be prefaced with, “Remember that time?”. It was at that moment that I knew I could do this. I knew I could spend the next however many years picking up our family and moving them from place to place without completely losing my mind, because I had discovered what really makes our house a home.
This fall, Marie Callender’s is gearing up to re-launch the Comforts from Home Project by bringing the comforts of home to those who protect America’s homes every day: the brave men and women of the U.S. military. Additionally, Marie Callender’s is teaming up with the USO to support USO Operation Celebration™, a program that shares a bit of home with our troops and helps them celebrate the holidays year round. You can support the cause by participating in Marie Callender’s Comforts from Home photo challenge on Facebook. Just upload a photo of what home means to you with the hashtag #ComfortsFromHome. The Scripps Network will donate $1 for every photo received in support of the USO (up to 10,000). Then your photo could end up on air with one of the shows Marie Callender’s teamed up with:
- KitchenCrashers on DIYNetwork and HGTV – Airing 11/9 and 11/14
- American Heroes on Travel Channel – Airing 11/9
- Guy’s Grocery Games on Food Network & Cooking Channel – Airing 12/14 and 12/19
This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Marie Callender’s. The opinions and text are all mine.