Velvety sweet caramel and chocolate ganache are beautifully offset with crunchy sea salt in a delicious light but chewy crust. Don’t let it intimidate you it, just takes a bit of chilling between each layer! 

It’s hard to believe that we have less than two weeks left here in our home in Georgia. This house has seen so much in these last three years we have lived here it will be bittersweet to move back home to the northwest.

As I sit in our backyard looking around at all the improvements we’ve made…and all the unfinished projects that we will be leaving it fills my heart with joy and sadness simultaneously.

In this home, I have carried and birthed our babies, laughed, cried, fought and made up. This yard has seen bonfires and garden parties, garden work days and brew days. We’ve grown gardens and animals in this yard, sunbathed babies jaundice away and swung slowly in hammocks.

We’ve fought ants and ticks and chiggers and cockroaches. We’ve seen baby ducks and baby rabbits and even our own baby born on this land. Plucked berries and figs and pears, and swooped low to harvest bags upon bags of pecans from the ground.

We sweated and poured and labored together and yes fought many a night as we tried to make this house a home. And we learned.

We learned about stewardship towards something that we couldn’t even call our own. We learned grace and perseverance, patience and long-suffering.

We learned that some things….like installing a whole new ceiling in the middle of a southern summer, are best left to the professionals. And those other things like installing a dishwasher and a washing machine in a house that hasn’t ever had one, is the best thing anyone could ever learn to do.

As the perfect paint jobs have been banged and bashed by our never-ending explorer of a toddler we have learned that life isn’t perfect and that touching things…and breaking things, are all part of the process.

We learned that tiny farm houses being remodeled really, really need storage and that Ikea makes really great countertops. That Behr all-in-one paint is the bomb and that rabbits shouldn’t be raised on pasture when all you have is a tiny backyard.

We’ve learned to hold each other when life melts down around us and uncertainty looms. That we really are strong enough together to make it through the storms of life. And that all the stuff…it just doesn’t really matter at all.

I’m starting to learn to slow down. We’ve packed so much into our time here and to be honest…I’m tired. I’m ready for slow days and leisurely dinners with our families. I’m ready to start to embrace the limits of having a young family instead of fighting them as I have with overzealous plans to be the best at everything.

I’ve learned that there isn’t enough time in a day for me to be the world’s best mom, wife, friend, blogger, gardener, homesteader, crafter, remodeler, house cleaner, volunteer and just plain individual that needs to eat, bathe and find time to pee.

I’ve learned I can’t have it all. So I want to pick the most important things to have in this next season.

I want to have more dinners and coffees with family and friends. I want to have more date nights and adventures with my husband. I want to have a more effective and satisfying work time.

I’ve learned I have to have less of other things.

Less stuff. Less clutter. Less wasted time that could be given to wiping a scraped knee and playing peek a boo. Less time trying to learn everything I could possibly need to know to make a successful blog and more time just writing on this blog that I love. Fewer screens and more paper. More photos and more words. 

I’ve learned that frantic last-minute preparations and fancy meals don’t make for good dinner parties. That simple things like chocolate and caramel make people…and toddlers very happy.

And that having the dishes done the day before a party because dessert is made ahead of time makes me happy.

I don’t know what this next season will look like, but I hope it will be as full of learning and living as the last season has been. 

Crust adapted from Food & Wine. Tart filling adapted from Saveur.