welcome to plain living
Practical Skills for a Handmade, From-Scratch Home
I’m Kim—a wife, homeschooling mom of five, lifelong maker, and chronic learner living on the South Dakota prairie.
Plain Living Home is where I share the skills our family actually uses: tested fresh-milled flour and sourdough recipes, beginner-friendly sewing tutorials, from-scratch kitchen basics, and Hope Chest projects designed to be used, loved, and passed down.
This isn’t about doing everything the old-fashioned way or creating a picture-perfect life. It’s about learning useful skills, making more with your own hands, and building a home that feels warm, capable, and deeply lived in.
THE STORY BEHIND PLAIN LIVING
Scott and I married young and have spent more than sixteen years learning how to build a life together. We’ve raised five children, homeschooled, built businesses, served in ministry, moved, started over, succeeded, failed, and learned how to keep choosing one another through every kind of season.
We’ve been a police family and a military family. We’ve experienced seasons of abundance and seasons when we had to become very creative. For years, we worked hard to do everything the “right” way—until a difficult season forced us to question which parts of our life were built on genuine conviction and which parts were shaped by pressure, noise, and other people’s expectations.
For a while, it felt as though the life we had worked so hard to build was falling apart. But starting over didn’t mean walking away from God, our family, or everything we believed. It meant stepping back, holding tightly to what was true, and becoming willing to build differently.
That is the story behind Plain Living Home.
We’re rebuilding one ordinary day at a time on the South Dakota prairie—learning useful skills, feeding our family, teaching our children, making things with our hands, and creating a home that reflects what matters most to us.
I don’t share from a place of having everything figured out. I share what we have tested, what has worked, what has failed, and what we are learning along the way. My hope is that Plain Living Home helps you feel more confident trying something new, whether that means milling your first batch of flour, sewing your first straight seam, cooking more from scratch, or beginning a Hope Chest of your own.
Start Here
Fresh milled flour
Learn how to choose wheat berries, mill grain, understand fresh flour dough, and bake dependable breads, breakfasts, and desserts.
beginner sewing
Start with sewing-machine basics, fabric and thread, straight seams, and useful projects designed for people who were never taught to sew.
simple sourdough
Find practical sourdough recipes for everyday family baking, from starter and discard basics to bread, biscuits, bagels, and treats.
the hope chest
Follow our cross-topic series as we gather practical skills, handmade treasures, family recipes, and meaningful things worth passing down.
What You Can Expect From Plain Living Home
Everything shared here is created for real life—not simply to fill a website.
Recipes are made in my own kitchen, and I tell you which grains, substitutions, and methods I have actually tested. When climate, room temperature, or fresh-milled flour can change the result, I include the details that helped me make it work.
Sewing tutorials are written with beginners in mind. I try not to skip the small steps that experienced sewists may do automatically but a new sewist has never been taught.
Here you can expect:
- Tested recipes with practical troubleshooting notes
- Beginner-friendly instructions that do not assume prior knowledge
- Honest explanations of what worked, what failed, and what I changed
- Useful projects and resources our family genuinely uses
- Updates when I discover a clearer or more reliable method
I’m not interested in pretending there is only one perfect way to make a home. My goal is to give you enough information and encouragement to try the skill for yourself—and enough honesty to help when it doesn’t go perfectly the first time.
