Artfully cultivating a home of beauty that nourishes all that live and visit there
Online Course
Poetry of Place - the unique, distinctive, cherished aspects of a place where stories, art, memories, beliefs, and histories are woven into a tapestry of great beauty.
Your home should mirror who you are and the stories you carry. It is sacred space.
It is the stories of our days, nights, celebrations, and ordinary journeys. Stories that bring us joy and lead us to reminisce. A poem that doesn’t need to be recited, because it is seen and felt. Wherever we hold space is a powerful part of who we are and the stories we carry. Living poetry. A creative haven where there is contagious wonder that reveals the truth of our Creator.
What does your home say about you right now? Your home is as unique as your personality. How are you writing your and your family’s story? The poetry of our spaces is what makes our home unique among other places.
Our home is a big part of shaping who we are and who we turn out to be; and it is our most powerful place of ministry. Let’s bring beauty, art, and creativity into our spaces whether they are permanent, mobile, for work, or for play. We can be intentional about cultivating a home of beauty that is life-giving. A sacred place.
Join us in this special online course to step into artfully cultivating a creative home of beauty that nourishes all that live and visit there; as we learn the power and soul nourishment of the poetry of place.
INSTRUCTORS
Daune Pitman
Daune Pitman grew up among a family of entrepreneurs, artists, and gatherers in North Carolina. She owned her first business when she was six and created pen and ink drawings of the beach each day after school, and then went door-to-door selling them. Morning walks in the garden, markets, coffee, fresh flowers, books, a beautifully set table, delicious food, faith, family, travel, adventure, great company….these are a few of her favorite things.
Daune and her husband, Keith, are former professional ballet dancers. After spending many years performing professionally in companies nationwide she and Keith have found themselves nestled in a cottage in Eastern NC, where they love to gather people, dream, and launch adventures. After homeschooling their three children, they are new empty nesters.
She believes our homes are our most powerful place of ministry, and with a passion for home, gathering, creativity, and travel, Daune launched The Cottage Table Experience and hosts long table gatherings, live workshops on creative home + hospitality + gathering, and creative retreats abroad and in the U.S. While being very content with where she is, she is homesick for places she has never been, and believes wholeheartedly that we should seize the common occasions and make them great!
Jeanne Oliver
Jeanne is married to her dream maker, Kelly, and the mother of three funny and creative children. She homeschools her children even though she has tried to get out of it a few times. You can often find her hiking, creating in her studio and finding an excuse to have another cup of coffee. She speaks and teaches all around the country and abroad. She was told that she needed to find that one thing but she doesn’t like listening to directions so she embraces many loves and that has given her a sweet mash-up of family, art, and travel. Connecting with women and sharing that each of us has been creatively made is one of her passions.
Jeanne is also a best selling author, creator of the online art school jeanneoliver.com with over 70,000 members from around the world, creator of the Creatively Made Business curriculum, and podcaster.
Lissa Whitlock
I’m Lissa Whitlock. I’ve been married for almost 27 years to my husband, Neal. Together we have raised two amazing girls, one is married now and lives on the other side of the state and one has moved to Arizona for school. After supporting my husband and taking care of the bills while he finished his degree I got to live my greatest dream which was to be a stay at home mom, raising my kids to the best of my ability. I’ve poured my whole heart into my marriage and parenting well. Recently, my husband and I became empty nesters and found that we weren’t ready. When I was pregnant there were all sorts of resources that helped you know what to expect when You were expecting. Then we took classes on the delivery process, the newborn feeding schedule, and how to handle a strong willed child. If we felt that we were in over our heads we could find a book or a class to help us get through. We are two proud parents who love our children deeply and raised them to chase their dreams with abandon. What we didn’t know to do was to prepare our own hearts for this big life change. This is where the purchase of our 2017 airstream Bambi comes into play. It became a way for us to figure out who we were now that we no longer have kids living at home. We’ve had adventures that have filled our hearts and continue to learn many lessons along the way. Our kids will always be our top priority but now it’s time for us to build our own futures the way we encourage our girls to build theirs.
Christine Willard
Christine Willard is a wife, mother, home educator, theologian, writer and teacher. The most important things in her life are faith and family. Christine’s faith inspired her to study theology in seminary, where she earned a master’s degree. Studying, biblical languages, she wrote, “A Theology of Womanhood” for her thesis. It was during her final year in seminary that she met her husband, Tim. He wasn’t in seminary. His band played at the cafe on campus. What can we say, she likes ‘em wild.
Chris’s family daily inspires her to learn and love. She shares a passion for writing along with her husband . You can explore her work at Club31Women, and her new Substack newsletter, Mend, where she sends weekly devotionals. Christine writes when she can, but her main focus rests on home-educating her daughters: Lyric, Brielle, and Zion. She also teaches writing for the local Classical Conversations co-op and loves how the mystery of faith can be expressed through the gift of writing.
Chris’s favorite experience as a family was the two years they spent living in Oxford, England while Tim researched for his PhD. It was a time of inspiration and growth—a time when God shifted their idea of what it looked like to live in this chaotic world of ours and showed them the joy of chasing beauty.
Christine lives with her family in Waxhaw, North Carolina with some woods and a melodramatic Goldendoodle named Cash. Most days you will find her escaping to the forest trail behind their house or to the front porch to read.
Timothy Willard
Timothy Willard is a writer, theologian, artist, creative consultant, and independent scholar. He has authored four books, including the critically acclaimed Veneer: Living Deeply in a Surface Society. His new book, The Beauty Chasers (Zondervan Reflective) released in 2022.
With a passion to disciple the minds of the emerging generation in faith and culture and for helping people live like beauty matters, Timothy moved his family to Oxford, England, for two years, where he earned his Ph.D. at King’s College London and studied beauty in the works of C.S. Lewis under the supervision of Alister McGrath.
Millions have read Timothy’s inspirational writing, which has been featured in Christianity Today, The Gospel Coalition, Patheos, Acculturated, The Huffington Post, FaithIt, Duke Divinity’s Faith & Leadership, Q Media: Essays, Catalyst Magazine, Outreach Magazine, Relevant Magazine, and The Edges Collective.
Timothy has been a featured speaker at Q Ideas, Catalyst Conference, Allume Conference, OCCA, The Oxford Center for Christian Apologetics, and various churches, including Carmel Baptist in Charlotte, North Carolina, Embrace Church in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and St. Aldates Church: Oxford, England.
As a creative consultant and publishing collaborator (ghostwriter), Timothy has worked on thirty books with clients ranging from Chick-fil-A, Q Ideas, International Mission Board, Hobby Lobby, and Coca-Cola Consolidated to NYT bestselling authors, multi-platinum Grammy Award-winning artists, former NFL MVPs, to writers, pastors, home educators, and entrepreneurs.
He lives in North Carolina with his wife and three daughters.
