AN OPEN HEART AND A FULL TABLE

Welcome to my new home! I’m SO glad you’re here. Some of you may have followed me here from The NoshRoom and some of you may be new friends. Either way I can already tell that we are going to get along famously!! If you’re wondering what Salt + Charm is all about, here you go… 

I started noshroom.com back in November of 2012 after a lot of my people kept asking for recipes and dinner ideas and because I knew I needed a place to expand my dinner table past the 8 chairs I have crammed around it.

I wanted to make a place for YOU… my heart needed to make room and I found that and more through opening my physical home and my virtual home to as many people as possible. And I have to tell you, loves, there have been times that I thought my heart would literally burst wide open from that little community. The way you all loved on me as I loved on you was miraculous and I am so grateful.

But now it’s time to throw open the doors even further. I found out that I started to have more to say than my little food blog would allow. I’ve learned so much over the last 4 years about keeping the heavy door to my heart open and about how to love more deeply and thoughtfully and about how to nourish my soul by nourishing yours as well. Love is such a reciprocal adventure. When I need to feel loved you better believe that happens faster when I wrap my arms around you first.

I found that my path to healing after an extremely painful season in my life was not through shutting myself off to new relationships but rather welcoming them in with open arms and my still broken heart. Was I scared? Hell yes. Was it worth it? All of the yesses. Every last one of them.

My Jesus, my people and some amazing food drug me out of a miry place.

The many people I have welcomed to my table in the last 4 years have taught me so much about accepting the things that life brings me. I am convinced that sharing a meal, some spirits and YOUR SPIRIT with your people is the best path to growth. It destroys the imaginary walls that we have built up to defend our broken hearts. It rips apart false ideas of who that person really is when all we know about them is the distant kind of knowing.

The table does that. It equalizes us… we sit together… we dine together… we laugh with each other… we cry with each other. {but mostly laugh… let’s do more of that} 

I’m so grateful that the idea of “my people” has grown to include all of YOU. I adore you all… this community of food + life lovers. This ever broadening circle of accepters + healers + believers + embracers + adventurers. I’m so excited to have a place to get to know you!

So why “Salt + Charm”?

Besides the obvious references to coastal living+food {salt} and southern graces+hospitality {charm}, what I have realized is that life is such a dichotomy of lovely and unlovely. The bitter and the sweet. The charming southern born and bred girl and the salty can’t-watch-her-mouth grown woman who has decided to be who she is and hope for the best. 

I want to be a safe place for you to land to find inspiration for living a life that is comfortably uncomfortable. I want to encourage you to open up your hearts to new experiences and different perspectives. I want to nudge you to fill your tables with amazing food, your days with new adventures and your hearts with people who will bring more love into your life.

I wish desperately that I could invite each of you to sit in my home, to kick your shoes off and share a meal. Maybe someday a lot of you will. (Wouldn’t that be fantastic?!) But in the meantime, let’s pretend you are walking through my front door right now and we are about to have the time of our lives together… a little wine, a LOT of food and some conversations that will make you smile.

Welcome to my table. I’m so glad you’re here!

Next week, Lindsey Pruitt is going to join us and share a little about our process creating my new virtual home. I was so very fortunate to work with her and had no idea how masterfully she would take all the ideas in my heart and make them into something so beautiful and a perfect representation of how I want you to feel every time you land here.

And tomorrow there is going to be a really amazing giveaway that you don’t want to miss! So stick around, loves!

I sure do love you all! (especially YOU!)

-Abs