From the threshold

Looking back at 2025 and announcements for 2026!

“May I dare as I have never done. May I preserve as I have never done. May I purify myself anew as with fires & water - soul & body. May my melody not be wanting to the season. May I gird myself to be a hunter of the beautiful that naught escape me. May I attain to a youth never attained. I am eager to report the glory of the universe - may I be worthy to do it - to have got through with regarding human values so as not to be distracted from regarding divine values. It is reasonable that a man should be something worthier at the end of the year than he was at the beginning.”

Excerpt from Henry David Thoreau’s journal, March 15, 1852

Heading into the Santo Niño chapel at El Santuario de Chimayó (New Mexico)

This past year has stretched and deepened me - and my work here - in new ways, and I’m so grateful to every single one of you for being a part of this process. Your voices help to make Hearthstone Fables a team effort, allowing us all to continue exploring the liturgical calendar in ways that help to take it off the screen and into our respective lives and landscapes.

Here’s a look-back at 2025 at Hearthstone Fables…

• Posts: I published 74 new posts (31 of which were especially for paid subscribers)

• Scriptorium: I designed, meticulously painted or inked, formatted, wrote, and posted around 25 new printables to the ever-growing collection of resources in the Scriptorium.

• Book of Hours: To help us all collect the printables and reflections we’ve been gathering these past few years, I started making symbolic cover pages and sharing more about the process of building a liturgical year binder.

• Book Club: We read five wonderful books together this past year - and were joined by the authors for a discussion of each book!

• Special Guests: I hosted around six special guests (in addition to our book club authors) for live discussions with paid subscribers

• Giveaways: We held six giveaways - available to all subscribers - ranging from books to calendars

• Rushbearing Festival: We held our first annual Rushbearing Festival, featuring special guests, live conversations, recorded videos, door prizes, and more…all geared toward asking ourselves how we can “bear rushes” into our own communities and churches.

• Almanac: In addition to my monthly festal focus, I started sending out monthly Almanacs with accompanying printables, to help us all keep better track of online gatherings, feast days, and more

• Botanical Liturgies: This new series (to be continued!) launched, with a focus on the religious folklore of plants

• Founding Membership: I’m incredibly grateful to have been able to launch the new founding membership, thanks to the support of such a wonderful team of readers here - with special thanks to Michelle H., my very first founder and wonderful soul-sister. This has allowed me to begin sending physical subscription goodies to you!

• Liturgical Life Group: We hosted twelve more gatherings for our local liturgical life group - one each month - and shared them with paid subscribers here

• Still Advent: I launched Still Advent, bringing together other liturgical living voices to help support a gentler pace throughout Advent

• Retreat: In 2024, I completed a year-long mentorship with ceramic artist Krista Coons…and in February 2025, that mentorship came full-circle with an immersive retreat outside Tucson, Arizona. Krista has been instrumental in helping me to unbox my thinking about ‘art’…seeing research, interviews, prayer, and so much more as artful living, and ultimately helping me to bind my art & faith together in new ways.

• Pilgrimage: When visiting my dad in my home-state this past summer, I got to meet a friend who I’d known for years online… Sarah Lee, host of Victory Kitchen Podcast! Getting to meet in-person was such an incredible gift, and it’s as if I found a long-lost friend. Sitting side by side at a soda fountain and wandering antique stores, I was reminded of how crucial it is to - when possible - take the glimmers of beauty we find online and embody them.
  
  I also got to spend a few days with my beloved sister-in-law Amy in Santa Fe, New Mexico - visiting countless churches and holy sites, and most of all…getting to commune with someone who has truly become a sister to me.
  
  All of these pilgrimages fed my soul, my art, and my writing in countless ways, and my hope is that these pilgrimages trickled into my work in this space, rippling out even further.

• Mentorship: I spent the year with Tudor history podcaster & historian Natalie Grueninger (of Talking Tudors) alongside me as a mentor, helping me to find creative ways to share history - she helped me so much to foster more conversation and dialogue about this shared passion of ours! The Rushbearing Festival and Still Advent were both longtime ideas that came to fruition with Natalie’s help and guidance in all the nitty-gritty details.

And: woven through all the ebenezers, joyful explorations, and fresh offerings over this past year is that familiar thread of our human struggle…all of these moments are received and pursued by the grace of God, while I imperfectly balance - in their midst - my own frailties, fears, trauma, and more.

In other words…cheers to another year of wholeness: beauty and struggle wrapped together, and received in gratitude.

This December, as I was preparing to send out Winter boxes to all my Founding Members, our farm was hit by three major floods, turning our house into an island. But the liturgical pony express forged ahead…and I managed to (safely) get boxes out, bit by bit, via rowboat. (In other words: I love my work, and high water won’t stop me!!)

Since beginning this journey on Substack in June 2023, your support has nourished the ongoing conversation and reflection here, in turn rippling into my own life…and, as you may have gathered, the paid support goes right back into the work here, sustaining the art I share with you as printables, providing the research materials I rely on, helping to support more guest speakers, and now - through the Founding Membership - support other small artisans, too.

With each passing month and year, the Hearthstone Fables archive continues to grow bigger & bigger, so new subscribers (welcome, dear friend!) are greeted with a whole library of resources to explore.

And so, to help align the price investment here with the growth in resources over the past several years, as well as to sustain current and upcoming offerings, I’ll be raising prices for the first time since I started writing on Substack.¹ This shift will help to reflect the years of cumulative work here, as well as continue to fund my mission in this space…to provide resources that encourage you to graft liturgical living into your own life and landscape. To find resonance and relevance in the agrarian heritage of our common Church calendar, here and now in our own unique lives.

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» IMPORTANT «
These new prices will not affect existing paid/founding members, whether you’re subscribed monthly or annually: existing paid supporters and founding members have their price locked-in at the current rate!² Yay!

» On Saturday, January 10, 2026, prices for new paid members will be:

• Paid Membership: $7/month or $70/year (raised from $5/month or $50/year)
  

• Founding Membership: $200/year (raised from $100/year)

  • Friends: my commitment to building meaningful seasonal boxes quickly outstripped the initial cost when I first opened this tier! Because I’m committed to purchasing physical creations from small artisans and bespoke businesses in order to create the story of each box, the vision of the boxes has turned out to be far more valuable than I had anticipated. (The cost of hand-cut brass mistletoe leaves, woven with a freshwater pearl, after all, is a deserving cost - and one that I stand by as this endeavor supports the local artist behind such a lovely creation!)
    
    Though I’ve happily absorbed the difference in cost personally (I think of it as tuition for myself as I learn!), continuing to offer this membership to additional new members while also making these boxes sustainable means that I need to adjust pricing: this will better account for the handmade items, small-run batches of goods purchased, packaging, and shipping. (My time is my ministry in this - something I donate, to help sustain the mission carried by the boxes!)
    
    Again, this January 10 change does not affect any existing Founding Members! Your pricing is grandfathered-in. Thank you for being alongside me as we have launched this into the world. :)

    
    And thank you all for your grace and understanding as I continue to grow and learn!

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In gratitude to all of you dear free subscribers who have been here helping to make this such a special endeavor, this shift won’t happen until after Epiphany…so, if you’re interested in upgrading, you’ll have the opportunity to join-in with paid memberships at the current rates.

As someone who has spent a lifetime painting and yet only recently had the courage to even call myself an ‘artist’ - please know that I don’t make changes like this lightly, and I truly believe that this price shift is a worthy reflection of the ever-growing offerings here!

Thank you so much for gifting me with your warmth, wisdom, and support all these years…and thank you for the opportunity to continue deepening this work. As local, liturgical living informed by agrarian heritage has been one of the most powerful catechisms in my own life, my prayer is that God would reveal to you any humble glimmers in this imperfect work that help you to see the liturgy in your life & landscape, too.

Always, always, always:

Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength, and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14 KJV)

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1. As you can imagine, I’m loathe to talk about pricing nitty-gritty here…but I want to be transparent in this space and include you in my thought-process, since this is such a shared project among all the readers here!

2. Current paid members would only see a change in price if they were to cancel their paid membership and later re-subscribe.