Home Sweet World

Home Sweet World From NZ to the US, a photographer, a builder + two rad half-kiwis learning from life + the road 🚐 Now we’re onto the next chapter of our lives.

An American expat & a small town Kiwi fell in love & baked a couple little kiwis. What began as a worldschooling adventure backpacking 15 countries in 2018, turned into a lifestyle of unschooling, entrepreneurship and renovating/building as many houses as we can get our hands on - two of each so far! Part time van life in a Winnebago out west, USA � Not sure where these four wheels will take us ne

xt! Come along to find out ������

We try our best to be minimal, sustainable, conscious & intentional as free citizens of this sweet world �

We have a fun tradition in our family where we take milestone photos in laundromats. They’re not every year, sometimes i...
16/12/2024

We have a fun tradition in our family where we take milestone photos in laundromats. They’re not every year, sometimes it’s not even every two years. Sometimes it’s just when we’re living on the road, sometimes it’s because we’ve been in a natural disaster and haven’t had clean running water or power for weeks 😬 But they sure are fun. We love looking back and seeing how they’ve grown 🥹 They remind us to keep living life as a great adventure. Lena is officially too big to sit in the clothes trolley now. We got looks 👀 😅

Shelby, North Carolina - post Appalachian Hurricane, 2024 (kids are 11 and 4 yo)
Jackson, Wyoming - van life out west, summer 2022
(Kids were 9 and 2 yo)
Anna Maria Island, Florida - road tripping winter 2022
(Kids were 8 and 1 yo)
Arizona - first time van life-ing out west, summer 2018
(Lena was 5 yo)

2024. Year of the storm. The acceleration of gratitude in all forms. Gratitude for running water, gratitude for electric...
11/12/2024

2024. Year of the storm. The acceleration of gratitude in all forms. Gratitude for running water, gratitude for electricity, cell service, a safe home, our health, our lives.

If I had to put the year into 10 photos, I guess this would be it! A compilation of all our favourite places and things to do here in WNC, so many of which were completely obliterated in the hurricane. Before the storm, we spent our days in the creeks, rivers and forests. In our favourite parks, on the blue ridge parkway, hiking beautiful mountains. Camping, working striving. After the storm, we were shell shocked. Learned to be scrappy, took care of each other, learned our neighbours names, were humbled by not showering for weeks, by accepting so much help. We gathered and donated supplies to local organisations, helped our community. Slowly but surely we’re coming back, and in some ways, we’ll never be the same.

Somehow our kids have grown more this year than ever before, suddenly almost 4 and 11.5. Lena has her own business (buy her birdhouses and pottery and crafts! 🥰) and I became a market mum! She saved up enough to buy herself her spirit animal, a dragon. A bearded dragon named Tiger to be exact.

Alby asked for a hair cut, it was momentous for me. 🥹 The kid is a big guy who can ride a pedal bike like a a full grown child instead of the toddler he was at the beginning of the year.

It feels like we’ve lived a lot of lives since we ended up somewhat unintentionally living in the US three years ago. We’ve been through a lot. But we’re still kickin’, loving, living life to fullest as best we can.

Here’s to 2025, knowing full well the brightest light only comes when you go through darkness.

💛 🚐 🇳🇿 🇺🇸 ⛰️

We always love a cozy Sunday at our local farmer’s market, but even more so since our Hurricane Helene here in WNC it’s...
11/12/2024

We always love a cozy Sunday at our local farmer’s market, but even more so since our Hurricane Helene here in WNC it’s more important than ever to support our local farmers, artists and makers.

The kids are staying cozy in their organic and ethically made clothing. They’re the sturdiest, best quality clothes for wild, tree climbing, forest playing kids like ours. We have been wearing them for years now and recommend their incredible brand to everyone 💛

Use code SARAH10 to snag some of their warm gears this season.

This one is for the foodies 😍🌮🔥🥘 My favourite place to cook 😍 Over a fire, by a fire, outside surrounded by nature. From...
15/07/2024

This one is for the foodies 😍🌮🔥🥘

My favourite place to cook 😍 Over a fire, by a fire, outside surrounded by nature. From fresh caught rainbow trout tacos caught (by Lena!) at 10,000 feet beneath the Colorado collegiate peaks, to bruschetta, maple pecan brussel sprouts and goat cheese stuffed peppers to campsite black bean nachos over the fire. And don’t forget the s’mores 😍

Going to sleep in the van with the scent of campfire in my hair is the best 😏

If you’re needing some campy fore-cookin recipes check out our two favourite cookbooks Feast by Firelight and Dirty Gourmet 🤙🏼🔥🥘

Throw back to Summer/Autumn of ‘22 when we lived in our van out west. Look at that little Alby boy. He was about 1.5 yea...
08/07/2024

Throw back to Summer/Autumn of ‘22 when we lived in our van out west. Look at that little Alby boy. He was about 1.5 years old 💛

desert magic is real and etched into our hearts forever desert 🌞✨

Living on a ridge in the forest near the Blue Ridge Parkway has its perks. This summer we’ve spent so much time playing ...
08/07/2024

Living on a ridge in the forest near the Blue Ridge Parkway has its perks. This summer we’ve spent so much time playing outside on our ninja course, gardening, playing in creeks, catching skinks, salamanders and all sorts of bugs! Josh and his builder’s apprentice Lena even planned out and built this awesome tree house together! 🛠️🌲

We’re still taking the van for camping trips here and there too. It’s our second summer spent here in Asheville and it is beginning to feel more like home ⛰️✨

These cute tees and bug shorts are from one of our favourite brands ever -
Their clothes are the only ones I’ve been able to find that withstand both Alby’s toddler antics and Lena’s forest school days climbing trees and playing HARD out in the elements!

Use my code SARAH10 for 10% off 💛

Kia Ora! We thought it was time to reintroduce ourselves! We are a Kiwi American family - Sarah (that’s me 😊) has grown ...
06/07/2024

Kia Ora! We thought it was time to reintroduce ourselves!

We are a Kiwi American family - Sarah (that’s me 😊) has grown up in SE Asia and Florida and for the last decade we lived in Josh’s beautiful South Island hometown where both kids were born. We sold everything and backpacked through 15 countries with Lena in 2018 when she was 4/5, then added Alby Atlas to the mix in early 2021 💛

We left NZ at the very end of 2021 hoping to have a break from our constant lockdowns and to see Sarah’s family for the first time in years and unintentionally ending up living full time in the US because of NZ’s border closures. It was a stressful time! We turned hardship into adventure, got Josh and the kids sorted with an immigration lawyer (that was hard 🤪), had to sell our beautiful house in NZ that we had just built, and followed our dream of van life and bought a van out west. We based ourselves in my family’s Colorado hometown for a year while living part time in our van falling in love with every state and National Park out West.

In the first week of 2023 we left a huge chunks of our hearts out West and made the big drive across the country to put down a couple roots in Asheville, North Carolina to be closer to family, best friends, and found a beautiful like minded community. We have always unschooled Lena and now have found an amazing homeschool co-op forest ‘school’ a few days a week for her to be a part of 😍

We’ve got an acre of land on a ridge full of wild rhododendrons and more wildlife than we’ve ever seen near the Blue Ridge Parkway and hope to start doing one of the things we do best very soon - design and build ourselves a house.

In the meantime, we are enjoying another slow Appalachian summer of waterfall exploring, river chillin, skink and salamander hunting, firefly catching, working, camping, hiking and exploring all we can 💛

Josh is working for a great luxury eco building company and I am continuing photography now, focusing on properties, construction and high end vacation rentals. When Alby is a little older I’d love to get back to home birth photography 💛

The kids are 11 and 3.5 now! Life continues to be a beautiful wild, ride 🥰

16/09/2022

This is her classroom.

And the local farmers’ market. The library. The museum. Skate parks. Forest trails. The swimming pool. Her friend’s homes. Her own home.

It will grow, organically, as she does.

Her classmates are anyone she meets and spends time with, people of any age and from any background.

She will never tie learning to one main physical space. It will never feel hierarchical or mandated. It is everywhere, all around her, all the time.

She will never associate her age with expected academic progress. She will never hate a ‘subject’ because her interconnected world will never be compartmentalised into them.

Her self-worth will never be tied to grades. She draws motivation and confidence from an internal drive, not from someone else’s expectations of her.

She has a say in how her days are paced, in what she spends her time doing, in who she spends her time with.

And when she turns five, no one will tell her all this has to change just so she can be *taught*.

💛 ✨
14/09/2022

💛 ✨

Those first glimpses of the glacier’s that surround Mount Rainier… surrounded by summer wildflowers, the odd fluffy whit...
07/09/2022

Those first glimpses of the glacier’s that surround Mount Rainier… surrounded by summer wildflowers, the odd fluffy white mountain goat, too many chipmunks to count, and the beauty herself.

There is magic here, volcanic magic 😍😍😍 ✨🌋

💛
01/09/2022

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South Canterbury
28150-28152

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