Hi and welcome to The Joy In Between! I’m Karen (but not the kind of Karen you keep seeing in those memes!) and I am so glad you’re here. This blog is something I’ve wanted to start for such a long time and I am so excited to finally be doing it!

My husband John and I have two grown kids; Jordan (25) and Brenna (23). I was a stay-at-home mom while our kids were little and then worked as a paraprofessional at their school district for 14 years (11 of those in kindergarten-yep, 5 & 6-year-olds are my favorite!!) John’s job kept him on the road a good part of the year so we made the decision to sell our house in October, put our things in storage, and are now living full-time in our RV and traveling around the country as he gathers new interviews for his storytelling project, A Peace Of My Mind.

I have been using essential oils and running my Young Living business for 6 years and love that it led me to a healthier, cleaner way of life. I can talk endlessly about oils and love sharing what I know to help people so hit me up if you have questions!

I like to tell myself that I am an organizing junkie! Well…it might be more accurate to say that I’m an organizing research junkie! I love exploring and gathering info about all things organization and try my best to implement what I’ve learned. I’m still a work in progress but I sure have fun trying. Any excuse to head to The Container Store or HomeGoods makes me happy! 

I also love all things cooking: cooking shows, cooking classes, kitchen gadgets, cookbooks (I may have an addiction to collecting them which is a little more challenging in an RV!), trying new recipes, cooking for family and friends, and chopping veggies.  ESPECIALLY chopping veggies! I know it’s many people’s least favorite thing to do but I have often toyed with the idea of being a veggie-chopping sous chef! Give me a good chef’s knife and a large cutting board and I will be entertained for hours. Yep…I know that’s a little weird but I’m good with that!

Traveling is something that has been a huge part of my adult life. I didn’t do much of it growing up and yet I knew it was something I wanted to do. John and I have been traveling together since we were dating.  Our first big trip was backpacking through Europe for 3 months after we graduated from college. We decided then that someday we wanted to fill a book with our travel adventures and call it The Adventures of JaK (John and Karen…get it? ). We have yet to write the book but we have more than enough stories to fill several books. Road trips are our favorite and our kids grew up entertaining themselves as we covered thousands of miles driving across the country heading to our various camping adventures.They still love a good long road trip! 

To round things out, we also own a Christmas tree farm in western Wisconsin. We started it on a whim thinking it would be fun to plant some trees and see how they did. Twelve years later and we’re planting 5,000 trees a year and learning something new all the time. 

I hope you enjoy my little corner of the internet. I’m looking forward to sharing this new adventure with you.