About

Hi, I’m Katie Drane! I’m a mom of 4, an autism mom, and recently began homeschooling our 3 youngest children. Western Kentucky has been our home for a long time now, but I’ll always be a proud Louisville native.

For 10 years, I shared easy homestyle recipes and craft projects, as well as the occasional home project. But life has changed over the past few years and I haven’t shared a lot. I don’t cook like I used to and I got pretty burnt out on crafting and blogging. No surprise, with a large family and kiddos with special needs, my priorities shifted.

When our youngest son started kindergarten, I took a job at the kids’ elementary school as a Learning and Behavior Disorder (LBD) assistant. I loved being with not only my kids, but all the kids at the school and I made life-long friends. I also saw firsthand how difficult it is to be an educator in today’s world, and how much the public school system has changed since I was a student. But what ultimately led us to homeschool was the abuse of our nonverbal son, Luke by a school aide and denial of Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE).

The content that I’ve produced for so many years–cooking, crafts, and decorating–is changing, because I’ve changed. I hope you’ll stay for the new stuff but I understand if you don’t. My purpose now looks like this:

• To share my experiences as a special needs mom so that other special needs parents have a place where they can feel seen and heard.
• To share the resources I’ve found about how children learn–everything from the importance of play, especially playing outside,
• To build awareness about neurodivergent affirming practices, therapy and the language we use around it.
• To share this homeschool adventure, including some great resources I have found (and the ones I’ve created) as a new homeschool parent to one neurotypical and two neurodivergent kids.
• To build a community of like-minded parents who appreciate social media and technology like I do, but who want it to take a backseat to real interactions and a more simple way of living.