Original Poem By Melanie Krug

There is great distinction between the words House and Home. A House is a building, a place to stay, to hold all of your belongings. Home is a feeling, an idea, a concept. We don't say that we feel at house, or that something is housey, instead, we say that something feels homey, we feel at Home.

In a perfect world, we grow up with our families. In a great big house with a white picket fence living 'The American Dream.'

House.

As kids, we introduce the place where we reside to other kids in the manner, "This is my House." Our introductions of the place that we come back to every night, they're just statements of facts. There's no subliminal meaning, no emotion, no individuality. Our House is just the place in which we live.

The chorus of the song, "Strangers" by Passenger go as follows, "Though you're in a house, don't mean it's a home..."

As we get older, we learn to understand the distinction between the two words and begin to use them accordingly. We come to understand the idea that someone else's house, a place of work, any given room can be your Home. Even if you continue to pay a monthly payment for your House.

What makes a Home different than a House is a Home has love and comfort. There a people, memories, ideas, and rituals that partake in your Home that a House just can't seem to grasp.

When we are all grown up and have created the Home that we want, the one that consists of all the people and things that you love and enjoy, that is when we begin to say, "Welcome." "Welcome to my HOME."

We have desire to invite people into that place that we have made our own. We want to extend the family that resides in the home, with our own people that we have found. Because, there is no greater joy than sharing a place that you love with the people that you love.