Joanna Gaines Quotes & Sayings

Best of all, as happy as Chip Gaines was, he seemed happiest around me.

I'm a generally happy person. My mom says I was a happy baby. But it's a fact--I was always happiest around Jo. And I still am. — Joanna Gaines

I mean, that's life. Life is never predictable. Life is never really manageable. If your mind-set is always, "I'm just surviving", it seems to me that would wind up being the mind-set for the rest of your life. You'd just get stuck in it. — Joanna Gaines

You bloomed?

I did. If I hadn't married Chip, I might not have ever bloomed. — Joanna Gaines

life is found in the glass of spilled milk and in the long, narrow hallway filled with socks and soccer balls. — Joanna Gaines

So from the age of five to about twenty, religion to me was a matter of 'you do this, and you don't do that, and you do your best to walk the straight line. — Joanna Gaines

The reality is that old houses that were built a hundred years ago were built by actual craftsmen, people who were the best in the world at what they did. The little nuances in the woodwork, the framing of the doors, the built-in nooks, the windows - all had been done by smart, talented people, and I quickly found that uncovering those details and all of that character made the house more inviting and more attractive and more alive. — Joanna Gaines

By the time Chip and I met, he'd managed to combine these two conflicting sides of himself: the kid who steered clear of trouble and did the right thing, and the kid who rode his Big Wheel full speed into the street without looking both ways. I had never met anyone like him. It's funny to me to think that the whole opposites-attract thing might have been programmed into my DNA. Just as my outgoing mother was drawn to my quiet dad, I was this shy girl drawn to the super-outgoing Chip Gaines. And the fact that he owned a successful lawn and irrigation business and had made up his mind that he loved Waco and wanted to stay put was somehow a perfect fit with everything I knew I wanted myself. — Joanna Gaines

Don't quit, and don't give up. The reward is just around the corner. And in times of doubt or times of joy, listen for that still, small voice. Know that God has been there from the beginning - and he will be there until . . . The End. — Joanna Gaines

On this particular afternoon, they all started teasing me. "You should go out to the lobby, Jo. There's a hot guy out there. Go talk to him!" they said.
"No," I said. "Stop it! I'm not doing that."
I was all of twenty-three, and I wasn't exactly outgoing.

She was a bit awkward--no doubt about that.

I hadn't dated all that much, and I'd never had a serious relationship--nothing that lasted longer than a month or two. I'd always been an introvert and still am (believe it or not). I was also very picky, and I just wasn't the type of girl who struck up conversations with guys I didn't know. I was honestly comfortable being single; I didn't think that much of it.
"Who is this guy, anyway?" I asked, since they all seemed to know him for some reason.
"Oh, they call him Hot John," someone said, laughing.
Hot John? There was no way I was going out in that lobby to strike up a conversation with some guy called Hot John. — Joanna Gaines

It's up to us to choose contentment and thankfulness now - and to stop imagining that we have to have everything perfect before we'll be happy. — Joanna Gaines

She cried. Again. That was sort of her thing during year one. If we ever write a marriage book, chapter 1 will be called, "She cried. — Joanna Gaines

I finally believed it was actually a beautiful thing to be unique and to be different. — Joanna Gaines

If I had planned my life, it never would have ended up like this. So maybe it's kind of fun not to plan. Maybe it's more fun just to see where life takes you. — Joanna Gaines

Well, I'm mad, but I'm not primer-in-the-face mad. — Joanna Gaines

...sometimes second chances lead to great things.
All of my doubts, all of the things I thought I wanted out of a relationship, and many of the things I thought I wanted out of life itself turned out to be just plain wrong. Instead? That voice from our first date turned out to be the thing that was absolutely right. — Joanna Gaines

It is no easy thing to trust in God, to walk away from a career, to give it all up not knowing if you can ever get it back or even come close. But I did it. I heeded his voice, and somehow I found peace about it. — Joanna Gaines

It's hard to describe the feeling that comes with starting your own business. It really is so much work in the beginning that you lose yourself in it. You lose your sense of time, and you can't believe how quickly the days go by because there's no time to focus on much of anything else. But then you open the doors, and it's like you've given birth to this new thing that didn't exist before. Then when it starts to flourish, well, that's just icing on the cake. To get to see it live and breathe and to know that this thing you created out of thin air can put a smile on other people's faces is such a blessing. — Joanna Gaines

I felt good about having made the decision to walk away and lock that door. It's funny, though, looking back on it now, because one very simple concept in life never occurred to me as I was walking away:
Even locked doors can be unlocked in time.
I simply never could have imagined just how much God had in store for us, and I certainly couldn't have dreamed just how many keys to other doors God had already placed in our hands. — Joanna Gaines

I always thought that the "thriving" would come when everything was perfect, and what I learned is that it's actually down in the mess that things get good. — Joanna Gaines

I came to think of God as more of a gracious friend who was accompanying me on this journey, a friend who wanted to carry my burdens and speak into my life and shape me into who I really was and who I would become. — Joanna Gaines

There's something about doing things the way our ancestors used to do them that kind of puts your heart back into the rhythm of this thing called life. — Joanna Gaines

It was such a blessing to find myself thriving in the middle of the pain. Unless you find a way to do that, there's always going to be this fake illusion that once you get there--wherever "there" is for you--you'll be happy. But that's just not life. If you can't find happiness in the ugliness, you're not going to find it in beauty, either. — Joanna Gaines

Then one day Chip showed up with the back of his pickup truck just loaded with old metal letters he'd found at a flea market--big, oddly shaped letters taken from various old signs. They were mismatched and rusty and dented--and I loved them. We tacked them up on the front of the shop, spelling out the name that would come to mean so much: Magnolia. The letters were uneven and looked a little handmade and ragged, but it seemed to work. I loved this sign because Chip designed it and made it with his own two hands. It came together in such an imperfectly perfect way, and I hoped people would get it.

To this day that sign is one of my proudest accomplishments. I'm no Joanna Gaines, but I certainly see things differently and love design in my own unique way. That first sign really reflected that for me. I would glow when I would hear a customer come in the shop and say, "I saw the sign and just had to stop in. — Joanna Gaines

I always said, "When things come against us we can either turn on each other, or we can come together and turn on it."
-Chip Gaines — Joanna Gaines

I realized that my determination to make things perfect meant I was chasing an empty obsession all day long. Nothing was ever going to be perfect the way I had envisioned it in the past. Did I want to keep spending my energy on that effort, or did I want to step out of that obsession and to enjoy my kids, maybe allowing myself to get messy right along with them in the process? I chose the latter - and that made all the difference. — Joanna Gaines

One pretty amazing thing we learned early on was that the more time we spent together, the better our relationship was. — Joanna Gaines

Between building the new house on our newly subdivided lot, continuing work on some small flip homes, and managing the rentals, Chip had more work than he could do himself, so he had put a crew of workmen together. "The Boys," as we called them, were a talented bunch of hardworking guys who were just as adaptable as Chip seemed to be when it came to making my crazy ideas become reality. I truly could say, "Hey, why don't we take that tree out of the front yard and hang it upside down in the master bedroom," and they would do it, no questions asked. (All right, maybe there'd be a little head scratching. But then they'd shrug their shoulders and get to work.) — Joanna Gaines

That got me thinking about the pressure we women and moms are all under these days. It seems as if the standards are so much higher than they were just a few years ago, mainly because of what we see whenever we look on the Internet. — Joanna Gaines

I have to choose to thrive, even in the pain. Even when it's tough. ... We can do this. God has not brought us this far to let us down now. — Joanna Gaines

How many of us take the time to relive half a lifetime's worth of happy memories, cringeworthy failures, and unforgettable adventures together? How many of us get a chance to sit down and talk about the rough times we overcame in the past or to laugh about the stupid mistakes we made when we were young? — Joanna Gaines

We didn't know what made "great TV." We were just trying to make a living and trying hard to honor the craft we had both fallen in love with over the years. — Joanna Gaines

Whether you are in an eight-hundred-square-foot home or living in a dream house on a lake, contentment is found on the way. — Joanna Gaines

I've always loved magnolia trees and their blooms - there's something so beautiful about a magnolia blossom. It demands attention, and you can't help but love those big, creamy petals and that fragrant smell. — Joanna Gaines

Back in the late 1800s, when a place like this was originally built, you had to work with what you had, and you had to figure stuff out. You certainly couldn't Google it. You didn't have Internet. You didn't even have how-to books. You had to sit there and wrestle with it. You found this old spare part, you did this other thing, you hooked it up to a donkey, and you tried it out.
Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn't. But eventually you'd pop out on the other side and say, "I've got this."
Call me old-fashioned, but I've always solved problems like that.
-Chip Gaines — Joanna Gaines

I liked stability. I liked safety. I liked traditional and I liked being on time. And this Chip with the beet-red face wasn't any of those things. I did think he was kind of fascinating, though. — Joanna Gaines

Even locked doors can be unlocked in time. — Joanna Gaines

Have you ever looked at the bud of a magnolia flower? It's a tight little pod that stays closed up for a long time on the end of its branch until one day, out of nowhere, it finally bursts open into this gigantic, gorgeous, fragrant flower that's ten times bigger than the bud itself. It's impossible to imagine that such a big beautiful thing could pop out of that tiny little bud. But it does. — Joanna Gaines

I don't think it's irrational or too conservative of me to think, I never want to carry my baby into the county jail ever again.
Is it? — Joanna Gaines