How Joanna Gaines Is Challenging Families to Make the Most of Their Time at Home

Joanna Gaines is encouraging fans to make the most of their time at home with a brand-new set of family challenges.

The 41-year-old Fixer Upper alum talked about how she’s trying to get a little creative with family activities during this period of social distancing. She also revealed how she and her husband, Chip, are approaching this new normal with their five children, Drake (15), Ella (14), Duke (11), Emmie Kay (10) and Crew (1). Via her personal Instagram, she challenged families across the nation to look for the positives in this situation with a little video of herself and her family making cookies.

Gaines captioned the clip, “With life looking quite a bit different than we’re all used to, our @magnolia family is looking for ways to focus on how we can make the most of our time spent at home, because honestly there’s no better place to be right now—and in the midst of all that’s going on, we believe that there is room for connection, creativity, laughter, and inspiration.”

She explained that “for the next few days, we’re going to share a new challenge and/or activity that we can all get in on together and share. To kick it off, Drake has filmed us making the chocolate chip cookie recipe from the first cookbook.” (Here’s the recipe if you’d like to follow along.)

Yesterday, Gaines opened up about how they’re dealing with this as a family and also made some delicious chili, which she called a “quick and simple family favorite recipe from her Magnolia Table cookbook.”