Guest Hollow, LLC is a quintessential small “mom & pop” boutique business that creates unique and engaging homeschool materials (all in digital format for download and viewing online).

Guest Hollow products include numerous award-winning curriculum schedules, printable worksheets, books, workbooks, and lots more.

We also maintain a blog where we share thoughts and opinions as well as an occasional homeschooling tip and behind the scenes things happening at Guest Hollow. Some of our material is traditional, and some most certainly is not.

The goal of Guest Hollow as a business is not to make a killing, but rather to support the growing homeschooling community while at the same time making a modest income for ourselves. Our philosophy is quite unique in that, as best we can, we truly DO value our customers and think more about their needs than we do our own profit. We hope this is reflected in not only our prices, but in our responsiveness and customer service.

Below you can find detailed information on the company and its history as well as the couple behind the Guest Hollow phenomenon.

There are two sections to this page:

Guest Hollow, LLC: The Company – A company introduction

Guest Hollow: The People – A more personal introduction of the husband and wife team behind Guest Hollow.

Guest Hollow, LLC: The Company –
A brief introduction …

A Little History

Started as a way to share an occasional worksheet with the community, Guest Hollow has evolved to the point that it is a full-on commitment built for two!

The truth is, Guest Hollow was never envisioned to become a company. We started out as an expression of community service where, on a single community website page, we shared homeschooling items that we created for our own children.

The idea was to help others as our kids made their way through the adventure of homeschooling.

Early Guest Hollow offerings included worksheets, printables, some hints and tips, and a couple of other items that we had custom-created for our three students as they make their way through the Pre-K through High School homeschooling adventure.

Those early efforts were decidedly unpolished and not the least bit professional, but they were extremely well-received. Soon we found people outside the local community were visiting the page, sending in compliments, and enjoying Guest Hollow items all across the United States.

As time went on, the Guest Hollow Homeschooling page evolved into an early iteration of its own website and a homeschooling blog. Soon we purchased our own internet domain and GuestHollow.com was born.

It still was not a ‘business’ though.

As time went on, and the kids started leaving the nest, the materials that we offered started to take on a much more rich and comprehensive set of characteristics. Some of the printables evolved into real books, worksheets evolved into workbooks, and the schedules, hints and tips evolved into a bevy of various curriculum schedules.

Guest Hollow Today

After the last of the kids graduated and left the home, a set of circumstances allowed us to consider a complete lifestyle change.

We made the difficult decision to throw ourselves full-force into Guest Hollow, and Charles left a decently paying and very secure 30+ year career (and an abominable 192-mile round trip commute).

Within a year we moved to an area where the cost of living was more manageable and the culture was far more amenable to our way of looking at life.

Over the last few years we have worked tirelessly to build Guest Hollow into a livable business, and we have done our best to professionalize the many materials that Guest Hollow offers. We have also expanded the number as well as the quality of the curricula we offer.

We are continuing to expand our line of materials and curricula. We have several new curriculum ideas and are working on creating those as you read this.

Note: If you have ideas or suggestions, please reach out as what we develop is highly influenced by our customers’ needs.

In addition to upgrading and enhancing our curriculum, the website platform that we offer our materials on has evolved.

In 2019 we recognized that Guest Hollow needed to have a much better and more professional web presence, and so we decided to completely overhaul our website.

Circumstances (including the unexpected need to rewrite one of our curriculum because the main (spine) book had gone out of print), delayed our ability to upgrade the site, but in early 2021 we completed the arduous and expensive website overhaul process and released the new site that you are now viewing.

We like to think that the new GuestHollow.com is more intuitive and easy to use, but we always LOVE to hear customer comments and constructive criticism.

Guest Hollow in Sum

Being an internet-based business, literally in the middle of nowhere, reliant on not-always-reliable satellite internet, occasional power outages, occasional interruptions for snowstorms, firewood splitting, and other challenges of rural life, may seem a little oxymoronic, especially when we started in Silicon Valley, but somehow it works really well for both us and our customers.

The bottom line is that our customers are happy – and that, in the end, is what it is all about.

The view out Guest Hollow’s windows

Guest Hollow: The People –
A more personal introduction of the husband and wife team behind Guest Hollow…

In our experience, people like to know a little bit about just WHO is behind a company, so we have decided to share a little bit about ourselves personally.

We’re a homeschooling family (kind of like being a Marine, once you are a homeschooler you are ALWAYS a homeschooler! LOL). In fact, we homeschooled for a looooooooooooong time! Our kids were homeschooled from before kindergarten all the way through high-school, and we finished teaching our youngest kiddo in 2016.

Jennifer

Wife to Charles – “CEO, Chief Creation Officer and Curriculum Illustrator (CEO, CCO)”

Jenn is the magic that creates the ‘secret sauce’ behind the materials you see on Guest Hollow. She creates and illustrates almost all of the items that you see for sale or that are given away for free on the site.

She also takes care of much of the tech portion of our website.

Jenn loves creating and illustrating educational materials with her own unique style! She is also the author and illustrator of The Science of Seasons and Beowulf’s Grammar books.

Jenn now devotes much of her time to creating new materials and curriculum for you on GuestHollow.com and tending to her vegetable and flower gardens. In her free time, she loves playing computer games, reading, and crafting.

Before Guest Hollow, Jennifer successfully homeschooled three kids.

Some highlights of our homeschool graduates are as follows:

Oldest Daughter

While in homeschool, she spent years volunteering for a local convalescent home. After homeschooling, she obtained a Psychology degree, International Studies degree, and TESL/TEFL Certificate. She did all of this while holding student government office at the college and being named ‘student of the year’ TWICE while she was in college. Later she interned in Japan teaching English to Japanese students through Osaka University of Economics and Law. She is fluent in reading, writing and speaking Japanese, is a published writer, taught English to 7-11th graders at a private school in Japan, and now owns and operates a couple of small businesses in Japan. She married a wonderful Japanese Christian who runs the family businesses with her and is involved in Christian ministry. She has 2 precious boys who are homeschooled.

Middle Son

He is a retired Army sergeant who went back to school and has a wonderful son and lovely daughter. He has a degree in collision repair and refinishing (with honors) as well as a master’s degree in business. He currently works in a public service field.

Youngest Son

He’s our last homeschool graduate. While he was homeschooled, he earned his Eagle Scout rank, was a Police Explorer, a CHP Explorer, worked for a local veterinarian, and participated in innumerable community events. Later he went into the Navy and retail service. He currently works in a public service field.

Charles

Husband to Jenn – “Controller & Operations Director– (CONT, OD)”

Charles jokingly refers to himself as the ‘cleanup on aisle 7’ part of Guest Hollow. 🙂 He is responsible for most customer service and trying to keep up with broken links and the many other trifles that occur during the normal course of business.

He is an integral part of Guest Hollow’s operation and spends a lot of time on public relations and answering questions, helping customers, and trying to get the word out about Guest Hollow on a nearly non-existent budget.

Charles also helps to direct the course and scope of the business. His no-nonsense (unless it makes for a good joke) approach to the business helps him to provide both levity and direction at critical business junctures. His broad computer and website creation background allow him to intuitively deduce solution paths to some of the technical issues that can occur on a site like this one.

Charles is a magna cum laude graduate of college where he earned his degree in Administration of Justice. He was top of his class both there and in the academy.

He worked for over 30 years as a contractor in a non-related field at a federal government agency where his duties ranged over the years from working in completely solitary environments to extremely customer-service oriented ones with constant interface. He was also a member of an emergency team whose job it would have been to rescue and provide emergency treatment to people trapped in collapsed buildings or other high-intensity situations.

Not one to be inactive, he almost always had a second job which included working in dangerous environments as an on-scene line photojournalist and reporter for two separate newspapers, helping to set up and start up a museum, director of operations for a dot com in the 90s, and owner of a web design, consulting, and photography business.

Charles got his first job at 10 years old, and he has not slowed down since. He now devotes much of his time to trying to support Jenn’s efforts and to get more people to hear about GuestHollow.com and to support their little piece of the forest.

Other things Charles does around Guest Hollow: Well, just about everything, including filling up the woodshed, taking pictures of the wildlife ambling through, and keeping our trail cameras stocked with batteries. 😉

You can contact either of us at GuestHollow@MemorablePlaces.com or via the Contact Guest Hollow page.

You’re invited!

We also maintain a number of active pages on Facebook. We suggest that you join one of our Anchor Groups either The Guest Hollow K-8 Homeschooling Curriculum User’s Group and/or the Guest Hollow High School Curriculum Homeschooling User’s Group as well as any of the other Guest Hollow Facebook groups that pertain to you. Click the button to visit all our Facebook groups:

Visit our Facebook groups!