About Us

Welcome to Live Simple Now – a website dedicated to positive thoughts, positive living – and living your best life!

In a funny twist of fate, we never intended this website to become what it now is – but we couldn’t be more excited that it did. We are Jim and Mary Competti, and a few years back, we started Live Simple Now to document one of our own “lifetime” dreams – to travel and experience all 50 states.

Our original hope was to see them all in a single year. And with that in mind, we left on September 9th of 2019, never imagining the only thing that could temporarily halt the pursuit would be a world-wide pandemic.

We had 26 straight glorious weeks on the road before having to put things on hold and come back to our little farm in Ohio. But somehow, one by one, over the course of the next year and a half we found a way to get to the remaining 24 states and complete the dream.

atop Flat Top Mountain
Our trip around the country was nothing short of a dream come true. Climbs like this to the top of Flat Top Mountain in Alaska were incredible experiences. We now have so many memories of places and people that will live for us forever. For us, life truly is about experiences, not possessions.

Honestly, it was life changing. We realized along the way how important it was to live your life while you can. To follow your dreams, whatever they might be, and live knowing that tomorrow is never promised.

Living Your Best Life – No Matter What

We have never been two individuals that sit still for very long. Thankfully we share that passion. Many times in our life we have used the term “Next Up ” when talking about never complaining or feeling sorry because something didn’t work out the way it was planned. To us, “Next Up” means move on from what you can’t control, and put your energy and fun into something you can.

The funny thing is, more often than not, that leads to something even better in the long run. Especially if you always approach life with a positive attitude, and the energy needed to accomplish it.

On our journey around the country, we met so many folks who had decided to start living for today, and not wait for their dreams to come to them. Without fail, all of them had two things in common – a positive attitude, and a passion to do what they loved, no matter what.

about us
If we are not writing or traveling, chances are we are in our garden! No matter what your hobbies are, make time to enjoy them!

Well, that is what this website is now dedicated to. To positive thinking. To following your dreams, and to making the best of every single day. It really is a state of mind – and hopefully, all of the articles, tips and stories that will fill this website can inspire more to do the same.

How do we know it works? Because it happened for us as well. Back in 2010, we decided to start following our dreams of living a more simple life and do more of what we love. For us, that was following our passions for cooking, gardening, travel, writing – and building a little farm we could hopefully retire to someday.

We started a blog as an outlet for our passion to write. What did we write about? Well, of course, about our love of cooking, gardening and the building of the farm!

We are still not sure to this day how or why, but the blog somehow resonated with folks from all over. First with a few followers, then a hundred, and then a few hundred thousand. The sites have now grown to over 10 million monthly viewers, with followers from 220+ countries.

The website that started it all, Old World Garden Farms. We have had a lot of fun over the years writing and living the adventure.

Before we knew it, we had published our first book, Growing Simple, in April of 2016. We discovered how much we loved writing and speaking about our adventures and our passions of building, gardening, cooking and traveling to place to learn more.

In general, finding love in the simple things in life to live to the fullest. In 2018, we published our second book, Raised Row Gardening. and launched two additional websites, This Is My Garden, and Make Your Meals.

Each allowed us a dedicated outlet to concentrate on two of our most favorite loves, gardening and cooking. It was at that point that we knew we had found what we loved to do, and what we were meant to do. Over the course of a few years, we each retired from our professional day jobs to work at our passion.

The point is, no matter where you are in your life at this point – you can start following your dreams. It doesn’t cost anything to be happy, pleasant and motivated. But those can all help you to get where you want to be – no matter the goal.

We hope to fill this site with inspiration – from all walks of life and types of people who have followed their dreams and are living their best life. Here is to wishing that for everyone! – Jim and Mary.