Royal Path of Life

Make a home; beautify and adorn it; cultivate all heavenly charms within it; sing sweet songs of love in it; bear your portion of toil, and pain, and sorrow in it; con daily lessons of strength and patience there; shine like a star on the face of the darkest night over it, and tenderly rear the children it shall give you in it. High on a pinnacle, above all earthly grandeur, all gaudy glitter and all fancied ambitions, set the home interests. Feed the mind in it; feed the soul in it; strengthen the love, and charity and truth and all holy and good things within it!

~from the Royal Path of Life, by Haines & Yaggy, 1879

Quote found within my Treasury of Vintage Homekeeping Skills

I love this quote, but as I finished typing in order to post this, I looked over where the tots are playing and observe my 2 year old pouring a bottle of elmer's glue (cap completely off) onto the dining table. To his credit, he was aiming for the construction paper on the table where Bella and I had glued fall leaves yesterday. So I may have to alter my version of the above quote to read,
"Make a home, beautify it... and do your best to protect it from becoming completely mangled by little critters who have an uncanny talent for undoing, sabotaging, and destroying any efforts made by you to adorn and clean it... and so on...

Nate often refers to Landry as our "Little Critter" and it reminds me to laugh when I might normally turn bright red with anger and frustration at his curious toddler exploits.



"I wanted to make something special for you like my big sister, but the glue was too fast." ~ Landry a.k.a Little Critter

If you need a good laugh,

here you go...

girlies

here's a video taken back in July of the girls... our digital camera died, so I am pulling entertainment from the archives!

Messies Anonymous- seriously!

Here is an excerpt from the intro to a book that is slowly changing my life and home for the better! It is "The Messies Manual- a complete guide to bringing order and beauty to your home" by Sandra Felton. This is different from any other "home organizing" book or article I have ever read because it's written from the standpoint of a 'messie'... all the other resources I see are written by the people that are gifted with organization and order, it comes easily for them-- and I cannot relate!

Here is the mission statement from the messies.com website:
Messies Anonymous is dedicated to bringing harmony in the home through understanding and aiding the Messie mindset.

Here's a sampling...

"Our goal for all of us is to get to the place where our lives are no longer consumed either by living with clutter or by the struggle to get organized and stay that way.
A successfully orderly life looks like this:
- The house is set up to work with us.
- Our routine keeps us moving in the right direction more of less automatically.
- Our habits, thought patterns and emotions have come under enough control that we no longer have to struggle to keep ourselves from drowning in clutter.

Eventually, if all goes as planned, keeping the house organized will become more or less a non-issue. Thought it may never be fully automatic, it can get much easier, even serene.
Wow! That's a thought!

...For years I waited for my fairy godmother to come and wave her magic wand over me and magically change my hovel into a castle--and my frustration into joy.
But she never came.
There is magic to be found , but I was looking in the wrong place for it. The program you are about to begin will work its magic on you. You are about to enter the world of the Messie and the Cleanie.... Each chapter contains a little magic dust, and when you are finished you will be prepared to become that princess you dream of becoming.
But you must wave the wand. You must sprinkle the magic dust. I know you will, because I know you won't settle for that stool in the cinders once you know there is a castle waiting for you and there is hope of finding it. I want your home to be a castle, full of beauty and dignity. I want you to be a princess in your own home.

daddy's girl

It's hard to believe Violet is only a week away from turning 7 months old. She has such a smiley easy-going personality. Bella and Landry love to make her giggle with their silly antics and tricks they preform just to see her reaction. She still only has two bottom teeth, and everything she can grab goes straight into her mouth. So we are being very careful with any small toys or miscellaneous objects around the house that may slip into her reach. My, it will be so much more difficult when she is crawling! As I type this, she is the only one awake so far this morning... sitting in the middle of our living room on her blanket, making all sorts of little jabbering noises, with a small plastic basket of her toys in front of her, which she usually always dumps out, examines & 'tastes' each toy for a moment and then plays with the basket for the rest of the time.

She is not consistently eating solids yet, but most days we try about 1/3 cup of something orange or green... sometimes she eats it all up, but more often she just tries a sample or two and then spits out anything else I manage to pop in.

Wow- can't believe she's this close!

Someone I greatly admire in the "motherhood ministry" who speaks and writes to encourage women, mothers, homeschoolers, etc... lives just down the way from us here in CO!

I attended a conference of hers in Austin over 2 years ago? and bought some books that have shaped my thinking on parenting and homeschooling tremendously.

I also found out she is having a conference at a local church next weekend and I am really looking forward to hearing her speak again! I know it will be very inspiring and refreshing, and also give me a much-needed boost of encouragement in my vision for our home and family.

Her website is here. Her blogs are here and here.