I picked up a copy of this 1964 gem at my grandmother’s: Elegance: A Complete Guide for Every Woman Who Wants to Be Well and Properly Dressed on All Occasions by Genevieve Antoine Dariaux. I have every reason to suspect that my grandmother took very seriously the dictates of this classic guide to style, and…
We had a dinner party Saturday night. Both of us were shocked when we realized how long it had been since we’d had a real sit-down china-and-crystal affair, what with working on the house and family weddings and all…I was as obsessively excited about it as Virginia Woolfe’s Mrs. Dalloway…I planned the menu with excruciating…
I just love it when I come a across a passage in a book that rings with a truth I have experienced. I’ve known longings such as these expressed in the excerpt below. And I’ve known the sweetness of a desire fulfilled. Any word of encouragment that I could offer to unmarried girls that wish…
We finished Brideshead Revisited last night on the way home from Charleston. We both longed to and hated to. Reading that book together has been a moving and sweet experience for Philip and me, in the same class as A Severe Mercy. I can’t stop thinking about it. All day the various elements have been…
There are just a handful of devotionals that I’ve spent much time with over the years, and among that small band, only three have found a permanent place on the side table with my Bible and journal. With ever-fresh insight the great classics My Utmost for His Highest and Streams in the Desert have prodded…
“Sit still, my daughter, until thou know how the matter will fall…” Ruth 3: 18 A sweet word for waiting hearts… Sit still, my daughter! Just sit calmly still! Nor deem these days—these waiting days—as ill. The One Who loves thee best, Who plans thy way, Hath not forgotten thy great need today….
I have never had to say goodbye to a house, never had to watch a house I loved pass into the hands of others. And that is why the sale of Hamrick Hall has been a peculiarly painful idea for me. Having my sister’s wedding in my grandparent’s house this winter has culminated a lifetime…
My friend Lauren has a new motto painted over her kitchen sink: Otium Sanctum. It was the first thing that I noticed when we were visiting in their home a couple of weeks ago. I asked about it, and her husband explained that it was an ancient Latin phrase that the church fathers used to…
Lucilla Eliot, of Elizabeth Goudge’s ‘Eliot trilogy’ (Bird in the Tree, Pilgrim’s Inn and Heart of the Family) is one of my heroines. Expect to hear much of her—and the wisdom that Ms. Goudge imparts through her voice—in this journal. Elizabeth Goudge’s writings have played a very formative role in my thoughts on homemaking and…
I’ve spent a delicious rainy afternoon perusing the stack of books I was blessed to acquire from my grandmother’s estate. I’ve held them each, gently turned fragile pages, read the inscriptions of familiar names. Out of one falls a Christmas card to my great-great-grandmother; another has an examination for a W.M.U. Mission Study…
A friend gave me this years ago: "Arise early. Dress thyself quickly. Go thy ways gaily. Do thy work wisely. Answer men demurely. Treat thy kin courteously. Rule thy tongue carefully. Con thy book soberly. Sing thy bit joyously. Dance thy round jocundly. Go thy supper warily And to thy bed merrily. Kneel then…
More fragrances abroad in this sweet fleeting Maytime, and effortless flights of nostalgia…the alchemy of privet hedge and honeysuckle transport me again to my first stay on Jekyll Island. Neither before nor since has a place other than my own home been of such vital significance to me, but fifteen visits later my unswerving devotion…
It bears mentioning that I went back to my ballet class yesterday—after two years!! I had to stop my ears against the voice in my head that said I’d never dance again and just go. I knew that it was now or never. The back injury that forced me to drop out in the first…
Well, I don’t know if the chickens appreciate the beautiful, fragrant bower of dog roses cascading over their pen, but I certainly do. It greets me each morning as I’m walking across the lawn and I just stop and think of all the happy hours that scent recalls for me…one of the sweetest is Delphine’s…
Finally, bretheren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any virtue and if there be any praise, think on these things… Philippians 4:8 These I have loved: White plates and cups, clean-gleaming, Ringed…
It’s been one of those weeks. Someone left their car in neutral at the mechanic’s where my car was having the oil changed and destroyed my passenger side door. On Tuesday, the house painters walked off the job, leaving a half-scraped house and a disheartening amount of exposed rotten wood in their wake. The next…
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