Home Sanctuary

Mapquest: Find Sanctuary

I love online mapping directions to someplace new! With a few clicks to indicate your starting point, and a couple more to show your destination, voila! It's ready to print and go!   (I've heard you can even get navigation systems in your car, but we don't have that yet.)  All you need is the address or intersection of where you want to go, and you are on your way.

I admit, I am a direction/manual/instruction reader.  I like for things to be clearly defined.  Give me a three-point sermon and I'm with you the whole way.  Pictures next to the menu items and I'm ready to order. That's why Sanctuary is so important to me.  Throughout my 23+ years of marriage and family raising, I've spent alot of that time trying to figure out how to GET THERE from this mess I'm in!  Lest you think I've ARRIVED, let me be quick to point out that, no, I am still on the journey.

Somewhere along the way, I found the intersecting coordinates for Sanctuary and started heading that way.  I still manage to get lost quite often, but it has helped me to find direction and purpose by defining what it is I want for my life and my family's life. 

Sanctuary is where Peace, Order and Beauty meet

Peace in my relationship with God, with my past, and with others

Order in my time, money, things, and table

Beauty in my environment, creating an atmosphere pleases the senses

There are some days in which none of the above is present.  My husband once said to me (sweat pouring off his brow in the 100 degree heat) "Cleaning up after these kids ain't "Sanctuary," baby"! Sometimes I know something missing, and I can mentally go to my categories and find the key to making the day meaningful.  On those days that I am up to my eyeballs washing dirty socks and undies, it helps me to think I am creating Order.  When I am saying "no" to hosting a post-season hockey party, I feel less guilty because I can see the bigger picture of Sanctuary.

Most of my posts will probably fall into one of the above categories.  Hopefully, some of you will share with me your own stories, and we can make our way together toward a common goal.  I spend alot of my (professional) time making things beautiful, and I'd like to share tips and tricks for sprucing things up on the cheap.  My kids are on their way toward becoming responsible and kind human beings, IN SPITE of my failings and shortcomings.  Proof positive that great kids don't have to have perfect parents.  And we are still working on those Issues that rear their ugly little heads.  Yeah, we've got those too.  But along the way, we are still having fun!  After all, the joy really is in the journey.  Got directions, let's go!

Blessings,

Rachel Anne

Company Girls

I have fallen hopelessly behind in trying to maintain a blogroll.  I still get confused about blogroll etiquette: do you ask to be on a blogroll?  Do you get invited to be on one?  I dunno.

So here's what I want to do. 

I'm inviting you to be an official Company Girl! 


Company Girls have a lot in common.
My Elle and Em.

Company Girls transcend Time.
My sister Katherine and me.

When I first started blogging, I envisioned finding a group of girls with a common heart for our homes and families.  And what a treasure of friends I've found!  Here's what I wrote back in August 2006:

"Will you be my company girl?"  one of my little red-haired girls would ask the other, and the question usually came with an outstretched hand that would clasp the other's.  It was their way of saying, "Keep me company!"  It didn't seem to matter if it was a trip to the potty or a trip to the playroom, the girls had their own way of communicating that wherever they were going, whatever they were doing, it was going to be better with a "company girl."

Over the years, that phrase has become one of those family-speak things that is special to our little group of five.  Yesterday, my husband asked me to be his company girl on a trip to Home Depot. Household chores always seem to go faster, a walk to the mailbox is more enjoyable, and even a run to the grocery store is much more adventuresome with a company girl! The invitation to be a company girl is an inside way of saying "I just enjoy your company and I want you to be with me." 

It requires nothing of the invitee but to Be There. 

Be along for the ride. 

Sit in companionable silence. 

Enjoy a laugh.

Share the experience.

Would you agree that most everything in life is made that much better when you have a friend to share it with?  My purpose here is to provide an outstretched hand and an invitation to be "company girls" together through the mundane, the dramas, and the everyday stuff that makes life what it is.

The invitation still stands.

I'm asking you to email me, and then I'm going to update my Company Girl List based on your response.  Even if you are already listed, please go ahead and let me know that you want to be included so I can update it.

And as if just being BFF's isn't enough, I'm going to throw in an added incentive. 

Sometime after the first of the year, I plan to create some "Home Sanctuary-esque" artwork and make it available online.  For anyone who is a Company Girl, I will offer significant discounts...JUST FOR YOU! I'm thinking of something like a canvas print that says "Sanctuary" on it that would be reasonably priced to begin with.  Just like my tattered 3x5 card, it can remind us of our vision for what we want our homes to be.  Hey, I even want one of those!  I'll keep ya'll updated...and if you think of someone else who might be interested, send them on over.  Link up, baby!  Let's have fun!

For my email friends, please don't think you have to have a blog to be a Company Girl.  I will simply put your name (or pseudo-name) on my list so we can be one big happy family.

C'Mon! Don't be shy. Be My Company Girl!

Company Girls have fun together! 
Two of my nieces, jumping for joy.