Preparing Older Daughters

Today I am over at Raising Homemakers sharing a bit of my thoughts on

Preparing Older Daughters

Won't you join me?



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Some Pretties For Your Home

As homemakers we are always looking for ways to beautify our space. We want it to be a place that warmly welcomes family and guests. We also desire to minister to those we love and care for with God's Word. Scripture does not need to be limited to wall art in the home but can also be displayed in beautiful serving ware.

Promoting life and home, introducing the gorgeous and hospitable

Life to the Full Collection

Breath-takingly beautiful breakfast plates!

I have come that they might have Life, and have it to the full. John 10:10

What a wonderful way to celebrate life--with cherished family, friends and food. 

A bowl full of soup to warm our souls and heart-to-heart conversation.

Tea towels for a very special occasion...

Coffee with friends....

and a word filled with hope....

Aprons that share God's heart...

And one for little homemaking hands that are learning too...

Together in unity---a feasting platter of love!

Fill your home with the beautiful things you love as you celebrate life and share His glory!



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Dear friends, I am an affiliate for DaySpring, a wonderful Christian company that has partnered with Hallmark. If you would like to make a purchase, please consider doing it through this site through the links above! We thank you and greatly appreciate it. Right now several of these items listed above are on sale and any order of $50 or more gets FREE ground shipping within the United States!






This post is also linked up at Raising Homemakers and Far Above Rubies.

Daughters Who Walk With The Lord

I have three beautiful daughters whom I love and cherish.

Teaching my daughters homemaking skills is very important to me. I want them to know how to cook, clean, run and manage a home, care for children, love their husbands and so forth,  but nothing is more important to me than having them walk with the Lord.

There are many daughters out there doing wonderfully virtuous and industrious things, but of all these—if I am not teaching them to walk with the Lord, then I am not doing my job.

We must take the time to invest in and evaluate our daughters spiritual life.

Here are a couple of questions to ask yourself:

1. Does my daughter have a personal Bible time with the Lord?
2. Does my daughter have a prayer time outside of meals where she is praying to Him?
3. Is she engaging in learning more about Him, through Bible study, devotions, books, conversations, godly mentors, etc.
4. Does she seek Him in the course of every day life?
5. Am I modeling this example to my daughters?

It is too easy to measure our daughters by comparing them with other godly daughters that we see out there at church, online, or through friends. But that is an unfair comparison—each daughter will be different and possess different giftings–we should not try to make our daughters fit a preconceived mold or judge them because we think they are not living up to our expectations of what a daughter should be like. God has made them unique, they were beautifully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:14), they were fashioned by the hands of their loving father our King,  and we should seek to illuminate that to the best of our abilities, not against it.

Yes, we want well-rounded daughters. We desire to raise accomplished daughters, but we cannot forget that our main goal is to raise godly daughters—daughters of the King who will be raised for His mighty purposes.

If we seek these things first, the good things, then the rest will follow.

“But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”

-Matthew 6:33

Have a blessed day as your turn your daughters hearts toward the King!

This post is being featured over at Raising Homemakers today.

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Teaching My Daughters

Today I am over at Raising Homemakers

sharing my experiences of teaching my daughters how to sew. 

It is such an honor to train our daughters to learn to become better homemakers

and our blessed responsibility to as well.

Train them while they are young

and cultivate the their natural tendencies

to want to learn to do these things.

See you over there:

Simple Sewing Projects for Daughters

Have a blessed day!



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A Lovely Summer Visit

A few weeks ago we were invited up to visit with the Brookshire's. Their mom~Robin, father~Rob, and daughters Breezy and Emily Rose (who sell their beautiful paper dolls at Vision Forum) warmly opened up their hearts and home to us in loving Christian hospitality. I wanted to share some of the pictures with you:

Sarah Mae of Like a Warm Cup of Coffee (and founder of Raising Homemakers) was visiting and she is a wonderfully friendly and gal and we 'clicked' right away! She is just what I thought she would be--kind, loving, exuberant, heart for the Lord and for Truth. It was a blessing to meet her, her husband and darling children!



The Devine family also joined us---so here we are--a second Raising Homemakers reunion! Now all you other gals who write for RH, we are going to have to plan to get you all down here somehow! Wouldn't it great to do so?



Sarah Mae's blog was recently featured on Good Morning America regarding how she made money by working at home through her Opensky shop. She is a wonderful example of how a young Christian mother can be industrious from home with her spare time and yet still balance family and homelife.

Sarah Mae has also recently helped to collaborate a wonderful piece of jewelry that is made by The Vintage Pearl. It is the"Raising Generations" necklace. She is also offering all my readers who are interested in buying this special necklace a discount of 15% for one week starting today until the 30th . The discount code is Generations15. Be sure to hop on over there and pick one up while you can!
Look how pretty it is...



"Because I am raising generations I will never know...."

Doesn't that just resonate in your mind and heart?
I love jewelry with meaning--especially with a message so close to my heart!




Now back to my summer visit---
*Two generations here---mothers with their lovely daughters*

We also took some fun pics looking 'bitter and oppressed' but I laughed too hard when I looked through them and so therefore none made it in this post!
Besides, I might need to use them one day as blackmail pictures...JK!! ;)
 {suppressing evil laugh}



My daughters Janai and Nomi with Emily and Breezy. Emily was such a sweetie and shared her photography tips with Nomi who just loves the camera!



Here is my little Joy with Breezy, she just loves drawing and was so blessed to receive some drawing lessons from Breezy while we were there. Breezy is an amazing artist, you must take a peek at her beautiful work.



And last but not least----I was able to see the yo-yo quilt!!!! Have you not read about this quilt? This picture does not do it any justice. This beautiful quilt was done by Emily when she was only 16 and has over 1000 yo-yo's all handmade by one determined daughter! Read her inspiring story here.

All in all, it was a beautiful day full of fun, precious summer memories were made, and great Christian fellowship was had. Hopefully we will be able to do this sometime soon again!




Hope you enjoyed taking a peek into my summer!



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Industrious Daughters-Olde Angora Giveaway

I love hearing about how women are being industrious in their homes by helping to make money to help their families like we see modeled by the Proverbs 31 woman. I especially love when I get to hear stories of daughters who use the talents and gifts that God has given them to bless others with an entrepreneurial focus, I find it truly so inspiring!

I would like to introduce you to Olde Angora. Olde Angora is an Etsy shop started by a godly, homeschool daughter who loves to knit and crochet, and now she has started a shop to sell her wares. It reminds me of this verse in Proverbs 31:24--

"She makes linen garments and sells them, and supplies the merchants with sashes."

Miss Miriam, owner of the shop, has a nice variety of quality hand-knitted items--she sells shawls, baby blankets, mini-quilts, hand crocheted bookmarks, scarves, slippers, hand spun yarn and headbands at very affordable prices. Many are hand-cleaned, hand-carded and hand-spun.  Here are a few pictures:

(Cute scarves, as pictured above, that can also be worn as a headband-$11)

(Lovely baby blanket-$10)

Any one of these items would also make a wonderful gift for a birthday, Christmas or just because! Olde Angora has generously offered to one of my readers a $20 gift certificate to be used in her shop--- all you have to do is to enter is leave a comment WITH your email.

For extra entries:

• Buy something at Olde Angora (10 entries, leave 10 comments)
• Blog about this giveaway (3 entries, leave 3 comments)
  
• Facebook or Tweet this giveaway (1 entry for each)
• Subscribe to this blog (must be a new subscriber)
• Tell us what you like most at Olde Angora
  

Hope you win!

Thank you Olde Angora!

Raising Homemakers "Reunion"

Recently we were blessed to have the Brookshire family come out to visit our church. We said it was something of a Raising Homemaker's "reunion" since we all write for the new, popular site and were all together at one place! Here are some pictures from their lovely visit:

From left to right:
Breezy Brookshire of A Bowl of Moss and Pebbles
Rhonda Devine of Walking With Sarah
Robin Brookshire of Robins Egg Blue
June Fuentes of A Wise Woman Builds Her Home (me!)
Emily Rose Brookshire of Simply Vintage Girl

We tried really hard not to laugh and giggle too much for the shots but it took about twenty or so to finally get it right!

Mother and daughter (Breezy and Robyn)

Robin was just as lovely, sweet, and sincere as you would imagine her being from reading her blog. She is also one busy mama as she helps her industrious daughters through the many new, exciting projects that come their way.




*Lovely Daughters*

(Naomi Fuentes, Breezy, Janai Fuentes, Emily Rose)

Emily Rose and Breezy are two wonderfully accomplished daughters who are striving to live godly, counter cultural lives. Their giftings range from beautiful art, knitting, cooking, poetry, writing, photography, sewing, to web graphics and design. They are also the special gals behind the beautiful and historic 'Daughters of His Story' paper dolls sold through Vision Forum.




My daughters own the whole set--they love them, and play with them constantly!I highly recommend these high quality dolls for your daughters...be sure to visit Noble Rose Press to purchase them for the lovely young ladies in your life.


For more pictures of this special day click here.

Also---did you know there were more writers added onto the Raising Homemakers team?

The West Ladies, creators of Homestead Blessings
and
Miss Jenny Leding of Blessed Femina


Have a blessed day!






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Virtuous Daughters

I am over at Raising Homemakers today sharing about

"Homemaking Daughters"

Won't you stop by?


And if you would like to read Part 2 to the article

you could find it

here.

Family Reformation Ladies Tea of 2010

This past weekend my daughters and I were blessed to be a part of the Reformation Ladies Tea hosted by Stacy McDonald (author of Raising Maidens of Virtue and co-author of Passionate Housewives Desperate for God). The lovely speakers were Jasmine Baucham, Stacy McDonald, Sandy Grutzius and Hope Ware. I have plenty of pictures to share for those of you who couldn't make it:

Tables were beautifully, creatively and lovingly decorated by mothers and daughters of Providence church.

I liked this ship theme, it makes me think about the Titanic for some reason and therefore conjures up romantic thoughts of the ocean. There were so many themes--from porcelain doll tables to horses theme, you can click here to view more of the tables.

Mallory Grutzius plays her gorgeous harp as background music, we tried to capture it on video but it was drowned out by all those talking in the background. Trust me though, it was heavenly as she is quite skilled. Her sisters also played violin and flute.



We were served a gourmet lunch, chicken salad on croissant, strawberry salad and strawberry soup---my youngest daughter was in heaven because she just LOVES strawberries. Above is a picture of the dessert table, everything was delectable! They had everything from chocolate covered strawberries, fruit bouquets, truffles, cupcakes and tea cookies and more. Gluten free dainties were also available.



This had to be my favorite table of all--I like to think of it as the 'Blessed Mother' table. It reminds me of my blog- look closely and see the crystals hanging off the cake stand? I love it! The candle holder on the left (not all pictured) gave it a beautiful aura as it glistened through the room.

This is Jesi Ryken (15) on the left with Emilee Degenhart---I have these two special daughters in this post because I want you to take a close look at their gorgeous dresses. Jesi made these dresses out of sheets--yes! I said sheets (that she picked out for free at the 'free room' of her church)! She made her dress in one day then added hand made crocheted sleeves and embroidered red and blue stars to match their flag themed table at the tea! Talk about resourcefully repurposing something old into something new and beautiful!




Stacy encouraged us and our daughters to live godly lives. She shared a clip about flirting and showed pictures contrasting the hollywood 'come hither' look of women and the 'pure eyes' of a woman who represents Christ. It was very good! My daughters especially enjoyed that part since two of their friends were featured in the 'pure eyes' collage.



Here I am with Jasmine--we both write for Ladies Against Feminism and Raising Homemakers. Did you notice how un-photogenic I am? I know I look tired but the night before we were out until 2am at my husband's 20th high school reunion---I have an excuse! {ahem} Jasmine Baucham was indeed our heroine--she had gone through quite an ordeal to arrive at the tea on time--canceled plane flights, torrential rains, unspeakable traffic and so forth. She is currently working on a book entitled after her blog, Joyfully at Home, that promises to be an excellent addition to our daughter's collections.



Here I am with my sweet friend Jaime Gibbs of Like a Bubbling Brook--if you click on her link you will find her perspective of the tea. She is a sweetie pie, has two adorable children and is in the midst of planting a church with her husband. Jaime, it was wonderful visiting with you and I hope to have you over to my house soon for some tea!



My daughter captured the room as the ladies sang a lovely hymn in unison lifting up praises to God.
(Be sure to turn off the music in the sidebar before you play the video!)



My daughters with their friends-- the Grutzius daughters and Kelle Merry (she also made her dress, isn't it too cute?) These gals all know eachother from the Maidens of Virtue group we attend.

Here are a few quick tidbits shared at the tea:

• Wives, mothers and daughters have an irrevocable calling
• We can get too busy with good things, not God things
• Statistics show moms spend way too much time on the internet and are distracted with that, blogging, emailing and texting (we are not 'safe' in our own houses)
  
• We need to examine ourselves to see if we are really living godly lives or just having 'the appearance of godliness'
  
• We need to model biblical womanhood for our daughters, to help them embrace it (and not force it). We need to model it with our heart allowing God to transform us.

There's so much more but cannot possibly include it all in one post...I also cannot forget our wonderful visit to Providence church the next day and staying the night with the loving and hospitable Bandy family! They so blessed our hearts with their warm welcome and godly Christian example. I learned alot from my visit there--but that is a whole other post! And if you are ever in town, I highly recommend that you visit Providence church-- Pastor James McDonald is an excellent preacher, full of zeal and a passionate heart for his Lord and congregation--their church family is loving and warm. We are very much looking forward to visiting again soon.

Hope you enjoyed my pictures of the tea!

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Have a tea with your daughter(s) and make special memories,
I love this tea set collection 
and it is perfect for their hope chest!

Daughters As Pillars

"May our daughters be like graceful pillars, carved to beautify a palace.--Psalm 144:12

Graceful and beautiful pillars are indeed being raised today. I have seen them with my own eyes. They stand out from the crowd. They are being raised for kingdom purposes.



Theirs is a strong and sacred foundation--the holy scriptures. This is where they are learning the character of the Proverbs 31 women and the mandates of Titus 2:4-6:



1. Learning to love their future husbands

2. Learning to love their future children

3. To be self-controlled

4. To be pure

5. To be keepers at home

6. To be kind

7. Learning to be subject to their future husbands so the word of God will not be maligned



This new generation of daughters are being raised to fear the Lord. They are taught to be feminine women of nobility, courage, diligence, loyalty and submission. They esteem purity and modesty. They strive to be honorable. They are daughters who have vision and remarkable influence as they help to advance the kingdom of God. These daughters have given their hearts to their parents and desire to help and bless them and their families. They learn the value of a meek and quiet spirit as they firmly defend and teach the Word to all who are willing to listen. They know their true purpose because they are serving the Lord wholeheartedly. They embrace how they were designed to be help-meets and seek to be industrious to help their fathers and future husbands. Many are highly educated and well-equipped to teach the next generation about the Lord and prepare for Him an army of warriors.



Godly daughters follow in the spirit of Psalm 144:12 and Titus 2. They are pillars and cornerstones, which is another word often used in this verse, help to support and vital in maintaining a buildings structure. Much in the same way daughters become just as invaluable to a home as they grow and help it to run successfully. Godly daughter's embrace their father's vision and take it up as their own. Virtuous daughters being brought up to be godly women are invaluably priceless in the eye's of the Lord (Prov 31:10) and they impact society and culture with a powerful rippling effect.



So, dear Christian Mothers, know that that little daughter sitting next to you is cherished in the Lord's eyes. The babes she will raise will be the next generation which will serve Him. She will be standing shoulder-to-shoulder with her husband taking dominion and quite possibly be at the helm with him, leading the future church, mentoring men and women alike as they take their place in reforming culture. She will be making strong the fabric of society by taking her place in the home and in her family- making it an example for others to learn from and to bring God glory. Be careful to guide her and protect her. Be careful to teach her all that you know and much, much more. Love her with the love that comes from the Heavenly Father and be found trustworthy of discipling her well.



















(This article is over at Raising Homemakers, hop on over there to see the great giveaway they have and all you have to do is post on my article over there to enter! And great news--Jasmine Baucham and Kelly Crawford will be joining the RH team!)

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Raising Homemakers

It's here!

The Raising Homemakers website launched today! It is so exciting to have a place for all of us mothers, daughters, grandmothers and women from all types of backgrounds-- to be able to gather and be encouraged on this blessed journey of raising godly daughters and preparing them in the arts of homemaking to bring glory to our King.

I believe it is so important to equip and inspire our daughters with biblical wisdom, life skills and good works to bless the world around them. I also believe that it is equally vital to impart vision and offer encouragement to them so they understand their purpose here on earth...that is why I am so excited about being on the team of inspiring contributors at Raising Homemakers and looking forward to the wisdom we will find there. This will be a place for mothers and daughters to do exactly that and to really focus in on the womanly and domestic arts in the 21st century.

And to celebrate the launch, we are having an wonderful give away bundle that you won't want to miss---the perfect set for any aspiring or present day homemaker! Here is a sneak peek at one of the books we are giving away:

(I love this book and highly recommend it for all mothers and daughters alike, there is much wisdom to be learned here.)

Don't delay, visit Raising Homemakers today!