Leila Marie Lawler's Blog, page 17

Ask Auntie Leila: Wardrobe foundations

Dear Brandi writes:

I feel like one of the lost skills of womanhood is how to dress oneself properly. I don’t mean looking put together but what kind of slip to wear, hosiery, etc. Basically, those garments we lost to feminism but are actually helpful. Can you share some lost wisdom on this?

Dear Brandi,

The garments, the garments. I can just remember how they were when I was a little girl in the 60s. A big topic of conversation among women was girdles! How uncomfortable they were, and they certainly looked pitiless.

And stockings! Things were progressing to the point of stockings that didn’t have seams in the back, needing to be kept in alignment (and opening the lady whose lines were not in order to judgment about her self-respect), but they were made of a kind of material that was all too susceptible to gravity. Ladies were always needing to find a private place to pull their nylons up again. And they got runs so easily — grief hovered in the air at all times over this calamity.

I remember thinking that I needed a way to escape this trap of adulthood, because I was not going to wear those things! I was so fatally sensitive to all the stimuli — the woolen underwear for children that was also still in use just about killed me, as my skin reacts to it by exploding into sensory chaos. I couldn’t imagine life as a grownup in a girdle and stockings.

Then along came women’s rights and bra-burning and hippie scorn for convention! If it got me out of having to wear dresses, I was for it! Ironically, at the same time, spandex transformed all the things, making them a lot more comfortable. I have a vivid memory of two plump playground monitor moms laughing hysterically over a pair of pantyhose that one of them pulled out of her bag, that looked like it might possibly fit a 2-year-old — until then you had to buy your hose in your exact size and hope for the best!

So you are right — there is a disconnect there. It took me a long time to figure out what I needed to dress comfortably, modestly, and I hope, attractively, especially in cold weather.

And yes, modesty is a big part of this question. Modesty is not limited to sexuality. It’s about fittingness in one’s personal appearance, so that one radiates to the eyes of others (and to their other senses too!) the truth of what is invisible. Modesty has a lot to do with figuring out how to be out and about without fidgeting, tugging, letting things hang out, and having what ought to be unseen be seen, yikes.

(For a full discussion of modesty, do hearken back to this book reading we had here on Wendy Shalit’s excellent book, A Return to Modesty.)

So here is what I have learned. Please keep in mind that I am taking into consideration the need to be warm for many months of the year. If you live in California etc. not all of this will be needed. But you may travel! And you may not be aware of the pitfalls… I will tell you.

Starting from the inside and working our way out — and I won’t have many photos because it’s hard to find modest ones:

Underpants: Thank goodness we don’t have to deal with tortuous girdles, but I don’t think the answer is bikini panties or even scantier options! Again with the tugging! Also, many women deal with cramps and scars and other abdominal issues. Why would we want a piece of elastic going across this sensitive area?

Then there’s the question of muffin-tops and lumpiness in general. I want to look smooth. The industry has tried to make me think that putting the panty line lower down will help, but that doesn’t make sense. Why not have something that comfortably smooths over the entire area, front and back, with some compression but not too much, and with the panty line at my waist where it won’t shift? But it must have cotton where it’s needed.

My suggestion is something like this (affiliate link)

I know that some will think granny panties, but the vibe is, rather, more like this (well, maybe not “sea nymph,” it’s hard to find a picture of what I mean, but let’s normalize curves and coverage!):

(I bought a supply of these (affiliate link) and they are now unavailable, but if you click on it you will see similar items. I wouldn’t want to link to something I haven’t bought, but you get the idea. I ordered my usual medium size and they are fine, but the description now says that they run small).

Bras: As I am not super well endowed, I will leave it at this: I don’t like underwires and sometimes, if I can only find bras with them, I take them out by cutting a little slit on the inside to access them. I just get mine at Marshalls; my main thought is that they give me a smooth look. I prefer ones that match my skin tone so that they aren’t visible under a light shirt.

Tights and pantyhose: In summer I don’t wear them unless the event is very formal indeed. We’re not talking about clothing here but let me just say that unless you’re at the beach and/or are 16 or younger, skirts and dresses should be knee length or longer. No one wants to see your knees! And if the skirt covers them, and you shave and moisturize your legs, you can get away with this most of the time. Again, I am a recovering hippie so this is fine with me.

But when the weather gets cooler, I like to have a supply of pantyhose, tights, and footless tights. I buy them at Marshall’s or TJ Maxx. Let’s discuss:

Sheer pantyhose in nude and black for really dressing up, with control tops. One of each. I prefer sheer all the way down to the toes so that whatever shoes I’m wearing won’t expose heel and toe issues.

Regular, non-fleece-lined tights. I like to have 3-4 pairs of these in black (maybe one in gray and one in brown if I can find them). These tights make me comfortable in a skirt in all but the coldest weather. They pull the outfit together and look trim — with cute clogs or flats I can go all day. They are sturdy, resisting runs, and even if they get a hole it doesn’t spread (this was a big advance that I also remember!) Maybe you think tights are constricting, but actually they are freeing. Just get your actual size! 

Fleece-lined tights. Here in New England I need these in winter. With a corduroy skirt and slip (discussed below) I’m good to go. 

Footless tights. Some of the pairs can be footless. This means I can wear warm socks; with boots no one can tell and I’m warmer and the weird sweatiness you can get with tights in the foot area is obviated. 

Leggings. These are handy in cool but not cold weather where you can stick your bare feet in a pair of flats and are good to go — if you are wearing a tunic that covers down to your thighs. Trust me… your backside, which you do not see, is not advantageous in leggings.

Slips: Here’s the real puzzler for many of you! What is a slip and — why?

Well, if you are going to be wearing pantyhose or tights, you need a nylon slip so that your skirt or dress doesn’t cling to them and make it hard for you to walk! A slip allows your skirt to… slip over your tights!

It’s all fine until you go from your house to outside. Suddenly, the change in temperature creates static and your dress is flattened against your legs. You can’t take a step because the fabric is wrapping around you! You needed a slip.

You can usually find nice ones at thrift stores, so you don’t even have to spend much on them. Have one that is just above your knees so it doesn’t show with a knee-length skirt, one midi one, and one longer one for your holiday maxi-skirt that will wrap around your ankles if you don’t have it. I also like having one midi one with a slit to wear under a pencil skirt with its own slit.

If the world were a place of justice, skirts would come lined and you wouldn’t need a slip, but we live in barbaric times… I have one fabulous mid-calf wool skirt with a lining that makes my life so much simpler in winter. Keep your eye out in thrift stores for such a thing.

The slip also adds a layer of warmth. You might not think it, but it does. And if you have a fancy frock with a bit of swing to it, consider an actual crinoline (affiliate link) to give it the necessary body and avoid a sort of limp effect that ruins the effort.

Consider getting a half-slip for your daughter. You can reconcile her to skirts and dresses if she doesn’t always feel that they are scrunching up on her. A lot of the resistance you’re getting has to do with a sense of being exposed and so is actually quite valid. Address that issue and you may find more cooperation.

Camisoles. In cool weather, a camisole adds a layer and can be tucked into your skirt or pants to keep you warm. In summer it provides modesty if your top is sheer. Old Navy has tunic-length camis that might be helpful under a short dress or long top with leggings.

All of these things can seem like… a lot. Is it worth it? All these layers? In colder weather it is — I would rather take the time (and know that I am extremely impatient with such things! hence it took me a long time to work up to all this) than get stuck somewhere with that miserable feeling of not being dressed in a fitting way , which to me, sort of characterizes immodesty (again, not in a sexual sense but in a sense of having my body not be the focus of my — or others’ — attention).

I spent a lot of time in my younger days just not having the right things to wear. A skeptic (not you, Brandi!) might save herself some embarrassment and free herself to have a nice feminine wardrobe.

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A word about jeans. I know some of my readers have sworn off pants and jeans altogether. But if you wear them, consider the question of why, why have extra, stiff layers of fabric, not to mention metal, in the sensitive area of your abdomen. I have found this style (affiliate link) and I have never looked back, since I do wear jeans on certain occasions (including yard work unless it’s very hot).

Since we’ve long ago left behind tucking in shirts, the elastic panel doesn’t show anyway. It pulls everything in nicely and most importantly, eliminates the bulky, even pointy, situation right where I personally do not need it!

If your figure is full in the hips and small in the waist, I don’t think they would work (and jeans in general probably don’t work), but otherwise they are brilliant. I have two in the dark wash denim and one in black (the photo on the listing makes them look wrinkly but they are not like that). The black ones are super clutch when I want to be ready to do work but also look a little more put together.

I do dearly wish they would make them in twill and corduroy!

Do get the bootcut style. They are merely straight, and my observation is that ankle-hugging jeans are not attractive — the straight style lengthens your leg and is much more modest.

(And no, leggings that resemble jeans are not acceptable substitutes. They really don’t look as good as you think they do… I’m old enough now to say it…)

For a full treatment on dressing in cold weather, go here.

For more on dressing in a pretty way (especially after babies), go here.

For a corduroy skirt I like, go here. This particular one is no longer in stock, sadly, but it gives you an idea of what works for winter while still looking attractive. Try searching “flared corduroy riding boot skirt” and see what comes up… this one is pretty (if pricey). This denim skirt (affiliate link) is good for all but the dead of winter, and is actually much nicer in person.

There you have it! Did I leave anything out?

follow us everywhere!

My “random thoughts no pictures” blog,  Happy Despite Them  — receive it by email if you like, or bookmark, so you don’t miss a thing!

Stay abreast of the posts here at LMLD, when they happen:

Consider subscribing to this blog by email. In the current situation, if we can’t meet here, it would be good for us to be connected by email!

Like LMLD on Facebook.

Follow LMLD on Twitter.

We share pretty pictures: Auntie Leila’s Instagram, Rosie’s Instagram. Sukie’s Instagram. Deirdre’s Instagram. Bridget’s Instagram.

Auntie Leila’s Twitter.

Auntie Leila’s Facebook (you can just follow)

Auntie Leila’s Pinterest.

The boards of the others:  Rosie’s Pinterest.  Sukie’s Pinterest.  Deirdre’s Pinterest.  Habou’s Pinterest (you can still get a lot of inspiration here! and say a prayer for her!).  Bridget’s Pinterest.

The post Ask Auntie Leila: Wardrobe foundations appeared first on Like Mother Like Daughter.

Curating the pantry

I am blessed with a pantry so large it could be, as some readers have told me, a legitimate bedroom in some places (yes, it has a window! but not a closet, that would be strange).

BEFORE: We’re going to do befores and process, so here’s the before! Tidy-ish but with a lot of things in there that don’t belong.

Now, I don’t have a useable basement, as many of you probably do. I can’t put my unused appliances or long-term storage in the basement, even though it’s huge, comprising the whole footprint of the house — but it’s fieldstone and dirt and not at all dry. The Chief is hatching a plan for a root cellar in one area, but it would require a major overhaul of the path down there, which at the moment is dark, forbidding, and scary.

Anyway, you can see how I’ve used the pantry over the years, for food storage as well as for my sewing; I have a highlight on Instagram with a “tour,” and you can also see it here.

Just before Christmas I made the decision to move the crafting component out of the pantry and up the back stairs which are off the kitchen, to the room that has heretofore been used as a sort of rec room and overflow guest room. Since we now have no need for the former and plenty of guest rooms without it, it seemed like a good call. More on that when I get to re-organizing up there.

But a principle that I will talk about more when we get there is this: you will always need to spend some time on resetting a space, visualizing and curating it, and the more creative you are, the more so. That’s because creativity, including using your talents to maintain a home, generates disorder, simply because you can’t do two things at once, the task at hand and organization. It’s important to make time for the latter and to accept it as part of the process, even though it seems like it should be done once and then just be done. But, no!

Things that need a new home for sure.

I thought you might like to see some progress on making the pantry just a pantry, in the spirit of last week’s “visualizing curated abundance” post. If I want to have abundant (but not excessive and wasteful) food stores and items I need for the two of us with the thought of possible interruptions in the supply chain and our ability to get out in bad weather, as well as for generous hospitality, I have to revisit this area and get it in order.

Left to right notes: I got some little organizational metal stacking racks from Aldi; such items make me anxious because I am not ever sure how I will use them and I hate wasting money.
I don’t know that I need three waffle irons.
My new books are going to need a place (some are on the shelf, and that box is more).
Christmas things got put in here, as did the beeswax candles that I ordered ahead of Candlemas. Up on the right there is a basket with “rag towels” — so handy in case of spills. But… this many may not be necessary.
The other baskets hold paper goods like plates and cups for big gatherings — of which we have many!Christmas tins drive me crazy. You need them when you are giving away delicate cookies, but storing them is impossible! These are going up to the attic with the decorations now that cookie season is over, to be faced again next year.

I already began visualizing before Christmas and did the part where I pulled everything out and cleaned from top to bottom. That is always the first step to real, deep de-cluttering: you can’t do it “in place,” although tidying is always going to be a daily necessity. Starting off with the way you want it to be is the key to getting somewhere and not just shuffling things around — and the key to being able to tidy easily after you’ve done this part.

However, Christmas intervened and the process got interrupted. Even though these during pictures are not shockingly disorderly, a lot of things got shoved into this undeniably handy space for shoving.

PROGRESS: Tidier. But — Here is a wall (needs repainting, more on that below). That poster is of a ship I actually was on when I was a teenager. I got it in an art store where it was significantly marked down, about 30 years ago. It’s impossible to hang! I need a little shelf for it to rest on. Sigh.Can you see that I’ve put those Aldi organizers on the right-hand metal shelf, in the middle? They are holding various cookie cutters and Springerle molds etc, one kind per basket. The basket of candles will sit there until it’s time for the blessing.

The back wall is all the food! My jars from canning this summer, jars and non-perishables from the store, and so on. Well, on the left are the blue bins that hold potatoes, onions, and other roots that do fine here in this cooler room.

I have gone over each thing and assured myself that it’s wanted and needed, discarding the rest or putting it in the more immediate kitchen area for using in a timely way.

Items that I access frequently are at chest height. Less-used things are lower or higher. I think most people have more storage for food in their actual kitchens; I have very little cupboard space. So here’s where it all hangs out.

On the black rack are extra jars and, on top, my medicinal herbs. I plan to have a bigger herb garden this coming year, so I anticipate more jars on the wooden shelf. Some remedies I buy in bulk; those are in the baskets and will get transferred to jars as they are opened and the contents are used. Since I do freeze produce, I don’t want to throw away/recycle my extra containers, but I did rationalize them to be all one size; those are stacked on the bottom shelf.
On the wooden shelf you see the basket with “rag towels,” now more compact.This is a somewhat dead corner. I am storing things here that are not accessed often, but I do want and need them. My books will stay there for now. The bins have flour or grain and are easily slid around. Behind them is a basket holding large shopping bags which I find I do want handy. Above is a homemade sleeve for plastic grocery bags, batteries in a super organizer, so unlike us! and my mop and broom. That rack is actually for an ironing board and I may move that upstairs when I get the sewing area up and running.

So here I am simply doing more to ensure that only pantry items remain here. To do this and avoid getting distracted, I require of myself that I not leave the room to put things in their new homes. My method (inspired by the Sidetracked Home Executives’ observations of their own distractibility that I’ve written about here) is to go ahead and allow things to pile up just outside the door or in this case, since just outside here is rather narrow, actually in the middle of the room!

This shows you the rationality of my method! I know just what needs to be taken out when I’ve gotten everything that Stays In, in its place. I couldn’t think of a place for my books, as you saw in the picture above (the “dead” corner).

Long ago I decided not to tire myself out by running around, even if I could prevent myself from getting sidetracked (unlikely). I hated leaving a space I was working on — it always seemed like then the kids would run and and really wreak havoc, and I find that running up and down the stairs is one of the tiring activities that makes me dread these tasks. If I take care not to do that to myself, I’m more likely to tackle them.

I can only do one thing at a time; the task at hand is to organize this space as well as I can, given the limitations, which include that I can’t paint here even though it needs it, because there is a repair to the radiator pipes in the laundry room above here, which will necessitate pulling down part of the ceiling. So while I’m waiting for that, I’ll set aside the decorating aspect and concentrate on making this space functional and pretty as best I can.

I spent some time when I was done re-homing/discarding/putting in a donation bag many things — all accomplished on this level, no stairs.

What’s left here on the radiator, below, is waiting for me to take it upstairs when I go! Not too bad!

So, for now, done! I have abundance, but not excess. I’ve visualized it the way I want it (for now at least), and I’ve curated all the things! I’m tempted to do a video of it all… what do you think of my pantry?

bits & piecesDon’t miss this interview; Lisa Mladinich and I had a good conversation over at Amazing Catechists (not that I represent myself as such!). And read an excerpt from The Summa Domestica: Order and Wonder in Family Life over at Theology of the Home: Deciding to Be HomeWomen Deserve Men Who Oppose AbortionThe other day I saw a post on Instagram from a young mom insisting that children learn nothing — nothing! — by the rote method. One of my purposes here is to stand athwart such resurrections, periodically attempted, of progressive nonsense — nonsense that I’m not predicting the failure of, but that has demonstrated on the backs of several generations now its tragic error. Ah well, here is a thoughtful defense of memorization — of poetry — from Dan Hitchens, along with a little advice on how to go about it oneself, even as an adult (I am so bad at it and maybe I will try his method!): Learning by Heart. For children, I recommend starting a tradition of recitation on Sundays as we’re relaxing after dinner! I wrote about a sweet essay on the topic here (the link about Penny Candy). from the archivesMarriage is the plan — there is no other plan. My thoughts on the March for Life and the real solution to the problem of abortion in our society.I’ll just keep posting my thoughts on how to dress children in cold weather until I stop seeing pictures of kids in short sleeves while mom informs us of the -30 wind chill… (spoiler — I don’t really recommend sweaters for young children so don’t tell me they don’t like it — just read the post!)Keeping the house warm in winter.follow us everywhere!

My “random thoughts no pictures” blog,  Happy Despite Them  — receive it by email if you like, or bookmark, so you don’t miss a thing!

Stay abreast of the posts here at LMLD, when they happen:

Consider subscribing to this blog by email. In the current situation, if we can’t meet here, it would be good for us to be connected by email!

Like LMLD on Facebook.

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We share pretty pictures: Auntie Leila’s Instagram, Rosie’s Instagram. Sukie’s Instagram. Deirdre’s Instagram. Bridget’s Instagram.

Auntie Leila’s Twitter.

Auntie Leila’s Facebook (you can just follow)

Auntie Leila’s Pinterest.

The boards of the others:  Rosie’s Pinterest.  Sukie’s Pinterest.  Deirdre’s Pinterest.  Habou’s Pinterest (you can still get a lot of inspiration here! and say a prayer for her!).  Bridget’s Pinterest.

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Visualize Curated Abundance

Congratulations to our two winners of our giveaway of The Summa Domestica: Order and Wonder in Family Life! If you are they, an email will be in your inbox!

You rest, here are two codes for your consolation: for 10% off one set of The Summa Domestica at Sophia Press, use the code Summa10; for 15% off of two sets, use the code Summa15 (but you will not be able to use both — one or the other please!) FYI it is better for the publisher and for me for you to buy it from them directly (or from your local bookstore).

My guest-room dresser, so fairly minimalist!

I had intentions of a post here, chock full of photos demonstrating a new slant on my decluttering method, but I got sick with the flu (the regular old flu) just after posting last week’s post and have been incapable of doing more than just zoning in and out and having ideas that seem pretty darned smart, but may just be the ravings of someone who has watched too many minimalist shows on YouTube while in this state…

In my book I have a whole section on how to achieve the The Reasonably Clean, Fairly Neat, and Comfortably Tidy House (which I first wrote all about here on the blog — see the menu bar up above to find it or click that link). And I show you how to declutter, giving you my secret to start.

The dresser in what was Habou’s room; I have taken away many of the things that were here.

That secret is based on the idea that you must start with the end, or goal, not with the stuff. I think every other method ignores this! Right now, based on it being January AKA The Time of Purging, I think that the idea of minimalism is going around, and the best sellers are telling you to chuck all your things so that you can be your best self, free of all but the most minimal belongings.

But I don’t want to have only one plate and spoon per inhabitant in my home; I want abundance! (And I know by now that I will default to abundance no matter what I do!)

My dresser; you can see what I mean about not being minimalist! I like to see my stuff. But it also has to be pretty!

The answer isn’t to swing the other way to maximalism, or stuff for its own sake. And it’s certainly not to ignore the very real stress of having every surface and drawer and cubby crammed with things.

The abundance has to be curated. To do that we need to know what the purpose of everything is, yes, but also we need to see things arranged in that satisfying orderly way and then eliminate, or curate, the rest.

If we begin with the beauty of what we are trying to tidy, or if it seems more appropriate, the prettiness or even usefulness of it, I think we will get further. I think the problems will solve themselves.

So if my dresser is piled with random things because it’s a handy horizontal surface in my bedroom, it doesn’t matter how many times I take each thing off and put it in its place, throw it away, or donate it. The problem is that I have stopped seeing (or have never seen) my dresser as a pretty or beautiful spot.

Once I take everything off my dresser, I must pause. I must wipe the dresser down and polish its surface. Then I can ask myself how I would like this surface to look — and replace on it only the objects that bring me delight and create a scene that is pleasing to my eyes. Obviously, the dresser things relate to getting dressed and undressed, but it should all be fitting and orderly.

I long ago decided this about my dresser (yes, when my children were very young, so don’t think this is a grandma thing), and then I made a rule: nothing would be put down on my dresser that did not belong there. Not a stray sock, not a hairpin, not a tissue, not anything! At the most, something could be there for a matter of minutes while I took care of whatever else I had to do, but then it had to be put in its place.

I had to make this rule because the dresser top is the most instantly cluttered piece of furniture on earth! You could easily have a whole basketful of laundry there, along with medicine bottles, magazines, broken shoelaces, barrettes, and the rest of the detritus of life.

Yet coming into one’s bedroom and glancing at a pretty dresser with one’s jewelry box, perfume, and assorted little boxes is right up there with a made bed in providing a sense of peace. Tidying it up after the inevitable messiness has occurred is not really a problem when you have established a vision of how you want it to look — you simply remove what doesn’t belong. And the things that are not on there really will take care of themselves — or rather, you will figure out how to get them where they have to go, because you won’t give them room where they do not go.

Horizontal surfaces in general need to be subjected to this treatment and I’ve watched too many demonstrations that pay no attention to the importance of aesthetics to remain silent any longer! If you start at your messy dresser as suggested by all the gurus, simply by holding up each thing and deciding what to do with it, you will never get to the real organizing principle, which is your beautiful dresser top. Or whatever surface it is that we are considering.

(I address the issue of countertops in this post. Try my kitchen table method — it really works. Putting stuff on counters creates chaos! Don’t put anything on the counter that doesn’t belong there!)

As to inside the dresser/hutch/cabinet, where the abundance resides, the curating has to happen as well. But the same idea obtains: take everything out, wipe/vacuum/lay fresh paper, and first put back what you want to be in there. Do it pleasingly (and here, Marie Kondo’s idea of rolling rather than stacking works so that you can see things when you open the drawer, though I feel she never quite actually explains that, I feel). As you choose items to return to the receptacle, you will necessarily make determinations about all the items. And thus the process will simply be undergone: throwing away, donating, or re-homing.

Visualizing curating your abundance — starting where you want to end up and then working with what’s left — helps you achieve the balance between having what you need and want and not paralyzing yourself with stuff, although of course, stuff being what it is, you will have to revisit it all on a regular basis until you die.

My method gives you permission to have enough things — plates, books, blankets, crafting supplies, pajamas, scarves — for a generous, creative life with lots to choose from and many people coming and going. But not so much so that you become trapped by your belongings and unable to be peaceful as you make your way through your day. Visualize first, then curate your abundance!

bits & piecesMen Are at War with God — Mary Eberstadt on the sexual revolution and its victimsMy husband on the Pope’s Motu Proprio Traditionis Custodes The Mystery of Christ Revealed to His EnemiesTwo interviews with me that I want to be sure I post here: Embracing Domestic Life with Steve and Becky Greene from the Phoenix Diocese and A Letter to the Woman Who Can’t Remember When She Showered Last with Chloe from Letters to Women. These were both super fun to do! I hope you enjoy listening.My friend Geoffrey Vaughan wrote about another side of the Covid crisis in the classroom: Suffer the Little ChildrenHow should children be catechized — what does accompanying them look like? (I would say that this article cries out for a practical answer, which you will find in my book, in the education volume!)

from the archivesSome people need to engage in some basic grooming, not going to lie. It starts with taking a shower! You can make dinner every day! follow us everywhere!

My “random thoughts no pictures” blog,  Happy Despite Them  — receive it by email if you like, or bookmark, so you don’t miss a thing!

Stay abreast of the posts here at LMLD, when they happen:

Consider subscribing to this blog by email. In the current situation, if we can’t meet here, it would be good for us to be connected by email!

Like LMLD on Facebook.

Follow LMLD on Twitter.

We share pretty pictures: Auntie Leila’s Instagram, Rosie’s Instagram. Sukie’s Instagram. Deirdre’s Instagram. Bridget’s Instagram.

Auntie Leila’s Twitter.

Auntie Leila’s Facebook (you can just follow)

Auntie Leila’s Pinterest.

The boards of the others:  Rosie’s Pinterest.  Sukie’s Pinterest.  Deirdre’s Pinterest.  Habou’s Pinterest (you can still get a lot of inspiration here! and say a prayer for her!).  Bridget’s Pinterest.

The post Visualize Curated Abundance appeared first on Like Mother Like Daughter.

The Summa Domestica — a giveaway of two sets!

I have a lot of New Year’s resolutions and I bet you do too, but right now I’m huddled in my house against the cold, hoping I can get some dough rising next to the wood stove, so I can turn on the oven!

But let’s talk about the book, shall we — and the giveaway! The Summa Domestica: Order and Wonder in Family Life is now quite available at Sophia, even if it’s still not in stock at Amazon; but maybe this is providential. I mean, I know the people at Sophia personally! They have all worked really hard to bring this set of books to life. There’s no question that ordering directly from them (or buying at a bookstore) helps their company thrive.

Anyway, I wanted to show you some of the features. For one thing, it is so beautifully designed! The stock photos actually don’t do it justice, not at all! The colors are richer. I had an excruciatingly specific vision in mind for the colors (as the designer will attest, poor thing), and they nailed it — but I don’t think it comes through in the photos on the site, whereas in person it does. Deirdre did a whole passel of charming and inspiring drawings to complement the text. And the quality of the printing is so high.

Did you realize that each volume has a ribbon? This was a surprise to me! Ribbons are to books what pockets are to skirts, I think!

Did you know that there is an index in each volume?

I don’t know if you remember, back in the day, when I was asking whether it should be one big tome or three volumes; one factor that was often mentioned was, “Make it so we can read it while we are nursing the baby!” So three volumes it is, and each one opens so nicely (I just can’t stand it when a book is trying to close itself.)

I have poured out just about all everything I know into these books. And today Sophia is allowing me to give away a copy to two lucky readers! Just leave a comment here below and you will be entered to win one! (To win you must have a US address for shipping.)

bits & piecesYou can still bless your home if you haven’t had a chance up until now. Rosie shared this blessing, so moving, with this prayer:

O God, make the door of this house wide enough to receive all who need charity and companionship, narrow enough to shut out all envy, pride, and strife. Make its threshold smooth enough to be no stumbling block to children, nor to straying feet, but rugged and strong enough to turn back the Tempter’s power.

O God, make the door of this house the gateway to Thy eternal Kingdom, I ask these things in the Holy Name of Jesus Christ, Thy Son, Our Lord, Amen

See if you can procure some blessed chalk and Epiphany holy water from your church (if not, try the nearest Traditional Latin Mass church or Eastern rite one). As the linked guide says, the father of the house chalks the lintel of each doorway with these marks: 20 + C + B + M + 22.

Let’s recover the kind of education that can resonate with and at least strive for the level of that of C. S. Lewis and his best and most perceptive explicator, Michael Ward! An education that tucks Dickens, Chaucer, medieval astronomy, and Herodotus in its corners, to be savored at the right time. Well, anyway, I’m not very well educated, but I found Ward’s essay on names in Prince Caspian, Return to Planet Narnia, exciting and mind-expanding.As I say in my post about whether having babies is a problem, one of the biggest dupes in history is everyone acting like contraception works and is not harmful — that it is a sort of magical remedy (for what? for being a normal person with a healthy body?) that some people unaccountably oppose, against all reason, because they are superstitious religious fanatics. I try to point out as often as I can that the types of birth control that work (although they do not by any means always work) endanger women who use them and are often fatal to the babies that come about anyway. Here is a site that seems really useful to provide information about IUDs and their threats. (Personally, I cannot imagine the decision-making process that goes into inserting a metal object into your body indefinitely, for the purpose of releasing said metal into your system. Sometimes I think people have lost their minds.)If you are interested in the case before the Supreme Court on vaccine mandates, please read this article on the 1905 case that will be most referenced, Jacobson v. Massachusetts. The author, Gerard Bradley, is Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s mentor from Notre Dame. (I recently wrote about her shaky jurisprudence on the matter of mandates in another case here.) Prof. Bradley makes a strong case for rejecting the “Jacobson test,” reflexively referenced by those who have really not examined it in light of our current situation. It’s a long but informative article and I recommend it.I was thrilled to see my friend Pascal’s Instagram discussed in this article — she helps people find childhood books they’ve lost even the names of, and NPR took notice! Our Lady as doula and Patroness of Doulas! (Don’t miss Pope Pius XII’s moving and deep Allocution [Address] to Midwives!)I love reading about the movie It’s A Wonderful Life, don’t you?

from the archivesYou know by now that I’m going to say that the most important resolutions are to get dinner under control and to sort out the laundry! I have some extra thoughts about laundry embedded in the posts in the form of what I call worksheets — a lot of words that I had decided to put into documents so that my posts wouldn’t be too long. Over the years those documents’ URL sharing gets mixed up, but I’ve gone back and fixed them, so click away. Good news — all of that is now incorporated in Volume 3 of The Summa Domestica!

liturgical living

Continuing the Epiphany celebrations! Tomorrow is the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord!

follow us everywhere!

My “random thoughts no pictures” blog,  Happy Despite Them  — receive it by email if you like, or bookmark, so you don’t miss a thing!

Stay abreast of the posts here at LMLD, when they happen:

Consider subscribing to this blog by email. In the current situation, if we can’t meet here, it would be good for us to be connected by email!

Like LMLD on Facebook.

Follow LMLD on Twitter.

We share pretty pictures: Auntie Leila’s Instagram, Rosie’s Instagram. Sukie’s Instagram. Deirdre’s Instagram. Bridget’s Instagram.

Auntie Leila’s Twitter.

Auntie Leila’s Facebook (you can just follow)

Auntie Leila’s Pinterest.

The boards of the others:  Rosie’s Pinterest.  Sukie’s Pinterest.  Deirdre’s Pinterest.  Habou’s Pinterest (you can still get a lot of inspiration here! and say a prayer for her!).  Bridget’s Pinterest.

The post The Summa Domestica — a giveaway of two sets! appeared first on Like Mother Like Daughter.

Happy New Year!

Of course we are still celebrating Christmas! Phil and I want to wish you all a blessed season of the celebration of the Nativity of the Lord. It always feels so awkward to me to post photos of us, and the light is terrible in these days of gloomy rain, but here we are and we truly do wish to greet you!

If you hadn’t seen it, I wanted to say that The Summa Domestica: Order and Wonder in Family Life is indeed in stock and ready to ship from Sophia Institute Press! (I am not sure about Amazon — eventually they will have it in stock, but the truth is that it’s better for everyone if you order it from Sophia. That said, when the time comes, please leave a review on Amazon so others can find it!)

There were so many woes before this happened (the whole thing went to press in August if you can believe it)… but at Sophia they did their best, even paying for Priority shipping for those who ordered before Christmas to ensure you got your copies.

I have to say that I could not be more thrilled with the production of the books! The design is amazing — just exactly what I had hoped for when I had the idea of an old-fashioned three-volume set that could be given as a gift and treasured for years to come. I’m sort of a fraud in that the fact that I can get out there and just tell people what to do covers up for my lack of expertise in any area, but the books’ high quality and the illustrations accompanying it (done by Deirdre!) hopefully make up for shortcomings on my part. You can always say to yourself, “Well, if she can do it, so can I!” and then my work here will be done!

As to New Year’s resolutions, as always, I say “figure out what you’re having for supper and do the laundry” is the best resolution. This year I want to add one more resolution that might help family life if you are not already putting it into practice.

I suggest that you and your spouse arrange things so that you spend time each evening together. Don’t depart to different areas of your home. Be in the room together!

If you have young children, put them to bed and then have some relaxing time in the same room with each other. Even if you are catching up on emails or reading, do it together in the same room. If you have older children, have them bring their books in and enjoy quiet time with you until they go to bed.

As spouses, be open to being interrupted by each other. Resolve to be cheerful and even encouraging about hearing an interesting or funny passage from the book the other is reading, or un-annoyed by the passing along of something cute or thought-provoking the other has come across.

As the years go on, it’s easy to fall into the habit of thinking the other doesn’t want to hear a story that just occurred to you or be read a bit of poetry, the way you did when you were first getting to know each other. But when you’re old, you’ll have nothing to talk about if you don’t bring up what you were thinking or what you overheard (or read)! And if you react with irritation at those things, or with an air of waiting for the interruption to be over so that you can get back to what you were doing, you’re shutting off the interactions that make life together possible and indeed a joy. Certainly if you head for different rooms when you’re still young, you won’t be comfortable being together when you’re older… and have no children to fill the house with noise any more!

So let’s work on being together most evenings at least for a time, with easy, companionable silence and open sharing of thoughts too!

At least, that’s my idea. Make of it what you will!

Next week I will have the usual links for you and a giveaway for the Summa!

follow us everywhere!

My “random thoughts no pictures” blog,  Happy Despite Them  — receive it by email if you like, or bookmark, so you don’t miss a thing!

Stay abreast of the posts here at LMLD, when they happen:

Consider subscribing to this blog by email. In the current situation, if we can’t meet here, it would be good for us to be connected by email!

Like LMLD on Facebook.

Follow LMLD on Twitter.

We share pretty pictures: Auntie Leila’s Instagram, Rosie’s Instagram. Sukie’s Instagram. Deirdre’s Instagram. Bridget’s Instagram.

Auntie Leila’s Twitter.

Auntie Leila’s Facebook (you can just follow)

Auntie Leila’s Pinterest.

The boards of the others:  Rosie’s Pinterest.  Sukie’s Pinterest.  Deirdre’s Pinterest.  Habou’s Pinterest (you can still get a lot of inspiration here! and say a prayer for her!).  Bridget’s Pinterest.

The post Happy New Year! appeared first on Like Mother Like Daughter.

Last giveaway before Christmas! Essential reading alert!

I hope you appreciate the wide range of giveaways we’ve had! But that’s you, my readers! So eclectic! Creative, aesthetic, and intellectual! Great taste and smart! So I know you will appreciate this book — actually three copies for three lucky winners! — I have to offer today (ending Tuesday, so act quickly!): Ministers of Christ: Recovering the Roles of Clergy and Laity in an Age of Confusion

And do use this code for Lovely Lady Linens if you weren’t last week’s winner, good for two weeks:

LMLD15 — for 15% off your order from Lovely Lady Linens!

A sort of tagline that has developed around here (and became the subtitle of my new 3-volume work The Summa Domestica, which I sincerely hope gets off whatever ship it’s on and onto your porch soon!) is Order and Wonder.

Although I began life like most adrift children of the 60s, full of vague egalitarianism and major discontent, deep down I thrilled to the notion of hierarchy — right order that makes wonder possible.

Like Mother, Like Daughter has tried to offer a place where we can visit with each other and savor our place in the various hierarchies (all interlocking) we inhabit.

Dr. Peter Kwasniewski’s book, Ministers of Christ: Recovering the Roles of Clergy and Laity in an Age of Confusion, is, quite simply, a must-read. The problem confronting us today is not one of “inequality” of the sexes and how to address or redress it, but of having forgotten the givens of creation.

Peter asked me to write the Foreword to this book, which was an honor for me to do. I find myself more and more convinced that the paradigm of equality needs to be rejected. Once we establish that man and woman are equal in dignity, which is not difficult to do by means of Scripture and natural law, there is so much more to talk about. But we never do talk about it, simply because we are always dragged back to this tiresome view, which harms everything it touches with its implicit stance of conflict.

No, the real discussion is about hierarchy, the paramount template for life itself, the universe, the Godhead, and for man in his life with woman. (For more on the hierarchical nature of the universe and how we intuitively understand it, see this post, What is Common Experience?) Everywhere we look, once we open our eyes, we find hierarchy. If contemporary man but realized it, here is the challenge; however, he’s too blinded by binary discourse to meet it.

So we miss beautiful ways of living. We have hardly any notion of a society (small or large) that is based on cooperation. We can’t imagine the peacefulness of complementarity.

Ministers of Christ is a readable inquiry into such things as they pertain especially to worship. Right away he puts the problem in a nutshell:

We tend to imagine that there is no more “nature” in the human body than there is “nature” in an automobile; each is a collection of parts that has no higher unity or purpose than whatever utility might be obtained from its use, in any way it can be operated. 

By the way, I find that even extreme “back to nature” homesteading, self-sufficiency types have this mechanistic view of the body, which is so odd. They don’t seem to view their animals or even plants as so detached from the general order of nature as a whole and from a higher meaning; yet they do view themselves this way. There is a whole culture of otherwise natural-minded people who are strangely open to being manipulated by a dry, utilitarian power structure. To me this attitude speaks of a deeply ingrained habit of mind that has lost sight of the horizon and what is above the horizon. 

Kwasniewski goes on: 

Why should having a female body involve a calling to motherhood? Why should having a male body involve responsibility to a family?

He speaks of a “false dynamic into the life of the Church” that “distorts our relationship to the liturgy and to each other in the Mystical Body.” 

Ministers of Christ looks at the traditionally exclusively all-male service at the altar and in all parts of the sanctuary and in everything relating to the service — including the forgotten rank of porter! And it’s precisely in examining what are called the minor orders where his book delves into the wisdom and fittingness of the Church in providing for a hierarchy of men to accomplish the work of worship. I doubt anyone but he could reach back to a seemingly arcane, superannuated notion more confidently dispensed with than minor orders and come up with a good argument about it all being restored. Who even knows what they are? Who cares? But once you have the courage to step outside of the frankly boring equality argument, you find answers.  

Although the book is focused on the all-male presence in the sanctuary, it also addresses the true role of the laity (which of course consists of men and women). Moreover, the argument is not that women are just not good enough to perform altar service. That approach (taken by some, alas) does not honor the authority it claims, which is in Christ, who expressed his kingship (that is, supreme authority) by the ultimate act of submission, death on a cross.

The Christian understanding of hierarchy could not be more clear that the last (in terms of levels of authority) shall be first and the first shall be last, that one’s state of life does not guarantee personal worth, and that the more authority one has, the more he is the servant of all. Yet the reality remains that it is the male (men and boys) who are fitted to serve in this particular way. I like to say that the real question is “why can’t priests be mothers” — and once it’s asked, it reveals itself to get the terms of the question wrong — a category mistake, if you will. But that’s our times for you.

I know many of our readers here are not Catholic, and I recommend the book to you as well, because it offers an excellent historical and theological perspective so often lacking, and I really mean perspective — a view from afar, wide enough to take in the present without editing out the past or seeing it through a lens distorted by current ideologies. Ministers of Christ expands the mind beyond what it is normally considered in this question of male and female roles.

Sophia Institute Press has offered this discount code, MinistersofChrist25, which will give 25% off their entire order, no expiration date is set. I’m giving it to you now so that your books have a chance of arriving by Epiphany!

But do leave a comment for a chance to win one of three copies of Ministers of Christ. Might I suggest that a book is a good choice for a Little Christmas gift if you are following the “Twelve Days of Christmas” way of spreading out the cheer!

bits & piecesI had a delightful conversation with Steve and Becky Greene of The Catholic Conversation. We went into a lot about feminism and making a home. Scroll down a bit after clicking for the available streaming services and tell me what you think!Words can be funny. Nonplussed is one of those words, and you may be using it wrong! The family is the bulwark of society. “An environment in which parents and children can truly feel at home is not built exclusively on prayer and the sacraments. The family needs culture.” Joseph Shaw on The Family in the Defense of the FaithI love The Craftsman Blog (see his Instagram “Shudder Sunday” series chronicling shutter crimes). I thought this post was spot on: 5 Reasons You Shouldn’t Buy and Old House. A good essay about That Hideous Strength, a book I ponder a lot. It’s a matter of prudential judgement to receive any medical treatment, and that judgement should be respected. In the current situation, one priest has been responsible for shoring up a rationalization to bar exemptions of conscience from taking a certain shot. In this article, The “Everything Was Tested on HEK” Lie, a medical doctor examines the priest’s claims that every medication is tainted by aborted fetal cells, refuting them and the framework in general. It’s a long article with lots of resources cited.

I would just like to add something: while it’s true that the common medications the priest makes claims about are not tainted, two things should be noted.

First, there is a lot of reliance on aborted fetal cells in vaccines in general and in new products, with more coming. The response of a person of good will ought to be to oppose all such products, not to use the common ones (such as the chicken pox vaccine, for instance) to justify new ones. I can’t help but note (and have written about on my other blog) that animal rights activists were successful in their pursuit. Why should anyone of good will accept our medical system’s reliance on such a grave evil?

Second, many people were unaware of the use of these cells in the production of certain things like vaccines, even though a lot of us tried to get the word out and did take a stand decades ago. It’s normal to trust doctors; it’s normal not to have a sort of fighting stance about everything. But one thing about this time is that a lot of previously unknown factors have been revealed. There is nothing hypocritical about making a discovery about a wrong and wishing to cease participating in it! But many have been silenced by precisely this accusation — so I do really recommend reading the article for peace of mind in taking a stand now.

Classical Gas, played rousingly by Tommy Emmanuel!

from the archivesCelebrate Christmas as a season and take the pressure off!Restoring the culture with a Twelfth-Night celebration!

liturgical living

The second day of the O Antiphons

follow us everywhere!

My “random thoughts no pictures” blog,  Happy Despite Them  — receive it by email if you like, or bookmark, so you don’t miss a thing!

Stay abreast of the posts here at LMLD, when they happen:

Consider subscribing to this blog by email. In the current situation, if we can’t meet here, it would be good for us to be connected by email!

Like LMLD on Facebook.

Follow LMLD on Twitter.

We share pretty pictures: Auntie Leila’s Instagram, Rosie’s Instagram. Sukie’s Instagram. Deirdre’s Instagram. Bridget’s Instagram.

Auntie Leila’s Twitter.

Auntie Leila’s Facebook (you can just follow)

Auntie Leila’s Pinterest.

The boards of the others:  Rosie’s Pinterest.  Sukie’s Pinterest.  Deirdre’s Pinterest.  Habou’s Pinterest (you can still get a lot of inspiration here! and say a prayer for her!).  Bridget’s Pinterest.

The post Last giveaway before Christmas! Essential reading alert! appeared first on Like Mother Like Daughter.

Giveaway! Beautiful table linens with your links!

I’m always excited about giveaways because I love the items, but I kind of hate it too, because I want to make sure each and every commenter gets one and it hurts me that I can’t do that!

But it consoles me that at least I can give you a discount code. For the books from last week ( do go check them out if you missed ), you can get 15% off at TAN books with THIS CODE, good until December 18:

Christmas123

Enjoy!

This week dear Thérèse at Lovey Lady Linens is offering her lovely Madonna table runner or tablecloth to a lucky winner!

So a few weeks ago we were feasting at the home of new friends and I noticed the beautiful table cloth. But when I touched it, that’s when the swooning began. If you are a quilter, you understand the concept of “substrate” — the actual fabric apart from the design printed on or woven into it. You’ve been disappointed when pretty yardage comes out of the wash looking tired and flat; you know that thin material lacks “body” and won’t hold up.

Well, these linens have body! That table cloth was so rewarding to the touch! I liken it to expecting the usual printer paper and instead finding high-quality card stock under your fingers!

So, all of that to say, worth it!

You can visit and follow Thérèse on Instagram to see all her offerings. About them, she says on her website:

Each of the curated collections you find here bears a Marian name in honor of the Blessed Mother because she is the embodiment of perfect virtue in her role as a wife and mother and no doubt, as homemaker; I tend to think that she maintained an orderly and beautiful home.

My hope is that you find an item—be it a tablecloth or a quilt —that brings a sense of joy, peace, love, and beauty into the sacred walls of your home.

Leave a comment here to be entered in our giveaway: one 112″ runner or one 60 x 90″ table cloth, for tables sitting 6-8 (you can mention which you’d prefer in your comment!).

bits & piecesI have two articles this week (writing articles is not my favorite thing to do but it just happened): Who Should Educate Your Children? at Catholic Answers and Can the Constitution Mandate Pregnancy and Vaccines? (a look into a line of questioning from Justice Amy Coney Barrett) at Crisis. (I don’t know why all titles end up as questions; probably because I’m that controversial haha)As we bask in the glow of the feast of the Immaculate Conception, I offer you this short piece on John Henry Newman’s view of this doctrine and reality, written when he was still a Protestant. The real pandemic: the loss of marriage and family in our country Only 18% Of American Households Are Families With Married ParentsI don’t think that Abigail Shrier has quite examined the depths of feminism and LGBT identity, and I would urge parents to teach their children never to lie, including never calling a “he” “she” etc (remember, the Commandment is actually not bearing false witness). But otherwise this speech to Princeton students is fantastic and should be read by or to and discussed with every teenager in America. Stand up for the Noahs!Is it just my husband and me, with our journalism/book production/copyediting/general-printed-word geekery, or does everyone care about and shed actual tears over stuff like The End of an Era: A Short Film About The Last Day of Hot Metal Typesetting at The New York Times (1978)Oscar Peterson’s interview with Dick Cavett, a “dazzling piano lesson”. For an amazing analysis of that epic performance of Boogie Blues Study (credits will be awarded towards your music theory degree, haha), do click on that last youtube video. It’s worth it. from the archivesI’m all about celebrating Advent, not Christmas, before Christmas, but I’m also all about preparation, because not sure what elves are coming on Christmas Eve to get everything done, and mamas need to pace themselves! And the whole point is that the more important an event is, the more effort we put into getting things ready! Here is a post with a craft and a link to my Pinterest board with nice crafts for your kids that result in items that would be welcomed as gifts. Here is a classic post from me: long, involved, not at all to the point, with stuff tacked on the end. However, if you want one Advent-worthy cookie/snack recipe (try not to burn yours like I did) and the actual list of our favorite Christmas cookies, linked to their respective recipes, this is it, this is what I’ve got. I am truly the worst blogger; SEO experts everywhere are falling on their swords over me.For your budding scientist: Spiders use flight by electrostatic repulsion — they fly using electricity! liturgical living

Today is the feast of St. Damasus, and it’s also Habou’s birthday. Please say a prayer for her if you remember!

follow us everywhere!

My “random thoughts no pictures” blog,  Happy Despite Them  — receive it by email if you like, or bookmark, so you don’t miss a thing!

Stay abreast of the posts here at LMLD, when they happen:

Consider subscribing to this blog by email. In the current situation, if we can’t meet here, it would be good for us to be connected by email!

Like LMLD on Facebook.

Follow LMLD on Twitter.

We share pretty pictures: Auntie Leila’s Instagram, Rosie’s Instagram. Sukie’s Instagram. Deirdre’s Instagram. Bridget’s Instagram.

Auntie Leila’s Twitter.

Auntie Leila’s Facebook (you can just follow)

Auntie Leila’s Pinterest.

The boards of the others:  Rosie’s Pinterest.  Sukie’s Pinterest.  Deirdre’s Pinterest.  Habou’s Pinterest (you can still get a lot of inspiration here! and say a prayer for her!).  Bridget’s Pinterest.

The post Giveaway! Beautiful table linens with your links! appeared first on Like Mother Like Daughter.

Giveaway alert! Two beautiful Christmas books!

Update! I actually have TWO sets (two books each) to give away! Be sure to leave a comment! (And you know I’ll give you a code later if you don’t win… or even if you win and want more ;)

John Folley (my fantastic son-in-law, married to our Deirdre) has done it again! After last year’s beautiful A Child’s Christmas ABC Book, Angels in the Air Arrayed, he and author Paul Thigpen have followed up with a fitting companion, A Child’s Christmas ABC Book, Guest of the Animals.

I’m giving away both these books to a lucky reader! Simply leave a comment below!

My friends, this is how we restore our culture, with offerings for children that delight. John has the gift of incorporating meaningful detail in his illustrations, and in the Counting book he doesn’t disappoint. I love the borders with their intricate numerical embellishments and subtle sacred art references.

The text, as with the previous book, also offers the child the beauty of poetic language with a light yet meaningful touch. It’s a pleasure to read out loud. TAN has done an excellent job of printing these two volumes; the books are even more beautiful in person, I want to be sure that you know.

To enter to win your companion copies of A Child’s Christmas ABC Book, Angels in the Air Arrayed (affiliate link) and A Child’s Christmas ABC Book, Guest of the Animals, leave your comment here on the blog. I will close the giveaway late Thursday night to give the books a chance to get to the winner before Christmas!

bits & piecesChristianity is much more historical than people have come to believe. Including the date of Christmas.If you really love music nerd stuff, watch this: The Girl From Ipanema is a far weirder song than you thought. I really like this guy; he’s very clear and thorough. I get about 30% of what he’s saying, but it’s not his fault. The weirdness of the song is all about the harmonies.

An interesting venture: learning Gregorian chant by means of a podcast. Why George MacDonald Matters (to so many of our beloved authors!)Homeschooling has taken off this year for obvious reasons. Here is a resource that I haven’t delved into, but looks amazing. A chemistry professor left work to teach her own children at home, and she’s offering materials on her site for free. I have so much to say about this topic (and I think I did say a bunch in my new book but who knows): For The Love Of God, We Need More DancingLooking for good spiritual reading? Edward Pentin is offering a great resource on his site.Sometimes you can breastfeed your premature baby, says this doctor.

from the archivesIf you need a SUPER cute mitten pattern, I made these fox mittens last year.I am paused at the macerating my dried fruits in brandy stage, but I am making my plum pudding this year (for next year too — I make it every other year). Here’s my detailed tutorial. It’s really not that hard!

liturgical living

St. John Damascene

Lots of beautiful feasts heading our way, including St. Nicholas and the Immaculate Conception of Mary!

follow us everywhere!

My “random thoughts no pictures” blog,  Happy Despite Them  — receive it by email if you like, or bookmark, so you don’t miss a thing!

Stay abreast of the posts here at LMLD, when they happen:

Consider subscribing to this blog by email. In the current situation, if we can’t meet here, it would be good for us to be connected by email!

Like LMLD on Facebook.

Follow LMLD on Twitter.

We share pretty pictures: Auntie Leila’s Instagram, Rosie’s Instagram. Sukie’s Instagram. Deirdre’s Instagram. Bridget’s Instagram.

Auntie Leila’s Twitter.

Auntie Leila’s Facebook (you can just follow)

Auntie Leila’s Pinterest.

The boards of the others:  Rosie’s Pinterest.  Sukie’s Pinterest.  Deirdre’s Pinterest.  Habou’s Pinterest (you can still get a lot of inspiration here! and say a prayer for her!).  Bridget’s Pinterest.

The post Giveaway alert! Two beautiful Christmas books! appeared first on Like Mother Like Daughter.

Dear Auntie Leila: I feel the burden of educating my children

Before I go on to the topic, I want to congratulate the winner of the Illuminated Liturgical Calendar Christmas Cycle, Jaunita! I have hosted lots of giveaways and the winners sometimes have short comments; doesn’t need to be long or complicated to win because I really do choose randomly, but her comment was so sweet:

These are beautiful! I already know where to hang them, on the wall at the landing at the bottom of the steps, first thing to meet the children’s eyes when they come down in the morning. I can see this being a wonderful source for quiet contemplation for children and adults alike.

12/13 years ago I was a new convert hunting through blogs trying to figure out how to raise our 3 little boys Catholic. I knew how to raise them Mennonite. Was it much different? I was completely overwhelmed by the myriad of crafts, cakes, activities, etc, etc. Surely, Surely there had to be an easier way that didn’t wear one out just reading about it. Then I stumbled on your blog! Ironically it was your post on spanking* that clinched it that you had practical, common sense advice that could be trusted. So, here I still am now with 7 boys and 2 girls. Thank you for saving my sanity all these years!

*my advice is embedded in this post!

IF YOU ARE NOT JAUNITA and would love to purchase — save 20% on the Liturgical Year Calendar: Christmas Cycle at Sophia Press using this code: Calendars20 (note that the code is not for the subscription, which is already discounted).

 

Thanks to all who entered and for all the encouraging and wonderful comments. I wish I could send a calendar set to all of you! The code is the next best thing. Now on to our main post!

Dear Auntie Leila,

Is it realistic for me to try to classically educate my four children, ages 2-9, with another on the way? We’ve had three moves and struggled with bad health; I’m not great at housekeeping; my children are high-strung and energetic. I feel like I’m failing all around.

I have tried to use The Well-Trained Mind and Memoria Press (not an affiliate link). A homeschool collaborative isn’t really working well for us. I am tired. I am exhausted. I fantasize about staying home with my younger three and sending my extroverted nine year old to school on his own.

I think about everything that I wish that I could be doing with my time (cleaning! helping friends! reading books! knitting!), but I feel stuck, because if we decide to homeschool again next year, using a boxed curriculum, I’m not going to have a whole lot more time on my hands anyway.

I want to be home. I want to educate my children well. I want to learn and grow myself. And I would prefer to stay sane in the process.

I feel that the perfect has become my enemy.

Classically Frustrated

Dear CF,

You can do it! Here’s my thought:

Instead of starting with the perfect curriculum and falling short, might I suggest that you attack the problem from the other end? How about starting with making goals this year for your children and see what these companies can provide to help you achieve those goals?

I outline this way of approaching things in this post on keeping records. Turns out that having to write down your goals as well as your particular lesson plans clarifies the mind wonderfully.

Let your children have their interests (and yes, even little children already demonstrate proclivities one way or another, very often); give them basics, including those that are oriented towards good literature and classical subjects as they grow older; and trust in the environment of your home.

Setting your own goals — literally writing them down on a piece of paper, going right down the line, one child at at time — will help you know what you should and could do this year, and probably no more, at least not officially. And really, that’s all you need to know for now. You have the big picture but you must, as you say, stay sane! The children will learn, don’t you worry about that.

My objections to The Well-Trained Mind have to do with the intensity of it, which is odd coming from someone like me, who loves Ambleside (a Charlotte Mason curriculum); but Ambleside is saying: “here’s the banquet, take what you like, be calm” whereas WTM is saying: “do all the academic things to succeed at the next academic level; we’ll get you through.” WTM is not actually “great books” or classical education (which could be defined as the study of Latin and Greek but we will use it more broadly here) so much as “elite, college-bound education packaged for the home school” — but not every child is cut out to be a scholar, and not every potential scholar needs to be at the academic grindstone full time.

WTM does not see the importance of nature, music, art, and dance, all of which the great John Senior thought were part of the good life, classically understood, and endeavors without which one cannot hope to succeed when it comes to book learning. They are part of and a necessary precursor to an education that emphasizes great books.

Susan Wise Bauer’s background is teaching at an elite secondary school. Her curriculum follows that model and I honestly don’t think that someone in your circumstances (or mine for that matter) could achieve it. There’s a very good reason prep schools charge $40,000 and upwards a year for that sort of thing. And in the end, if your child happens not to be scholarly, it will only frustrate him and, frankly, do his intellect harm. Yet, a true classical education aims to form even the non-academic, scholarly sort of student.

Interestingly, I read her blog back in the day and saw that she herself was, first of all, relying on her mother to do a lot of the actual schooling, and second, in her own words, bribing the littles with M&Ms and videos so she could “Get it all done.” (And she is a feminist and her book on world history is laden with progressivist baggage.)

I don’t think that approach conduces to the overall building of an environment of peaceful learning (as peaceful as it’s possible to be when there are, you know, kids involved). To me, it’s better to do less and calm down the relentless push to get things done. Busywork doesn’t guarantee outcomes, anyway.

I am a big believer in doing what excites you and seems to fit your children and family, rather than trying to force everyone into someone else’s idea. Try my approach for a year and see how it goes! I am assuming you saw this post (super long-winded, sorry), and this one about having a vision for your educational path.

Look at it this way: Let’s say you have a third grader who hasn’t become fluent in reading. That means that your year’s goal for him has to be “become fluent in reading” or maybe more specifically, “enjoy chapter books.” To that end, your English class for him will be doing MC Plaid phonics along with read-alouds that entice him (and following my advice, reading one and a half chapters and then suddenly having to go do something, to entice him to finish on his own… or leaving the book in the bathroom for him to pick up during that boring yet immobilized time… ). If by the end of the year he is enjoying reading on his own, it’s a success. Done and done!

Another third grader might have been reading for three years. So the goal for this child is “good narration and being able to write a good sentence.” The Charlotte Mason curriculum on Ambleside will give you good leads on books that will challenge him. And he might be ready to start Latin, for which Memoria Press will be most helpful.*

*I have a whole series on teaching your child to read. It starts here. My book, The Summa Domestica, will have the whole series in a chapter of its own. 

That’s how the goals work, being specific for each subject and written down. That way you have a sense of accomplishment and not having wasted a year, because it’s all too easy in April to forget where you started in September, and to become a victim to that snare and delusion, the receding goalpost. The poor kid never gets a break because his accomplishments seem unremarkable, when really he went forward with a great leap. Let’s give our kids a break by being clear on what we are hoping they will accomplish.

This is the key, all you overwhelmed people! Use these comprehensive curriculum offerings not as a stick to beat yourself with but a means to achieve your goals. Don’t let them set the goals (except insofar as you find it helpful). These two third graders I mention can hardly be compared. They are in very different places. Forcing them into the same curriculum would be damaging to each, in a different way.

Some kids cheerfully do all the work put before them. Others balk. Most of mine went along fine. My Will said in 8th grade that he didn’t want to do more math. Alrighty then. By the time he got to chemistry, he needed calculus and he learned it without difficulty.

John Taylor Gatto says you can learn anything in six weeks. If your child is interested, he will learn. Your duty is to give him the tools. And to make the environment rich enough so that he knows enough to get interested. I don’t even think that the elite curriculum approach says much about music, viewing it as an extra-curricular. But many children are quite musical and simply are given no scope. for their talents. All children need to learn the basics of music (and to read music, something I didn’t quite understand at first). The actually classical part of the curriculum called the quadrivium is almost all related to music! That’s a topic for another time, but worth remembering when you are evaluating someone’s idea of what they are calling classical.

Many parents come to feel they have expended all of their efforts on the purely academic aspects (not customized for their child though) and parenting and running the home, and have nothing left for the good bits, the original elements of “wonder” that lured them into homeschooling in the first place. They realize they haven’t even started music lessons, haven’t learned French, haven’t done art camps or learned how to play basic sports, haven’t gardened or grown flowers or built anything. I’m trying to show a way forward to changing that, just by changing from being a blind consumer of curriculum to a careful distributor of it and maker of an environment that fulfills your own vision.

If you and your husband are academic and bookish, most of your children will be as well. If you are not, probably not. However, children surprise us all the time by being interested in things we never thought about, one way or another. Don’t fret about it. They will be what they will be — your part is to use your energy helping each one make the tools of learning his own and be able to pursue what really interests him.

Our Bridget insisted on the violin — which seemed a bit random. And then after she started, she needed encouragement and a certain amount of gentle forcing to keep at it. Once over the hump of the tedious process (for everyone, believe me) of acquiring the skills, she became proficient. The violin was not in our wheelhouse but we saw she really wanted it.

Learning a language, singing in harmony, writing a newspaper, solving mathematical problems — these are the pursuits that make the family interesting and interested. Offering an ordered path to familiarity with perennially fruitful subjects and books, in harmony with their temperaments and abilities, gives them a good and classical education.

bits & piecesI posted an Instagram post on Facebook the other day, and a reader encouraged me to listen to the author’s podcasts. So far they’ve been most enjoyable!I have taken a real dislike to the current trend of referring to our minds with the language of computers. We are not processing, we are thinking. The metaphor tends to ratify the idea that computers will soon think (AI), which is impossible, but if you downgrade the one, you can elevate the other. Robert Epstein on The Empty Brain.I fixed the link in my previous post to the new C. S. Lewis Doodle page, but I post it here as well – -sorry about that!Normally I wouldn’t share a sort of forum post like this one, but it’s quite detailed, informed, and interesting: How clean were medieval people? I made these and they were amazing: Apple Cider Doughnut Blondies (although the recipe is absurdly detailed! I have never had anyone instruct me on which rack to use in the oven for making blondies, come on)from the archivesAdvent is heading our way. Don’t forget to get your Advent candles (affiliate link). Here’s how I make our Advent wreath, the one I hang from the chandelier in the dining room. And Advent is the beginning of wonder — making room for it is the single most important goal for all of us.

liturgical living

St. Felix of Valois

follow us everywhere!

My “random thoughts no pictures” blog,  Happy Despite Them  — receive it by email if you like, or bookmark, so you don’t miss a thing!

Stay abreast of the posts here at LMLD, when they happen:

Consider subscribing to this blog by email. In the current situation, if we can’t meet here, it would be good for us to be connected by email!

Like LMLD on Facebook.

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We share pretty pictures: Auntie Leila’s Instagram, Rosie’s Instagram. Sukie’s Instagram. Deirdre’s Instagram. Bridget’s Instagram.

Auntie Leila’s Twitter.

Auntie Leila’s Facebook (you can just follow)

Auntie Leila’s Pinterest.

The boards of the others:  Rosie’s Pinterest.  Sukie’s Pinterest.  Deirdre’s Pinterest.  Habou’s Pinterest (you can still get a lot of inspiration here! and say a prayer for her!).  Bridget’s Pinterest.

The post Dear Auntie Leila: I feel the burden of educating my children appeared first on Like Mother Like Daughter.

Giveaway of The Illustrated Liturgical Year Calendar!

Every once in a while some offering comes along that is so very lovely that I think it’s worth making room for it, in the home and in the budget. In this case, The Illustrated Liturgical Year Calendar, your Little Oratory is going to glow with the hand drawn beauty of the liturgical year in all its splendor!

When it comes to liturgical living in the family, I am all about keeping it simple. I shy away from a lot of busy-ness; I believe in living your prayer life as a believing adult and letting the children join in. Occasionally, a coloring page or tastefully done activity can be really helpful for getting an idea across and allowing some reflection, but in general I think it’s better not to create a didactic situation.

The beauty of the liturgical calendar is that it unfolds as we live it, and between what the church offers and venerable cultural practices, every age group can find plenty that is meaningful, growing along with it every year. I admit that we have to work hard these days to find those aforementioned cultural practices, the recent past having been concerned with tossing them out, but the recovery work is best kept behind the scenes and not offloaded on the children.

Better to chalk your door at Epiphany with a blessing than to give your children a worksheet with the Epiphany blessing on it and then hang that up. Better to light a candle before an icon of Our Lady than to have your children answer 20 questions about who Jesus’ mother was. (Anyway, the conversations come up so naturally. They are irreplaceable.)

The key is to adopt a few meaningful practices and to understand that those helpful experts who offer the whole panoply of possibilities are trying to be thorough — which doesn’t mean that every family should do every thing!

It was precisely to avoid the frantic overload that David Clayton and I wrote The Little Oratory and chose not to delve into the array of devotions available, but kept to the liturgical year itself and the Big Ones (Rosary and Sacred Heart, mainly), on the theory that you were probably already overwhelmed — we certainly were!

When you find something truly beautiful, seize it! Your whole family will grow closer to the saints and to life in Christ with this wonderful work.

These liturgical calendars (following the Traditional calendar) are incredibly detailed and absolutely astounding. From the lush decoration to the well drawn figures to the careful attention to the order of feasts and feria (vertical — in relation to each other — as well as horizontal — their place in the calendar), nothing has been overlooked.

When I received my set of four calendars for the coming season, I was struck immediately by the lavishness of the illustration as well as the quality of the printing (and heavy, glossy paper).

I would consider this an expenditure for the curriculum, so to speak, a worthy budget item. Looked at from the perspective of offering the family a rich window into the life of faith, one could spend considerably more and receive far less. (I suggest buying the accompanying wooden poster hanger. Maybe at some point Sophia will make them into a flip chart!)

You can order your calendars one set at a time, or you can enter a subscription and receive a discount along with the calendars sent to you in the appropriate season.

To enter the giveaway for the first set of liturgical calendars — which begin this Advent! — simply enter a comment here on this post. The winner will receive the first four posters! If you share the giveaway on another social medium (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook), come leave another comment and you will receive another entry!

The giveaway will close on Thursday so that we have time to send out the calendars for the start of Advent. This giveaway is for residents of the US only.

bits & piecesSometimes I give decorating advice, and it’s usually this: detach a bit from trends and train your eye with timeless design. I came across this post and found it thoroughly delightful. The front façade of the house is far too formal for my taste (so demanding!), but the interiors demonstrate wonderful texture and layering — and color! Those of us without unlimited budgets can still learn a lot from studying such images.Speaking of design, Shawn Tribe of the Liturgical Arts Journal directed me to this ecclesiastical designer and I could not love all his work more. Here is one slice of the transcendent work of Augustus Pugin: .These long months we’ve been praying over here for strength in the struggle against a rare form of cancer suffered by a friend of ours, Tim Cantu. Thirty-two years old, the father of five and husband of Marie, he succumbed this past week and passed away. The grief is overwhelming. He was a cheerful and smart man, the kind of person you are so happy to see unite with a family you love. Although it doesn’t go too much into his strong faith and convictions, this remembrance brings out his love for baseball and offers links to some of his writings, with a glimpse into his sense of humor and ready wit. Tim, you will be missed! Please pray for him and for his family. May his memory be eternal.Listen to this beautiful traditional Latin chant, In Paradisum — and put it in writing that you want it sung at your funeral! We want prayers and beauty, not sentiments!

In paradisum deducant te Angeli; in tuo adventu suscipiant te martyres, et perducant te in civitatem sanctam Ierusalem. Chorus angelorum te suscipiat, et cum Lazaro quondam paupere æternam habeas requiem.

May angels lead you into paradise; upon your arrival, may the martyrs receive you and lead you to the holy city of Jerusalem. May the ranks of angels receive you, and with Lazarus, the poor man, may you have eternal rest.

Our Self-Imposed Scarcity of Nice PlacesWell, after all, November is the month for us to contemplate death and pray for our beloved dead. Here is an account of A Beautiful Funeral by Sean Fitzpatrick. Each one of the elements seems difficult to come by; pulling them all together speaks to the community and the long, remote preparation done by so many over the years. We have to be used to singing together and taking care of each other to achieve something like this funeral.Need: The Hidden Key to Wealth — a reflection from John CuddebackIn the past I have linked to those satisfying C. S. Lewis doodles — but now those links are broken. You can find them here on Youtube.

from the archivesThanksgiving — it’s coming! Here’s my advice on how to prepare!Want to think more about how an ancient chant is better than a popular song for a funeral Mass? Read along with me in that chapter of The Spirit of the Liturgy.Don’t forget that my 3-volume master work is coming soon! The Summa Domestica! The ultimate “From the archives” but with lots of new material too. To those who asked, it is more helpful to me and to the publisher for you to order it directly from them. Do what is best for you, but if you are able fully to support quality publishing, that is the way! Thank you!

liturgical living

St. Frances Xavier Cabrini

follow us everywhere!

My “random thoughts no pictures” blog,  Happy Despite Them  — receive it by email if you like, or bookmark, so you don’t miss a thing!

Stay abreast of the posts here at LMLD, when they happen:

Consider subscribing to this blog by email. In the current situation, if we can’t meet here, it would be good for us to be connected by email!

Like LMLD on Facebook.

Follow LMLD on Twitter.

We share pretty pictures: Auntie Leila’s Instagram, Rosie’s Instagram. Sukie’s Instagram. Deirdre’s Instagram. Bridget’s Instagram.

Auntie Leila’s Twitter.

Auntie Leila’s Facebook (you can just follow)

Auntie Leila’s Pinterest.

The boards of the others:  Rosie’s Pinterest.  Sukie’s Pinterest.  Deirdre’s Pinterest.  Habou’s Pinterest (you can still get a lot of inspiration here! and say a prayer for her!).  Bridget’s Pinterest.

The post Giveaway of The Illustrated Liturgical Year Calendar! appeared first on Like Mother Like Daughter.