Welcome

“The best things in life are nearest: breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of right just before you. Then do not grasp at the stars, but do life’s plain, common work as it comes, certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things in life.”ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

“Ma liked everything on her table to be pretty.”LAURA INGALLS WILDER, LITTLE HOUSE IN THE BIG WOODS

“The attic and the cellar were full of good things once more, and Laura and Mary had started to make patchwork quilts. Everything was beginning to be snug and cosy again.”LAURA INGALLS WILDER, LITTLE HOUSE IN THE BIG WOODS

“It’s sad if people think that’s (homemaking) a dull existence, [but] you can’t just buy an apartment and furnish it and walk away. It’s the flowers you choose, the music you play, the smile you have waiting. I want it to be gay and cheerful, a haven in this troubled world. I don’t want my husband and children to come home and find a rattled woman. Our era is already rattled enough, isn’t it?”AUDREY HEPBURN

“Home is to be a safe place, a refuge for all who enter, a protection from the harm and storms of the world. Yet often or even daily we open our doors — usually via television or the internet — to ideas and images that can damage our faith, abuse our hearts and minds, sear our psyches, and tear apart our peace. Home should be a place where, behind its doors, one should expect to find protection and safety from all the harms of life, including voices that do not speak truth or wisdom. Only the foolish would invite just anyone to enter the door of their home.”Sally Clarkson, The Lifegiving Home: Creating a Place of Belonging and Becoming