I have long held the highest of respect for Susan at NotQuiteJuneCleaver.com. This woman makes everything homemade and has owned her own catering company and a successful venture in soap making, written cookbooks… and has six children, home schooled them all and runs a home based on love and “doing it with pride”. I admire women like her… not caught up in fast food and fast living… but values based on home and homemade… and being real and authentic.
I found her website one day, while looking for homemade soap… which I love and use here in our home. Needless to say… I got “hooked” on Susan and her daily blogs and fell in love with her passion for life and her homemade way of living. I became a fan, and I have even written about her in my free newsletters I send out and put her link on my blog page.
I usually do not go this route with women I don’t know… but you see Susan has been a life saver for me many times. I have my own company that is based on celebrations and traditions for women, and I produce my own line of organic bath products and gift line. There have been times when I have had doubts about my creative comapny… and the path I was on… you know the ones all creative women have…. and when I felt this way… I would pop over to her blog and her words and daily living that she wrote about on her blog, gave me the COURAGE to stay on course and keep going!!!
I finally wrote to her one day via email and thanked her for being such a positive mentor to me and she took the time to write me back! How great is this!!
And now I am proud and excited to say that I won one of her handmade APRONS!!!! I will wear this apron each time I cook dinner, or when I am feeling blue… cause I know that a great lady made this… and her inspiration and devotion to being a homemaker, wife and mother…. inspires us all to be Not Quite June Cleaver… but just to be who we are… exceptional women… doing exceptional things!
Thank you Susan,
Victoria
I have reached a certain age in my life…or space in wisdom… where “getting things” really doesn’t matter any more. Instead I find myself as of late…”giving away” items and stuff I have craved and lusted after in earlier years. My values have changed… I feel for the better.
I don’t want my life to be about what I have or don’t have… I want my life to make a statement about the kind of woman I was while walking here on Earth. Quality of life… and caring and giving from the heart… these are important to me… not what kind of car I drive… or some overpriced purse. These are “things” that other people decided would make you or me a success or happy or even powerful!
Don’t get me wrong here… my home is filled with beauty and quality items…. but that’s just the point… I have made a home filled with beauty and quality… not consumerism or status seeking. Or openly telling someone how much money something cost… as a way to brag. What point is there to that? Or what does it matter anyway? It is not what I value… nor should it be any value at all to anyone.
A persons value should be about how much they love… and are loved… not about things they collect or how much money they make… but about who they are inside. And family and quality, caring friends and being mindful about taking care of the Earth. These are the “things” I crave and lust for these days…. realness, authenticity, and caring, loving people in my life.
So these days… you will find me picking out a purse or a “thing” I used to value so much… cause it cost me this amount of money, and “giving it away” to someone who can use it or wants it. And in its empty space… I focus on the gratitude I feel, the awareness I now see… of all the wealth I truly have in my life…. myself, my wonderful husband, my daughters, and the most awesome friends any person could hope for.
This to me is success… and being real… and coming of age!
Victoria