Raleigh Style: Furbish Studio
One Sydney Road
You don’t have to live in Australia to shop in Australia (or just Ohio). One Sydney Road is now open for business. I’ve been following this girl’s story on Makeunder My Life and love seeing people follow a dream.
This is a great location for gifts, home interior, and anything else to make you feel pretty – or your home to look pretty and stylish.
Carolyn Mahaney on Effective Womanhood
GirlTalk has been an invaluable tool and resource for me over the years. I wanted to share this with you as a means of encouragement and discipleship and growth. You can see the whole blog here, but these are the 7 Habits of the Highly Effective Woman:
So with this in mind, I came up with a list of 7 Habits of the Highly Effective Woman (to borrow from the title of the bestselling book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People). We will consider these 7 habits over the next few days. This list has evolved out of my years of personal study on this topic. It certainly is not an exhaustive list; however, I hope it will be helpful.
7 Habits of the Highly Effective Woman:
1. She rises early. (The 5am club. Shopping for Time. This is something I do well for seasons of time, then I get out of the habit – like many of these. But, this is a Biblical concept.)
2. She maintains the spiritual disciplines. (Again, I think some of these go in and out of season for me, but most are a pretty set part of my life now. What are some Spiritual Disciplines that you do? Two books which would be good here are Don Whitney’s and Richard Foster’s.)
3. She focuses on relational priorities for every season. (This is key for different seasons of life. I just had a conversation with a mom the other day about the importance of pouring into people at different times in life – making different relationships a priority.)
4. She sets up regular times for planning. (I had a great idea to do this at Caribou on Friday mornings at 7am – I thought of this before I moved to Raleigh – I need to be more diligent with it.)
5. She develops an effective to-do list system and calendar/planner system. (Well, my planner system is my phone, and my to-do list is usually in my head. It works well for me. Find what works best for you. As long as it works.)
6. She establishes an efficient routine for managing her home. (I need to work on this one. It doesn’t matter if I have a roomie or live by myself. I need to be a manager of my home. It isn’t going to naturally come into place if I ever have a real “home” of my own. How do you manage your home? What tips would you offer?)
7. She organizes her house systematically. (what does this look like? You can find further thoughts on the Girltalk Blog)
Redeeming the Time (Guest Post)
I don’t know of any woman (single, married, young, not as young, with kids, no kids) who will tell me that she is not busy. We have iPhones, calendars, outlook, post-it notes, etc to help keep us organized! Unfortunately, every day we live, most of us are just getting busier.
There are many Scriptures that tell us how to redeem our time – in every area of life. But, I want to concentrate on your time at home today.
There are a few books that have helped me see this reality a bit clearer: Girls Gone Wise, Shopping for Time, and The Gentle Ways of a Beautiful Woman. Of course there are more, but these three come to mind.
I want to live most of my life at home. Ok, yes, I work a full time job, in ministry, so that often means that it is well over 40 hours and even when at home I’m doing work for work. However, since i’ve been here, that has not been a reality for me. Some of the personal disciplines that I had in Louisville have not translated well to Raleigh living. Why – busy-ness and lack of strategical planning my day.
My friend Courtney wrote a fantastic blog post on her site about how the Spirit is sanctifying her in this area right now:
“Today has been a lazy day. And boy, do I like it! About a month or two ago a dear friend encouraged me to examine my schedule and cut things out that took me away from my husband and my home. As she wisely observed, I had begun to fill my evenings, and even my Saturdays, with a lot of other things that had very little to do with my husband. I had assumed that since he was studying I could just do whatever I wanted. He didn’t need me around, right? Well, what happened was these other things became overwhelming. Suddenly, I was just away from home too much, but I was exhausted and moody when I was home. Not good.”
To read the rest…go visit Courtney:
Here are a few exhortations from Scripture:
Prov 31.10, 15, 27: “An excellent wife, who can find? She is far more precious than jewels. She rises while it is yet night, and provides food for her household and portions for her maiden. She looks well to the ways of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness.”
These commands and characteristics of the excellent wife (or excellent woman as Carolyn McCulley points out and illustrates in her book Did I Kiss Marriage Goodbye) will look different depending on what life stage you are currently in. But, each of us must strive, in and through grace, to live these out. God has given us His Word to live out by the strength of His grace for his fame and glory in the world (or in our home, or to our friends, or our husbands).
May you be strengthened in His grace today!
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