Jennifer sent me a link to the Girlhood Home Companion Magazine a few weeks back.  I have been checking out the links to their samples and to the editor’s blog. This has been such great fun I thought I would share the links here. In this post she discusses the idea of a ‘note chest’, similar to a hope chest, where you can store all the correspondence between family members. She encourages us to write letters to our children about what makes us tick.  I especially loved the idea of taking a few moments to share about a hobby we love and give tips about how we do it.  Essentially that is what many of us blog about. It would be so nice to cut and paste some of these posts onto paper documents we can save for our children. I envision our binders as serving a similar purpose for the next generation.

Anyway, the blog is delightful. The family lives rurally and she writes about everyday things that happen, often attaching her own symbolic meaning behind the events. The pictures are lovely – in fact the whole blog is. I found myself spellbound reading ‘just one more entry’ about her grandmother, the apple orchard, you name it. Fascinating!

I haven’t finished the samples of the newsletter or the magazine.  I have to read online since my printer, like all things mechanical around here, is on the fritz. : p  However, at first glance I am tremendously inspired by the layout.  For those who are intimidated by the time or skills involved in full blown scrapbooking take a look at the magazine’s pages. They are mostly text with a simple photograph or clip included. Occasionally a text box of a scan of a handwritten recipe or a poem is added.  It is very simple, inexpensive, and the effect is quite lovely! It is a good reminder that in the end this is about the stories, not about burdening ourselves with artistic expectations.

In this article she speaks compellingly about Family Relationships and how interactive journaling enhances them. It was uncanny timing because only yesterday I had emailed friends about the relationship building aspect of homeschooling. It had been on my heart as they were debating about whether or not to home educate. It is hard to articulate without sounding as though the academics are unimportant. They aren’t of course, but what started as an academic endeavor has certainly evolved into a matter of the heart for us. I am excited about how family writing as described by Mrs Novak could enhance this family cohesiveness even further.

Thanks Jennifer for sharing this fantastic resource!!