As the New Year begins, I’ve been thinking of what 3 words define Hadley Court, my family’s ancestral summer home on 65,000 acres in Arkansas. The three that came immediately to my mind were Gracious. Timeless. Tradition. My mother, who now lives close to me here in Midland, Texas, where I have my interior design practice with Chancellor Interiors, brought me up with these values, which were reinforced by her every summer I spent as a young girl at Hadley Court.
This is a cherished, vintage picture I have of Hadley Court’s courtyard.
As you can imagine from looking at this picture, the home itself was not grand, but it was gracious and the values my mother and grandmother instilled in me then, as a young girl, are values I hold dear and have worked hard to pass on to my children, Amy and Grant, now 18 and 15, whom you might have met in my *10 Highlights of 2013* post here.
By choosing to be a *stay at home Mom* before I started my interior design practice a year and a half ago now, [ and being blessed with a husband who agreed with that choice ] , he and I have faith, as Amy enters the University of Texas at Austin this fall, that she’s equipped now with the values that will allow her to navigate college and her life beyond it with grace, poise, and equanimity.
One of my favorite authors over the years has been Alexandra Stoddard. Her book, *Gracious Living In A New World ” is one I’ve read, and I’m going to see if our local Friends of Libraries and Literacy bookstore here in Midland, Texas has a used copy of it that I can tuck into Amy’s luggage to take with her to college. Have you read her latest book, ” The Shared Wisdom of Mothers and Daughters: The Timelessness of Simple Truths ? Click here to find a local independent bookstores to purchase her books from in your zip code.
Amy will carve out her own path, now, of what *gracious living* means for her { and so will her generation of friends ] and my family and I and my brand, Hadley Court, will be there to support and educate them in their *gracious living* journey, updated for today, and built on a solid foundation of what I learned about timeless, traditional gracious living and family values during my summers at Hadley Court.
Readers, what does gracious living mean to you and your families? Please let me know in the comments.
Thank you for reading and subscribing to Hadley Court, I am grateful and invite you to follow Hadley Court on Pinterest, here, on Twitter, here , on Facebook, here and on Google + , here.
Leslie Hendrix Wood, Founder, Hadley Court