Guest Blogger: Honoring your Home – ‘Slow Home Living’

Guest Blog #46, Entry #436, March 3, 2011

This month I want you to start thinking of your home as a refuge. Not a refuge – like you are hiding from the world, but more of a place that you cherish, and  celebrate all that is good about your home. Your home is the one place where you can do, feel, act, and say whatever you want, without the world having a say. As we continue through ‘Home Renewal’ month, think of how you live, work, play, and enjoy your family and your home, it is truly one of life’s best treasures. This month we are reminded of how to renew our home and all it has to offer.

Gloria Battista Collins

Today, I welcome guest blogger Gloria Battista Collins, from GBCStyle. See how she shares with you “Slow Home Living’. A wonderful concept that makes you redirect your thinking back to a simpler way of life to truly enjoy everything that your home has to offer.

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I was asked recently by Ronique Gibson, an online blogger for Stagetecture, to guest blog about my company GBC Style .  I too, like Ronique, desired to start a business driven by a love for style.

GBC Style is just that, a style company, to help achieve a polished and beautiful look in any home.

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via: GBC Style

I’ve always had an obsession for beautiful items and frequently recall being surrounded by women who seemed to process an amazing sense of style in their homes.

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via: Stacy Style

The whole aspect of maintaining a charming home fascinated me – from the beautiful starched linens  used for an exquisite dinner party to driving around town for the freshest market ingredients. Seeing the gardens and watching the flower beds being tended gave me the foundation to go after a dream. I truly did aspire to be a homemaker and to keep a beautiful home. So I followed my passions and started a business creating beautiful cottage flower arrangements for friends and family later to become GBCStyle and my belief in what I call Slow Home Living…

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via: Trouvais

Slow Home Living is a shift from our fast paced lives filled with throw away clutter and plastic food.

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via: Flutter Clutter

Slow Home Living is a belief about creating a mindful approach for everything we do in our lives and for our families, it’s about allowing only treasures into our homes and feeding our lives the very best we deserve.

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via: Orange Pop Design

Slow Home Living is also about re-thinking and acting mindfully when purchasing products not made locally in America. It’s about asking the question – who really benefits from our purchase?

GBC Style provides ideas for you and your home.

via: Le Fashion Image

Slow Home Living is about supporting our communities through active participation in them in order to ensure vibrant energy. Its about finding the hidden treasures in our towns to fulfill our family’s need for food, home goods and commerce, and not being so quick to outsource everything we buy at a neighborhood big box store.

I now use my blog and website, as well as local gatherings, to tell my story and beliefs for slowing down. My goal, through GBC Style, is to pass on information to people of all ages about what I have learned of life, relationships, cooking, mothering, work, and most important, the personal growth that makes this journey so worth living.

There is definitely strong similarities between Stagetecture’s approach to the home and that of GBC Style’s philosophy of Slow Home Living – we both believe in doing what we can to make our living spaces beautiful and functional through our passion for aesthetics. Making your immediate environment beautiful and functional can easily happen through a Slow Home Living mindset. I look forward to connecting with each of you in the near future to hear more about ideas and suggestions.

Gloria Battista Collins, a business owner, designer, community volunteer, wife and mother, is a beautifier of living spaces with a mindful approach for design, botanicals and food, as well as educating friends in our community about eco-living and the value for a greener approach to treat our tender planet.

Gloria is an active member in the Slow Home Living movement – encouraging her family and others to eat local, buy local and just overall slow down to enjoy the food, home and community one creates. She is an active member in the Sustainable Furnishing Council GREENleaders Program and the Rockland Farm Alliance helping to bring back local farming to Suburban Communities.

For more bedroom living ideas on Stagetecture, click here.