Keturah’s Extraordinary School for Girls
where everyday things happen
welcoming the unexpected
The Living Room Academy offers girls an extraordinary opportunity to return to the basics of wonder and simplicity. You’ll need some old-fashioned flexibility to become the capable, curious, radical hostess everyone will want to visit, and as long as you’re willing to do hard things you’ll find this challenge an easy delight.
Four to six girls will live with me for two weeks and follow me throughout my day to perform commonplace but lost skills. We’ll work hard but make time for leisurely afternoon walks and evenings of literature. We will clean and cook and discuss what it means to be a woman outside of the home. Girls will leave with something they’ve knitted and embroidered and garments sewn by hand and by machine. Above all, girls will learn what true hospitality looks like after the tablecloth is thrown on the line and an unexpected knocking sounds at the door.
This is not a finishing school. There will be no lessons on etiquette. There will be books in our hands but never on our heads. We will get up early without an alarm clock and go to bed before some crime is dreamed up. There will be no scales, no razors, no makeup; screen time will be limited. We’ll detach from the world’s ideas of what it means to be a woman, but not to turn our backs on it, rather to face it forthrightly with open, guiding arms filled with grace and generosity.
Do you bemoan the inability to do tasks that were once commonplace and ordinary? Do you believe you can’t keep a house clean or perform fascinating hospitality? Do you struggle with society’s expectations of woman to either be all-sacrificing or to be void of soft femininity
I will teach you how to safeguard your naivety so that it is your tool. By being more capable in your house you will be able to spread home to the rest of the world.
What will you take home?
You will take home a knitted dishcloth, possibly a knitted hat, a hand-sewn pillow-case that is also embroidered, an apron made from an old sheet, a machine altered thrifted garment, a machine sewn skirt, and canned pickles or apple sauce. Also the knowledge of how to use your creative energies to learn more and perform hospitality.
Where is Keturah’s Extraordinary School for Girls?
The school is located at the base of many mountains in Montana. You will share a room with three to five other girls in Keturah’s home. Do not worry about bringing extra things: Keturah will provide ingredients for meals, tools and materials for projects, and all the space you’ll need to cultivate feminine skills. This will be an intense two weeks of learning and growing, with little actual free time. We will most likely have one group town day; the majority of this experience will be spent inside Keturah’s home or walking outside in the mountains.
NOTE: Keturah is engaged and will be moving to upstate New York with her husband in the spring of 2024. The location of the school is currently wherever she happens to be residing through the winter. After all, all that is required is a living room and a few willing hands!