I'm gonna escape reality for a bit and I want to take you with me. I want to invite you to my home. I hope you like it. We can pretend your coming over for dinner and a movie. I'll give you a quick tour before we sit down to eat.
Retro is great. I like those old hippy days when my big brother Phillip would wear a rolled up red bandana around his forehead tied in the back as he let his wavy brown hair grow out. As a little girl I would watch him work on his old blue four door Chevy sedan that had previously been our family car. He didn't have a lot of money so his wife, Marsha would put patches on his flaired Levi's and when the patches got holes in them she'd sew another patch on top of that!
Anyway, I like retro because I lived it. So, back to my imaginary home. When you pull up it's gonna be easy to find. You'll see an old Volkswagon van parked in the front. But its not just one color. It's all kinds of the brightest colors mixed together. We spray painted it that way. And since, like a hippy, I go for the natural side of life. We have five large thriving tomato plants all in a row in our front yard. They've really been producing. When you drive up you'll see how loaded they are. I'll pick a few for you to take home. We always make Tabouli with ours.
As we walk up the sidewalk to my old remodeled house we'll walk past a big American flag that stands unusually tall for our average sized front yard. We've got it properly lit though. Everybody in our family respects it and understands it symbolizes freedom, pride in America and that it represents so many lives who sacrificed greatly to protect us and give us the freedom to display it. I'm not a rebellious hippy as you will see I'm redefining the definition of hippy.
As we approach the house you quickly notice it's different. It's an old two story home that was built in the 1930's. It's white with a big open porch on the front. That's where my husband Danny and I sit and watch the rain on cool Fall Saturdays. We've got a nice porch swing. Danny needs to oil it though. It has a small creak when we gently swing on it. The porch is so big, even when the rain really pours and is slanted it doesn't hit us. Besides we always snuggle up in Granny Gayle's homemade gold and white quilt to keep us warm from the elements. She made it for Danny and he mostly wore it out while in college but it'll still work just fine when we fold it in half.
I'm proud of my home. It had just plain white wooden shingles on the outside until our family got ahold of it. We tie-dyed it! Like the VW van we have bright tie-dyed colors all over it. Danny and I put the designs on it by using old sheets I got cheap at garage sales. Using regular house paint of many colors we put rubber bands on the sheets painted the color on, cut the rubber bands off, unraveled the sheet. Then we climbed ladders and carefully pressed the freshly painted sheets against the outside of our house, thus producing the circular design tie-dye affect!
As you approach our big thick planked wooden door you'll be sure to notice the two big windows on each side. I put pull-down white shades in them. My daughter Ginny and I painted giant peace signs on them. Except the peace signs don't have four lines in them because in times past I've heard people say that represented a broken cross. They have three lines in the shape of a "Y".
The living room is just to the side of the small entrance hall. It has a big wide doorless entrance. Oh, but you'll love the many different styled beads which hang from the entrances into the living room, dining room, and kitchen. Lots of times in the high traffic areas we end up pulling them back like curtains with decorative hooks on each side. Don't forget to take your shoes off at the door. Since we have beige shag carpet we're a little more careful because it seems to take longer to vaccuum!
We have two continuing themes throughout our home. There are Bible verses and an American flag in each room. See, this is how I redefine "hippy". Even though we burn incense from time to time we don't get into Eastern mysticisms. We are hippies who are truth seekers. And we've found the purest truth in Christ. Besides He did say He was the way, the truth and the life. No one can get to God and heaven except through Him.
Oh, you're gonna love our living room furniture. It's green camoflage, overstuffed with toss pillows made from old light green army jackets that have dangly puff balls around the edge. We have a couple of extra large bean bags laying around too. I've got my Dad's and father-in-law's army pictures from the 1950's hanging above the couch. I have an old chest as our coffee table. Our entertainment center is like those found in most modern homes. But we also have a retro stereo. I bought it for $25 from someone at work. Danny and I shop second hand stores to buy the best old albums to play on it. It even has an eight track player. It's made of fake wood and gold crushed velvet with a lattice of criss-crossed thin wood strips covering the speaker areas on each side of the long piece of furniture. It's fun to lift the shiny formika top when you're ready to play some tunes. I like it when the popular songs of today on the radio come blaring out of the speakers.
Our dining room table is homemade by my father-in-law. It's extra long with a shiny triple coat of varnish. Not a single chair matches except that they all have Nogahyde as the cushiony part you sit on. In the kitchen we have modern black shiny appliances. But my kitchen colors are a mixture of harvest gold and olive green. I managed to find material with both colors interwoven for the curtains. I also put little brown dangly puff balls as a trim around the bottom of the curtains. All the curtains and our two living room lamps have them as trim.
We have two bathrooms. One has the theme of bandanas and the main one has the bright yellow smiley face as its theme.
Everyone's bedroom has just any theme they choose so they're not really retro.
For dinner tonight we're having Chinese. If you don't know how to use the chopsticks I hope you'll try them out. They're fun.
We'll that's the tour of my "day-" dream home. I hope you enjoyed yourself :)
Posted by Linda at July 16, 2005 07:03 PM