Day 123: I’ve been going on about HOMES this week - honest homes, leaving Home, returning Home, so I guess it’s the theme.
My mother laughed out loud the first time she read the term “farmhouse style” on the cover of her Better Homes and Gardens magazine. She physically laughed out loud and pointed around the room, “You mean to tell me this is a style people try to emulate?”
That was a really long time ago. She would have loved the Gaines’ Fixer Upper series, with all its shiplap and exposed beams and barn doors, all while chuckling at the absurdity of upscale people re-creating elements from the farm she probably didn’t love. My dad called her a city girl, which is kinda funny if you’ve ever been to Shelley, Idaho. But my city girl mother successfully became a woman who could manage a farm and a farmhouse and a farmyard. Those aren’t “styles.” Those are hard work. Really hard. Remember, I’m writing these TOWELS in memory of the stuff she pinned to the company towels in our ONE bathroom. When David and I married, Mom and Dad started passing down furniture to help us furnish our new life, and very quickly we began attesting that our style was what we still call Milo Barn and Basement.
After college, we bought our first house. Dad would call it a city house, but you must remember his comparison to Shelley. The home was built in 1898. By pioneers. It’s a relic, but we love it. We live in constant “fixer-upper” mode. My daughter-in-law gave us this saying, and you know what? My mother most definitely would’ve pinned it to her company towels. #MomsCompanyTowels #FixerUpper #MiloBarnAndBasement #LittleHouses #FarmhouseStyle
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