all in the family

I enjoy filling our house with furniture and decor that has family history. I like when I feel like things have a story to tell, and I like learning those stories. Life is all about stories.

Since we moved into this house I have slowly been collecting more and more family items. The parrot chair and the couch were in this house when Clay's grandparents lived here (they just needed a little freshening up). I have lots of hand me down clothes from Kayce and Clay's baby collection as well as from my own childhood. Everywhere I look I can find something that has been passed on to us from family sources.

This is one of the reasons it is nice to have several excellent artists in the family. I have several watercolor paintings gracing my walls from my Gram, like this cheerful sunflower one that I have had since high school:

And my Aunt Josephine has graciously provided us with a couple family sketches for the hallway:

And an egg basket piece that I really love:


And I still need to collect some samples from my artist cousins.

One of the items that I have recently received is a beautiful antique lamp that has been in the McBride family for several generations.

I have pictures of it in my grandpa's house when he was growing up. I believe my grandpa is the one in the cowboy hat sitting next to his sister and grandmother Elsie (the one who made the baptism gown):

And my great grandmother, Hilfrie, with one of my great aunts (someone correct me if I'm wrong on any of these):

And now it graces our living room, still holding on to its stately elegance, providing light for Auntie Laurel to knit a beautiful baby blanket for her new niece, Amelia.

This is partly why I love our house so much. It still needs a lot of work and it's small -- we're fixing that with our up and coming fancy new attic addition! We so excited (check out this quality video for the source of that inspirational phrase). But it's been in the family, it has history, and lots of stories to tell. It's built with authentic Ozarkian rocks taken from across the road by the creek. It was bought by Clay's grandma one day when she decided that she (and Papa Dee) needed to move out because their son and his new wife needed the farmhouse they were currently residing in. Clay's mom spent the older portion of her childhood here. And now we get to start filling it with our own stories that our children can pass on. We have changed a lot of things. It looks a lot different inside than when we first moved in. We have made it our own house with our own family atmosphere and culture. But the history is all still there.