Friday, December 18, 2009

Welcome to Gentility

For a long time now, I've dreamed of living in an old farmhouse full of family heirlooms, antiques and pictures of long lost relatives on the wall.  I imagine myself sitting in a rocking chair on the front porch snapping beans, watching the chickens scratch in the front yard and wondering how to keep the deer out of my garden.  I see a handmade quilt on every bed.  It's grandma's house - or at least what I've always imagined grandma's house should be.

The reality though is that I live in a cookie cutter modern house in a cookie cutter modern neighborhood.  There's not much in my house that's older than I am, except maybe my sweet husband.  My quilts come from the store and the only beans I have are in a can.  I don't know a lot about gardening, or chickens for that matter.

In this day of modern conveniences and mass production, there is very little of long term worth.  You can't go to Target and pick out something that will be passed on to your children and their children and so on.  So there's something special in the heirlooms that are still with us from the past.  I love things that have a soul, things that could tell stories of where they've been and what they've seen over their long life. 

And so I am resolving to recreate my own "little old farmhouse" right here in the middle of my subdivision.  As I thought about how to go about this, I knew I needed a vision, a focus to point me in the right direction.  I also needed a name for my little old farmhouse.  Every good old Southern home has a name - just ask Scarlett O'Hara about her Tara.  And of course, our family has a thing about G names so it wouldn't hurt if our house had one too.

I turned to the dictionary for inspiration and there is was - the very definition of what I wanted to achieve in my little old farmhouse: "Refined in manner; polite; free from vulgarity and rudeness; elegantly fashionable or stylish in manner or appearance; striving to convey a manner or appearance of refinement and respectability".  It was everything I wanted to bring to my home - it was gentility.

So come on in and sit with me.  I'll make us both a cup of tea.  I can show you my quilting projects and the wonderful treasures I've found at the antique store.  My little old farmhouse will be a work in progress for quite a while.  But company is always welcome.

Welcome to Gentility.