AHHJ and the need for technological sophistication

Although it surely must appear that Alice Haddow cannot get enough of her Carolina villa, she is ready and willing to confess that many individual posts on the subject are more a function of her soon-to-improve technological acumen than anything else. All of Alice Haddow's friends who are also skilled bloggers can easily place multiple pictures in one post. For Alice Haddow, it's a different story; one picture per post these days seems the most she can manage. Still, it gives her a chance to share info (and pine, if only a little bit) about her homesickness for AHHJ. Look carefully out the window of this picture of the family room, and you will see the lights of the golf clubhouse that beckon Poppy each and every day he is there.

More Rooms at AHHJ

The picture to the right is our morning room at Alice Haddow's House of Joy.  Though very small, we enjoy it immensely. Sometimes, when we manage to ignore our cravings for the breakfast bagels at the Sippin' Cow Cafe, we eat on the little glass table pictured here.  As always, click to enlarge the picture.  You will not find corked, green, empty bottles on this table, but you will find three place settings with only one glass from which to drink. We asked Centex Homes, whose interior designer had accessorized this former model home, where we might find the rest of the blue glasses to match. Surprise, surprise; they had no idea.  For some reason, that was A-OK with us. Maybe that's because this little house embodies pure bliss, with or without all pieces to the table place settings.

House of Joy

As promised, I have begun to download a picture (or two, or few) from Alice Haddow's House of Joy, affectionately known as AHHJ. To the right is the dining room. Click to enlarge it, and you will see a delightfully vibrant place to visit. Most would assume this room is used for eating, and my LDS friends can correctly assume it is never used for imbibing, despite the decision of the interior designer to stick a corked, green bottle in the middle of the table. This corked, green bottle is now and always has been empty; in fact, said bottle disappeared to who knows where--the trash maybe?--shortly after we moved into AHHJ. Each time the clan of Alice Haddow visits SC, other things in this room, place settings included, also disappear in favor of computers, computer chargers, and printers. We work in the dining room and love every minute of it. More to come after Alice Haddow attends to a couple of newlyweds who have come to visit AHHG.

What We Should Have Done

I have noted in recent weeks the existence of an organization called the Small House Society. They cite as a motto the notion of "better living through simplicity." My experience draws me to this motto like a moth to the light.

Owning a home large enough to house 15 people (see "What We Did" post below) will not ever be--nor has it ever been--easy, particularly when one attempts to employ the Alice Haddow House for Grownups rules. Despite our pure motives in building Poppy's Place as a gathering place for our large family, I now know we could have accomplished the same thing far more simply and efficiently had we joined the Small House Society at the turn of the 21st century.

How do I know this? I know it because I purchased a small home in South Carolina just before my youngest's senior year of high school. As we made plans to gather the family there for Katy's graduation, we knew that a dozen or more people simply would not fit in two small bedrooms. We asked to rent one of the 11 villas on the same street, which led to an epiphany. Nothing could beat this arrangement for family happiness. One tiny house for the tidy grandparents (plural here only because Alice Haddow chooses neatness on behalf of her hapless husband) and their tidy offspring plus a second tiny house for free-spirited offspring equals a fabulous solution. It eliminates all nagging, guilt, or other unpleasantness involved in the AHHG rules.

Best of all, when everyone leaves, Poppy and Sugamom resume their simple lives of golf and swimming at a fraction of the expense incurred in the Virginia countryside. There is a reason Alice Haddow refers to her SC villa as a little house of joy. Access to a home computer in the coming week will also provide access to the pictures that will show precisely why.