I spent part of my morning creating two 12×12 scrapbook pages focusing on the first house my husband and I lived in. We lived in Hudson, MI in a house provided by my husband’s work. It was a really nice house, and, as I sat scrapping the pages, I remembered so many different wonderful things.
I thought about our first Christmas. We had very little to spend on gifts and yet I still have and use items I got that year. I saw a picture of the first birthday cake I made for my husband – it was a snowman. There are lots of memories.
The man who built the house was a brick mason so we had the neatest stone work in the living room and kitchen, unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. And the downstairs, wow! When you walked down the basement steps there was a bit of a hallway and the wall on the right was made to look like the front of an old western town saloon. There were “bars” (dow rods painted black) over the real windows that looked into the room and there were swinging doors that you had to walk through to enter the room. It’s so hard to explain and unfortunately I never did take pictures of that particular room. With my scrapping today I was really wishing for some!
Yes, our first home looked really neat! There are times I wish I could move back there and let my boys play in that house. As I think back though, I remember some not quite so fun things. I remember the lack of AC on hot days. I remember the fun electrical mix ups that seem to come with every house.
You see, this house was not very high tech. We were doing good to have lights, they may not have had dimmer switches, but they were lights. I remember one of the lights. It took us forever to learn how to turn it on. There were three light switches controlling that light so it shouldn’t have been a problem. The only thing was, all three of those switches had to be in a certain position in order for that light to work. If one was down instead of up, no lights!
There was no home automation. There was no Protector Plus Home Security System to keep us safe. There were no wireless remote controls to anything other than the garage door. You know what though? It didn’t matter. My husband and I were together and that’s all that really matters. We were as happy as larks. We could have been in a one room apartment with an airmattress and we would have been happy.
Those are the memories I like to scrap. There aren’t any pictures of light switches, AC units or security systems. The pictures on my pages are the ones that bring back good memories, memories that I want to share with my family. They’re memories of happy times.