We couldn’t afford to put in a pool, so we added a cemetery to the front yard instead. Oddly enough we couldn’t find a pre-made sign to highlight that addition, so we had to create the other hanging piece ourselves. Isn’t it so lovely???
As some of you already know, we have had our home on the market for a seriously long time. I wrote a post earlier in the summer discussing the countless joys of having numerous strangers tramp through our home to do fun things like breaking our blinds, leaving our doors unlocked, tracking muddy footprints from room to room, going through our drawers, and (still my personal favorite) sitting on our beds. (Note to prospective buyers: Neither our beds nor our bedding will be included in the sale of our home. Consequently you don’t need to test either of them out. Keep. Off.) While I never would have imagined that some buyers could behave so badly nor would I ever have planned for our house to be for sale for this long, I am truly thankful that we are still in this home at present.
Some of you may recognize that terrifying doll from the donation post I wrote. At last she has found her true purpose.
With that said, there are rules about what you should and shouldn’t do when trying to sell a home. Have the temperature at a comfortable level. Leave the house smelling fresh or with the scent of baked cookies hanging in the air. Don’t have clutter. Remove personal photographs. And maybe avoid hanging ginormous spiders and skeletons lurking around every corner.
The situation is this – Halloween is approaching. With it comes the chance for me to sass up the home and basically give my inner child a chance to be an outer child. Yes of course I already know that my inner child does not do a good job of staying hidden on most days anyway, but I utterly adore Halloween!
More accurately, I love every festive minute from mid-September to the end of December (except the post-Thanksgiving clean up and ugh my back hurts just thinking about that). I play Halloween movies (kid movies, horror flicks, dorky tales, lame 80’s VHS rips – whatever I can get my Freddy Krueger gloves on) until October wraps up, and then I’m right in Christmas movies (anything and everything except “Santa Buddies” – I must draw the line somewhere). I just love being surrounding with fun and magic and countless reasons to smile that can be seen anywhere you go.
But last year was different. Our house had already been on the market for a few months at that point and had yet to sell. I was extremely worried and didn’t want to decorate our home in a way that might turn a potential buyer off. We did very little to decorate the home, and the kids complained incessantly about it. Since this whole “having kids” business is old news to me, I didn’t sweat the actual complaining. The part that bothered me is that I didn’t feel like we were allowed to really live in our own home. We had to keep it looking a certain way just in case someone happened to come in who maybe might not like Halloween decor or might have a phobia about something we had displayed (I call those people “Halloweenies”).
Ultimately, we didn’t have one showing for that full month and a half. I had kept our traditions boxed up for the sake of someone who never showed up. Can you say Suck Central? That was then, but it’s a year later, and this next month and a half may be a completely different story.
And if that’s the case this time around, I sure do hope that they like Halloween. If they don’t, they don’t. If this isn’t the house for them, it isn’t the house for them. I’m done with living in a way that feels disingenuous to my family for the sake of a maybe. Until this house belongs to someone else, their decor plans are not relevant in my home. I’m not looking to taint my water bowl, but I’m not interested in feeling like I’m spending another hollow holiday in someone else’s house either.
It may seem like an insignificant move, but this is about telling fear to shove off (which is doubly ironic given that I am loading up the house with skeletons and spiders). This is about paying attention to what feels right to me and my family, and then honoring that feeling no matter how silly it may be. It’s also about remembering to keep humor at all times, and sometimes most importantly, during the stressful situations of our lives. We all face challenges and problems that are beyond our control. Our best option is to give our worries to God, pray for strength in the meantime, and just set those skeletons free.
“Life is too important to be taken seriously.” – Oscar Wilde
Isn’t she bootiful???
Love and light always – Jo
Momentum of Joy 