Hello, my name is Melissa, and I'm a serial adulterer...

Hi,Melissa

No, you silly gooses, not that kind of adultery.  I'm married to this guy, remember?

No, friends. But I have to admit-- I'm cheating on something I really love. 

My house.

I'm terribly, terribly unfaithful to my sweet little cottage with it's picket fence, porch swing and

the smell of roses heavy in the air.

I read a bit on a blog last week about someone who wants to "fall back in love with my house" this year.  I want to do that, too.  It's fun to freshen up and change things and make them a little more beautiful-- kind of like date night with one's abode.

But despite it all, I think I have the Seven Year Itch (technically, it's just the Three Year Itch, but you know how we established in my last post that I might or might not become bored more easily than most...)

I forgot to mention this other wee interest of mine yesterday-- real estate.  Me like-ee.  I'm never not looking.  Why buy the cow, when you can get the Listingbook for free, right?  So today, John Harper and I went on a little Photo Jog.  Incidentially, this is my favorite kind of jog, especially when all the really interesting houses just seem to happen in the middle of the big hills. 

So off we set-- and the moon went with us.

(That Harold and the Purple Crayon, for those of you who haven't read that bedtime story one bajillion times.  This appears to be the week of the children's book reference.)

I'm doing some serious cropping of these, since I didn't actually go up and knock on the door and say-- "hey, mind if I photograph your house for my blog, which a handful of people you'll never meet read each day?"  But these are all on the Dream Home short list for me.  And only one of them is actually for sale.  So join me in this little flight of fancy, won't you?

This was the first house I ever lived in in Greensboro.  We're going to forget the tiny, overpriced one bedroom apartment with the original (and yeah, I mean circa 1900) toilet-- we're going to remember the glory of 12 foot ceilings, foot deep moldings and four-- count em'--balconies and two porches.  It's a little dream of ours to buy it (some day) and convert it back to a single family house. I envision bevies of people dressed straight out of Gatsby spilling down the lawn, music drifting softly through the air, bottomless glasses of Champagne...

but if that seems like too much work, how about this one?

This is just a teeny, tiny corner of the house.  It ain't small, is all I'm sayin'.  And the gardens-- rooms of roses with pergolas and a gazebo-- it's the first house I ever really fell in love with.  It actually foreclosed right after we bought our house-- but even before you added in the hundred grand in renovations it got from it's new owner, it was no where near our price range.  Oh, well. 

This one-- I love the symmetry.  Somebody told me it's the last White House of the Confederacy, but the same somebody also told me that it's where Sherman kept headquarters.  Something is confused here-- either history or the retelling of it, I'm not sure.

And this little guy.  He really does look like the White House, huh?  It's actually got a strangely creepy quality to it-- I can't put my finger on it, but have you ever seen an old house (this one's around 150 years old) that just gives off spooky energy?  They do put up some really cute bunting for Fourth of July, though.

This one-- it was a sad little place that someone bought for a song.  A song, I'm telling you.  I really do want to knock on this front door and say "hey, high five.  Pat on the back.  Irish jig." Whe would have thought that a fresh coat of paint, operable shutters, a turquoise pillow and an acrylic coffee table from Cb2 could do so much?  And then I could get a better picture of the porch.  And, if I were feeling bold (and had brought some really nice coffee as a peace offering,) I'd tell them to paint the door back to black.

This last one really is for sale.  It's priced high, but hey, who said perfection comes cheap?  The house is cute-- but the garden.  Oh, the garden.  It's designed by someone who actually lists "visionary" as one of her titles on her business card.  And methinks I agree.

These little guys-- there are two of them-- are how you enter the garden.

How could you not?

I don't think you can read it, but the rungs of the ladder up to the treehouse read "Do. You. Know. The Secret. Password?"  I'm dying.  And that little bit of green there?  That's the hat.  Of a lifesize gnome.  Who's fishing in the pond.  At the base of the waterfall.  Before a split-rail fence.  Next to the al fresco dining patio.  Which is right next to the tin-roofed screen porch.  Yup.

Well, hey, a girl can always...

Right?