It’s been a little while since I’ve posted. I considered giving up the blog, when I was feeling overwhelmed; thinking that maybe social media was enough writing… but I’m finding that I like the contrast of writing the blog. Social media is so focused on engagement – shares, comments, reactions, replies… you are always thinking about how other people will respond to everything you write and/or create. The blog is different. More thoughtful. I know people read it (thank you 🥰), and of course I hope you like it, and come back and read again and again, but at the same time, I feel like it’s more for me… it’s a way for me to document this crazy journey. Of course, as I write this, I realize that social media is that as well… it’s just different – slower, more reflective. I like doing them both. I feel like they scratch different creative itches 🤷🏻‍♀️

Speaking of creative itches… the main reason I haven’t written a blog post in a while is that I have been hyper-focused on a completely different creative endeavor! I am of an age that I was a kid during the Little Mermaid – Beauty and the Beast – Aladdin – Lion King era of Disney. These movies were the soundtrack of my tween and early teen years; and I, like so many women my age, can sing nearly all the songs by heart to this day 💗😆.

I imagine you’re wondering how this is relevant to our current adventure… it isn’t really 😆. Except that some time in our early days here, we were talking about my aunt’s samovar collection, and the line “You want samovars? I’ve got twenty!” popped into my head – from The Little Mermaid’s Part of Your World: “You want thingamabobs? …” – and just wouldn’t go away 🤷🏻‍♀️

The next line to come to me was “I wanna be where the teapots [people] are…” and I wrote a whole verse about teapots:

The next lines: “What would I give/ If I could live/ out of these waters? … What would I pay/ to spend a day/ warm on the sand?” in the original; came to me as “What would I… live/ away from these piles? … What …to spend a day/ roaming the halls?” This did not fit the tea theme at all, and so I set the lines aside. I thought I would just use the one verse, and make a short video in the dining room showcasing the teapots (I might still make that one 🤔)

But those two lines (bars? idk) kept coming back to me; and I realized I wasn’t just writing a silly song about teapots, I was writing part of our story, in parody song form! Once that revelation came to me; I was off and running. I wrote a lot of the lyrics that night, then pulled in my bestie (thank you, Monica 🥰) to finish.

Once the lyrics were done, James and I mapped out the locations for each line, pulled and stagged items where we needed them (most of this was already done for us 😆), and started filming, with occasional help from our buddy Jerry (goddammit, Jerry!) We filmed on three separate days, and then I spent hours and hours… and a few more hours, editing. It’s far from perfect… the audio in particular, is pretty janky 😂. But hey, we filmed in over a dozen locations, with a phone, and no fancy mixing equipment. Honestly, I’m over the moon. I’m so proud of it 🥰 (also, for the part where we were outside, it was like -4 F… which pinked up my cheeks nicely for this still😊💗)

This project was a creative outlet for me, and a work of love. An homage to the house; even to the stuff, in a way. There is some really cool stuff here… a lot of really cool stuff… too much stuff, is the bottom line. Meanwhile, the house could use some serious TLC. It would be amazing if we could turn a whole lot of the stuff into cash that we could use to fix the place up!

Until that happens (or my video goes mega viral and we make a million dollars 🤞😄), we’ll continue to nibble away, sliding our tiles, selling what we can, making content, writing blogs, and livin’ life. Thanks, ya’ll for coming along for the ride 🥰!

Here’s a better look at some of the old pictures from the video, just because they make me happy ☺️

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