We're in The Newspaper

We had our home reviewed in the local newspaper this last weekend. My wife, Maria, is the Executive Director of Historic Milwaukee Inc. (HMI), a non-profit group that recruits motivated volunteers to conduct tours of Milwaukee. Maria wanted to promote the "Immersion Series" a course on architecture and history of Milwaukee that can lead to the student becoming a guide for HMI.

Her contact at the Milwaukee Journal - Sentinel agreed to help if she could do an article on our East Side Condo. I've seen my wife nervous because of the impending arrival of company, but imagine the company being as large a group as this visit could promise. The article was great and certainly accomplished Maria's original goal. The photographer was so good that if I didn't recognize our personal processions I may not have known it was our Condo apartment.

But than another thought came to me. When we moved here I took some record photographs of the place before we moved in and some additional shots after we got somewhat settled. I pulled them up on my computer and did some comparing. When you live with something day after day, you are not quite as cognisant of the changes that occur, even if you institute the changes. I was able to see how my wife's vision for the place was coming together. I have no talent for imagining what a room will look like if I paint it a certain color or moved the furniture. One look at the before and after photo's of our condo would convince you that some people, like my wife, are especially blessed with that talent.

Environment does count. I tease my wife about her addiction to decorating magazines and remodel TV shows, but the truth is I benefit greatly from her genius. The colors that surround me, the accessories and furniture, she has incorporated into our living space provide and atmosphere of tranquility and yet stimulate the senses in a good and seemingly effortless way that provides me with a sense of pride and satisfaction in that, this is my home.

We don't live in the photo's that were published in the paper. Spaces that are used in magazines and newspapers are staged. They are perfectly clean, painted and prepped for perfection. After the photographer left, the family photo's come out on the tables and he magazines began building their teetering pile next our chairs and on the ottoman. However, the bones of that structure that was in the photographs the paper published is our space our home and that is what counts.