Hill Country Living
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Hill Country Living
By Coulter Fussell
This past weekend, I did something I never would have imagined myself doing. I opened my house up to be a stop on a Tour of Homes! I don’t have anything against tours of homes, both official and unofficial, but I always figured they were for fancy people — not sweatshirt and flip-flop gals like me.
Another reason I would have never imagined being on a Tour of Homes is that despite writing a column about my life in Water Valley for the whole free county of Yalobusha to read each week, I’m actually kind of a shy and private person. Admittedly those qualities are probably mistaken for another adjective sometimes but I promise it’s just a natural tendency toward reservation.
But when the Water Valley Chamber of Commerce asked me if I’d be interested in showing my home on the historical tour, I could palpably feel the karma of my exposing the historical Wagner’s personal 1880s family drama via the newspaper each week. And so, I said “Yes! I shall be on the Tour of Homes!” – in a very stately manner.
Well, let me say, I didn’t quite know what I was getting into. My mother-in-law, Vicki Cook, on the other hand, knew exactly what I had gotten us into.
And thank goodness she did because she pulled through and is basically solely responsible for my home looking like a Queen Anne Victorian Christmas Wonderland of Historical Splendor with remodeled bathrooms.
Preparing for a Tour of Homes is no joke, y’all. Two of my closest friends (Kathryn York and Megan Patton – both of Panola Street) also opened their homes to the tour and our collective preparations were so intense that it felt like we were all three throwing our own separate weddings to Santa Claus in our living rooms. I didn’t really get a clue as to what was expected of us until, a day before the event, Megan sent me and Kathryn a screenshot of a Water Valley Chamber of Commerce Facebook post that advertised the upcoming Tour as having “exquisitely decorated homes.”
Megan had drawn a little pink circle around the word “exquisitely.” The bar was set. It was go-time. We had 24 hours to make it exquisite.
Fortunately, the house builders and laborers who built the houses a century and a quarter ago had already made the homes exquisite so I can’t take credit for any of it except for some very well-placed red Christmas bows, if I do say so myself. Most of my work was simply making the house look as if me and my teenage boy children didn’t actually live in it.
My children were very impressed with how clean and pristine our house looked during the Tour and asked me “Can we keep it like this?” I assured them they absolutely could keep it that clean and that, believe it or not, they had the power within themselves to make that happen.
I very much enjoyed the Tour of Homes and all the kind people who came through our home and complimented my houseplants, which are my special babies. For me, it was really more a Tour of Houseplants. Thank you to the Chamber for hosting this event!
