Are we having a party? A garage sale? An open house? The answers are no, no, and sort of -- it's an open house, but we're not selling it, and you've got to pay 30 bucks to get in. Welcome to the hottest house tour in the Bay Area, the Charming Cottages Tour of Palo Alto 2007!We were approached by the organizer, the Palo Alto Area Mills College Club, some months ago. Despite some initial misgivings and moments of despair, we did it because it's for a good cause and a good incentive for us to fix up the house. Today I realized there are other benefits to opening your house up to perfect strangers:
* The organizers gave us a lovely flower arrangement.
* We got to gawk at four other houses for free. One sumptously-decorated house with charming little knick-knacks certainly made me feel like ours was quite plain in comparison -- but then, as my mother-in-law reminded me, there is no way we could decorate our house like that with little kids anyway.
* Looking at the other houses gave me a chance to see what other little touches they threw in to make their houses look awesome (ahhhh... flowers in the bathroom, must buy a bunch for tomorrow..... ooooh, their bedding is so nice, gotta make a late-night trip to Target for some throw pillows!).
* Last but definitely not least, it's nice to have a bunch of strangers come in and look at your house and say nice things about it. Seeing a long line outside your house five minutes before opening made us feel a bit like celebrities!
Would I do it again? Sure. As long as they don't look inside the closets (which some did) or swipe our stuff (which I hope no-one did).
That's the height of pleasure for me, to be able to snoop through other houses. Shows how exciting my life is! lol
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