My girls often like to ask me what my favorite room is at Waffle Hill Farm. It’s not easy to answer. I love the kitchen, with it’s wall of windows looking over my clothesline, and old linoleum kitchen floor, old painted cabinets and creaky old stove. It’s a workhorse of a kitchen. Or our bedroom–breezy and bright. Or the living rooms–dark and cozy and overflowing with books.
It’s hard to choose, when you love a place.
But one of the favorites at the top of my list is the Waffle Hill porch. In the spring and summer, we slide open the windows to let in the breeze from the top of the hill. We escape the heat of the kitchen to enjoy our dinners with the coolness of the porch breeze and ceiling fans. During the school year, the younger girls and I sit around the big farm table to do school lessons. In the winter, the warm sun streaming through the windows makes it the perfect spot to sneak away for an afternoon nap in the sun. (Someone else in the family has discovered it’s good for napping too. Ahem. He has four paws and also prefers the sofa.)
The porch is where we gather for family dinners. It’s where I find the kids hiding out in the afternoons or just before bed–a quiet space to escape.
It’s our overflow for big family parties. The “kids table”. The “hors-devours and drinks are the on the porch” space.
It’s the place in my house where I can slip out with a book or magazine and it feels like maybe I’m actually on vacation.
You can ask my husband, but before we even moved into Waffle Hill last summer I was already telling Dan that I wanted to hang lights on the porch. I had it already pictured in my head. We temporarily strung up some Christmas lights when we took down the tree, but they looked sloppy and weren’t the look I wanted.
