My House is a Museum…this is why.

Happy New Year everybody! Yes its been the New Year for a month now, buuuut better late than never. Hope the holidays were well for ya’ll. Mine went ok minus the fact I had a nasty cold that lasted for over 2 weeks…but I’m over it now so we’re not gonna talk about it.

So I was just updating my About The Author page and was talking about my parents when I realized that there was a whole lot I wanted to talk about, that would be too much to try and fit in a single paragraph. So I decided to give you a post about some of my personal history and talk about my parents. This is definitely important for me since they are the ones that instilled my love of history in me and helped shape me into the person I am today.

We’ll start with my Mom.
Ever since she was young she always loved what she called “old fashioned-y things” (what we now know as antiques). As a child she would beg her grandpa to tell her stories about the old days, all while she would sit on his lap, or he would let her comb his hair. When she became a teenager she fell in love with a gothic soap opera from the late 60s and early 70s called Dark Shadows. She began watching it right when the show was set in the 1890s Victorian era (characters on the show travel back and forth in time) and she was obsessed. (Later in my pre-teens she got me obsessed with Dark Shadows as well and I still love it to this day. I have also gotten my husband hooked on the show and its fabulous). She said she would put on records that gave her that gothic, old fashioned feeling (for an idea of what I mean, listen to “Nights in White Satin” by The Moody Blues and “Shadows of the Night” by The Robert Cobert Orchestra) and day dream about the olden days.

As she got older she met and married my father, who also enjoyed antiques but in a different way than her, that made them perfectly complementary with each other. As life continued on she found a love of Civil War history when she discovered that her Great Great Grandfather, an immigrant from Germany, fought for the North in order to get his citizenship. This also led her to look into her family history and genealogy, going back centuries on multiple family lines. Upon this research she discovered strong Christian lines of faith going all the way back. Men who wrote in their wills, ”First and foremost I give my heart and soul to my Savior Jesus Christ.” And women whos last moments was reading God’s Word. This helped deepen her own faith in Christ, and encouraged her to continue to pass that shining example down to us, and her grandchildren. She tells my sisters and I this all time, “My goal in life is to leave my children and grandchildren my love for my Savior! If that heritage can be passed down, then that’s what I would desire more than anything!”

Now to my Dad.
He is an artist. There isn’t much he can’t do and I don’t say that simply because he is my dad…I say that because it is the absolute truth. He found a love for antiques and old things a bit later in life than my mom, and in a totally different way. One day he started bringing home antiques that were beat up and rusted, and would clean them up and paint them making them look absolutely amazing! He has turned an old gas pump into a wine rack, revamped a (now gorgeous) old movie marquee (poster) sign, turned an old stove into a lamp, and so so so much more! He would buy beat up antiques for pennies, and turn them into works of art worth…well, quite a bit more than pennies. This meant regular trips to antique stores, swap meets, and yard sales growing up. This also meant learning from my dad why he enjoyed it so much, “It’s a ministry for me.” He would tell me, “This is what Jesus does with us. He takes something that nobody wants, that’s beat up and broken, and fixes it and makes it new and beautiful again.”

And that turned into my parents house being called a museum. The jokes are endless that they should charge people to visit “The Blevins Museum”. There is so much love and openness in their house, and there are very very few people that I have encountered who are uncomfortable with my parents, or their house. This has given me and my husband the drive to make our house (well, tiny apartment) the same way. The love for antique-ing flows strong through my veins and we are already in desperate need of a bigger apartment 😅. But within the last year my brother-in-law gave me the best complement I could get, “I love looking around your house. It’s like a museum!” The next chance I got I told my parents that I had officially leveled up.

So….this is me. And this is my parents. You know the Addams Family theme song? The line that goes, “Their house is a museum, when people come to see ‘em. They really are a scream! The Addams family!” Well we have always adopted that song as our song. We are a bit kooky, and a bit strange to “normal” people. But just like the Addams family, our museum houses are always open and if you’re hungry we can always set out an extra plate.

Hope you enjoyed and hope this gave you a little idea as to where I come from. More to come soon! Love ya’ll. 💖