An Eclectic Home That Tells “The Story of Us”

Name: Denae
Location: Richmond Heights — St. Louis, Missouri

St.Louis wasn’t in our plan of where to settle down, but this affordable community with amazing schools, plenty of diversity and adorable old houses has slowly stolen our hearts. It has such a small town feel in the middle of a city with loads of history and art around every corner that would make even the biggest hipster swoon.

In making it our home, we really feel it needs to be an extension of us. It’s the place where we get to express who we are and where we can come to feel happy. It is the living example of our eclectic style and eclectic lives. Our philosophy for our home is, if it makes us happy we put it in! It doesn’t have to “go together”.

Three of the five people that live in our house are under the age of ten so we want it to be theirs as well. We don’t try to hide the fact that they live here too. We embrace it. We want them to feel proud of their home so we try to let them contribute in any creative way they want. That means there is a lot of their and their friends’ artwork up wherever they put it, stickers in random places, furniture arranged in odd ways, homemade impromptu ideas on display, etc. Some people may find it uncoordinated and stressful, but to us it is happiness. It is home. It defines our family.

We are also big DIYers who love to use our hands to create things and our home is our excuse to do that. We love the days that we can troll the internet and find so much inspiration from people all across the globe! Almost everything in our house is either something we made or received from someone else. It makes our hearts smile to be able to look around & everything we see has a history or story to it that means something to us. We have been together since high school 20 years ago and have lived and traveled all over. In the process we have gathered a lot of happy memories that we proudly want to keep on display, mostly for ourselves. Did I mention we also love estate sale and thrift store shopping? We have taught our kids to embrace it with us, so a lot of the things in our house have been scored during those outings and find their way into the mess. It’s awesome having pieces that we know meant something to someone else and had a life before us.

We want our house to be the story of us. To show who we are and where we’ve come from. It’s constantly changing and evolving and will never be finished because as we continue to live, we will always be finding something new to add. We hope you can find in it a little bit of the smiles it gives us daily.

Thanks, Denae!

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