Home Tour Recap

Guys, the home tour was insane... in a good way! If you are visiting my blog because you were on the tour - WELCOME!

So about that home tour...

I have a lot of dreams, but being on a home tour was never one of them. But when a friend suggested that my house would be great fit for the Irvington Historic Home Tour, I thought, why not? I emailed the board of the Benton House to ask about the application process and before I knew it I was having a home visit that ended with a "we'd love to have you on the tour!" After that I had about four months to plan, which turned to be just that, planning only. What with my month long trip to Switzerland, my unfortunate accident, and subsequent surgery (more on that here), I was happy to just get the house cleaned (you can read about my realistic to-do list here)!

Anyway, enough with the set up. The tour itself was amazing and strange. It ran from 12:00 pm - 5:00 pm so for five hours I stood in my living room welcoming people into my house.

Me, awkwardly being photographed. No joke, my friend had to coach
me on how to smile, that is how much I dislike getting my picture taken.

While I could tell you lots of stories about all the awesome people I met, I'll keep it simple with two lists. First, the phrases I said hundreds of times, and second, the most common questions/comments I heard.

These are the phrases I said about 500 times (which is around how many people came through my house!):
"Hi, I'm Jasmin, welcome to home."
"Thanks for visiting."
"Thank you, I appreciate that."
"Have a nice afternoon."
"That's so nice of you, thank you."
"I have a blog if you want to know more about ______."

These are a few of the questions/comments that I heard A LOT:
"Are you English?" - my response was always, "No, just an anglophile."
"You sure do love to travel."
"You are an avid reader."
"Are you an artist?" - I said, "No, I'm just artist-ic."
"We are soul mates/we should be friends." - I got this comment a lot! It was my favorite comment of course :) Welcome, to all of my new friends!
"Where did you get that chandelier?" - the dining room chandelier was very popular!
"What are those little books on the wall?" - the post card wall art led to a lot of questions.
"Are the floors original?"
"Is that a photo of your grandparents' wedding?"
"Did you take those photos behind the old windows?"
"How long have you lived here?" - Since I've been here for 20 months, I had the weird decision of saying I've lived here for 20 months which makes me sounds like the mother of a toddler or saying a year and a half, I went with "A year and half." or the occasional, "Almost two years."
"How old is the house?"
"Is there a basement?"

Flowers from my Mom!

Flowers from the tour coordinator!

Disclaimer: I am a major introvert so the thought of talking with hundreds of people for five hours straight was anxiety inducing to say the least, BUT everyone was so nice and kind that my anxieties quickly vanished.  I had a really lovely time and I was happy to meet so many cool people. Special thanks to my Mom, Hayley, Kristen, and Amy for being with me for moral support :)