Sign of the Skull

Bonjour, Ya'll!
I've taken a brief hiatus from writing my blog to do a few things:

sell, donate, or trash all the things my lousy French movers refused to pack
pack up as much as insanely possible into my suitcase
move, move and move again: Paris>HTX

Yes, it's been a lovely and thrilling adventure...NOT!!  But, after a couple of months of staying with friends and family, we did finally move into a rent house....on the same street as our old house!  Yes, the charm of Minsmere Circle drew us back, not to mention a short-term lease on a nice little house.  Thanks to my sweet neighbor, we have been able to settle down for a while. (Thanks, Jenny!)

So, you ask, what has been happening?  Well, there's been a heck of a lot of house hunting.  Lots of folks offering to help and sending messages about houses coming up on the market for sale or rent--really appreciate it, too.  But, where is the entertainment value of this blog?  Here it is my friends:  "Adventures in House Hunting".

Lucky for me, I have my excellent realtor named Honey to guide me through this fantastic journey.  No joke--her name is Honey and her sister Holly often comes by to help.  On a good day, the girls' Mom, Shelly, also comes with us.  (It takes a village, people!!)  And what have we seen you ask?  Well, we've seen many well, "interesting" homes.  Just a few I'd like to highlight here for your enjoyment. Addresses changed to protect the innocent.  Oh, and I give names to all the houses to keep them straight in our ever-expanding file...pretty sure we've seen over 50 houses by now.

"Sign of the Skull"
This treasure is filled to the brim with all sorts of huntin' and fishin' gear, not to mention many, many dead animals.  The interior is brown, wooden and more brown.  The kitchen sink was even brown.

The first skull that greeted us at the front door.

Skulls, skulls everywhere!

A specially crafted desk displays a foxalope?

Antelope chandelier:  It's a Texas thang...Ya'll wouldn't understand!! 

MEOW!!

Gone fishin' homeboys!!

The Party House
So I found out there was a custom builder that had an interesting signature to all his houses:  a phone booth with a real, working pay phone.  Remember the Brady Bunch episode where the parents installed a pay phone so the kids would all share the phone?  I think these houses might be from that same era.  This builder is really wonderful, but I really don't need a house with a pay phone.  This house also had a huge party room complete with disco ball & soda fountain.

Party on, Laura!

Wow, how great is it to have these kind of super choices??

The Angel House
Here is another cool house we found.  We loved the floor plan and location (small cul-de-sac on golf course), but it has an interesting feature we haven't quite figured out how to incorporate into our decor:

That's right--it's a rotunda painted with some angels.  Painted quite beautifully, I must say.


We were DEFINITELY interested in these:

But sadly, they sold either WHILE we were inside looking at them, or a few minutes before we could make it to see them.  The count is now up to FIVE houses sold at the moment we were looking at them...So the search continues...stay tuned!