There are a lot of funny ideas you get in your head as a kid – things you absorb that you don’t realize you’ve carried into adulthood. We all have them – we follow a certain family code, abide by rules of our social group, and accept certain ideas as fact (until we become old enough to question them). We also randomly assign certain aspirational characters that make perfect sense to an 11-year-old brain, but certainly bears re-examination years later…
I may be on my own little island with this one, but when I was a kid I had certain ideas what success would look like. And not the typical white picket fence + husband + American Dream milestone type way. I ascribed some crazy arbitrary things to wealth. Does anyone else have one of these “You’re rich if….” type of things? You know…”You’re rich if your house has two stories” or “You’re rich if your family owns two cars.” I certainly had a few hilarious milestones – and one in particular has always stuck with me.
For some random reason, 11-year-old me decided that “rich” meant your house had a gazebo. Not a pergola or archway or even a decorative cornice would do. It had to be a gazebo.
Kids today….
To this day, I’m really not sure what it was about a gazebo that spoke to my pre-pubescent ideals. Forget Lamborghinis or Rolex watches – this girl had woodworking on the mind. Got a huge 3-story mansion on a sprawling estate? If it didn’t have a gazebo, I wasn’t having it. Diving into a room full of gold coins a la Scrooge McDuck notwithstanding, I would know I had one day “made it” when my home boasted a pristine white gazebo, complete with wrought iron furniture inside and an ornate tea set to finish off the tableau.
While as an adult I realize there are a lot of markers of wealth, my childhood brain still clings to my gazebo theory. So much so that to this day I can’t help but gaze longingly at houses with gazebos in their yard. And while we are still climbing the ladder and do not yet own our own gazebo, the minute Miss Hero Holliday showed me this perfect skirt, with a woman strolling through the gardens towards that mythical gazebo, my 11 year old heart leapt and I felt one step closer to true success….
I remember a couple of years ago when Mr. Dressed and I were on our house hunt. Looking back, we had a pretty smooth ride with the whole process. Although there were a few normal bumps and bruises, what would eventually become our home found us pretty quickly. Buying a house was a pretty huge deal for me – with all of the moving around in my life, it was amazing to finally feel settled somewhere.
There are a lot of ways I knew my Mister was the perfect partner for me. Little things, big things, we always just fit. I remember after closing and finally getting the keys, we were wandering around our new garden, making the excited plans of new homeowners about renovations and landscaping that would happen during some mythical “one day” time. And he looked back at this small clearing, perfectly framed in a half moon of trees and said, “Our gazebo would be perfect there.”
Perhaps it’s no wonder why, gazebo or not, I feel like the richest woman in the world…
xoxo
Outfit Details:
Top: Unique Vintage
Skirt: Miss Hero Holliday (similar modern and vintage here, here & here)
Necklace: gift, Lady & Librarian (similar)
Belt: Altar’d State
Handbag: Lucy in Disguise (similar here)
Shoes: gift, ASOS (similar here & here)
Lip Color: Dior Rouge 634
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