Making our house really warm.

We finally achieved maximum house warmimum. We had to break-in our house properly in a way that can be shared with friends (nudge-nudge, wink-wink, know what I mean?). We were good sports and let four kind hostesses fill our home with food, wine, and beer while various friends spilled through the door and filled up the floor. The weather was warm so that we could take good advantage of the inviting upper porch. The night was filled with laughter that spilled over the side of the bathtub and ran down the stairs. It is one of my favorite things to give people a welcome space to come and relax with conversation and laughter for a while. Bring on the brief, adhesive moments in life that glue us together.

Debs, Mindy, Hind, and Nicole set up the kitchen, arranging warm and sweet foods on trays for easy access. Finally, the sparkly and shiny stuff that we got for our wedding got to jump out of the cabinet and onto the countertops, coming to life for a few hours. All the Arthur Court and Lenox and Mikasa and Reidels were vying for attention from every onlooker. I encouraged them all, I’m not going to lie to you. Let all my little lovelies have their big moment. Mr. Husband was proud and agreed we’d done well with our picking and planning for the wedding registry. The registry had a theme: entertainment. And so we did.

Throughout the evening, various couples and friends poured through the door, coming to walk through our house that was lit up larger than Christmas and fine on display. My parents had arrived with older brother on Thursday in order to whip the house into shape. Mr. Husband soon became certain, convinced, and suspicious that my mother was trying to get our house ready to sell. When is too much HGTV just too much? Clear off the clutter. Bake cookies for the sugary scent. Hide everything you have or want to have or thought you have in a cabinet. Let your whole life move out to the garage. Store everything so that you forget it and never use it and then throw it out. My mother is a cleaning demon. She breathed her HGTV all over our kitchen and living room until it sparkled and smelled of “Buy Me!” While slightly annoying, she did damn good.

The party was open for kids. Bring your babies. Bring your kids. Bring the never-out-of-energy-Polish-twins-what-is-your-mother-feeding-you to run around our house and up and down the stairs. The dynamic of our circle of friends has changed drastically with all this obnoxious marrying and popping out with children once a year. Baby sitters are expensive. I know. I’ve gladly accepted forty bucks from the Halvorson’s when we didn’t expect it. I understand the cost. Let the children come and be merry, too. Don’t feed them beer, but let them run around with wild abandon. Fill our home with children’s laughter and questions. That is one way to ensure the warmth of a home.

Plus, this gives the Stewarts more opportunity to pose with other people’s kids to pretend that they are our kids and we are a family. Oh, yeah! Look how good we look with our pretend kids? Look how good my mother and mother-in-law look with my pretend baby daughter. I can do that kind of stuff all night. One day we’ll have our own, if we’re lucky.

The house, now, is properly warm. We are still cleaning up after the party. Putting glassware away, cleaning the decanters, sweeping and washing the floors. It was all worth it. There is nothing better than warming a new house with good friends. Mr. Husband was a social butterfly. I watched him being himself and being happy and talkative. I watched him in our house, among our friends, and fell in love all over again. We did this together.