May — Stay Late

It's Open...

I’ve been burning on the screened porch all afternoon.

I watched her move the candles around seventeen times before deciding the first spot was right all along. I watched the camera roll fill up with tiny adjustments nobody else would notice but she absolutely would. The background too warm. The reflection too sharp. The label half a degree off center. Again. Again. Again.

I watched the website go live while nobody in the house said anything for a minute.

Not because it wasn’t exciting. Because it was.

I’ve seen every version of this house already — the basement pours, the fragrance oil explosions, the spreadsheets, the formulas written like love letters and chemistry equations at the exact same time. I’ve watched Chris smell fifty versions of the same candle and somehow still answer seriously every single time she asked:

“Okay but this one? Better?"

I’ve watched the dogs supervise from the porch like middle management with absolutely no qualifications.

And then suddenly, after two years of talking to yourselves inside these walls, The House opened.

Quietly. Intentionally. Room by room.

So tell me — what does it feel like to let people see the thing you built in private? What part of this house are you most afraid they’ll recognize? And what does it mean that strangers are walking through rooms that used to exist only in your head?

The House (and the porch) is open. 

Forever, Lit.