Welcome to Welcomecroft

Last year, we decided our home needed a name.

An idea that has always inspired us, especially in moving into an older home (ours is 1951) where so, so many things need work and nothing is quite pristine, is that if it’s good enough for a cottage in the English countryside, it’s good enough for us. Truly, if you’ve done any amount of traveling around Europe, you quickly realize that our American notion of “old” isn’t old at all. We may feel like our 70-year-old house has some age on it, but that’s nothing compared to a Tudor manor in Sussex or a 18th-century farmhouse in Provence. So when I notice that the paint on the window sill is peeling or that my floor has the scratches of a thousand claws in certain lighting, or that when we’re trying to hang a shelf the entire corner of the room isn’t exactly square, well, Brian and I look at each other and and just say, “crofting.” It’s our code for making do with what we have, even when that is less that ideal or far from “perfect.” It’s our way of embracing the age, the quirks, and the limitations of what we can put money toward to fix, and finding beauty in all of those things.

So when we decided we wanted to name the house and everything we’re trying to do here, from the gradual fixing of things inside to the making of the garden and projects outside, we landed pretty easily on Welcomecroft. “Welcome,” which is our street address, plus “croft” just felt perfect.

** These photos are from two summers ago when we redid the front landscaping and created our first little vegetable garden. I wanted to include them here because that year was so pivotal, and it’s really fun to look back and see major progress!