Discover the magic of slowing down
My Beaufort Getaway Blog: A Dream Come True
My husband, son and I first visited Tybee, Savannah and Beaufort in 1998. Although married years and years, we'd never taken a real vacation. Believe me, getting away from it all was absolute bliss. We're both architects and adored the scale and design of these magical towns, with our 4-year-old in tow. We decided we would make this area our annual destination. Once we left, we'd spend the rest of the year awaiting our next summer visit. Back home, we read everything we could get our hands on about the Georgia coast and the Carolina Lowcountry.
I remember coming across a story about Gullah culture- and wondering if I may have stepped on a root that made me fall in love with this beautiful wonderland. Over the next ten years we would return for 2 weeks, usually one week on the beach and one week in the historic district of Beaufort. We made friends, and bought local-themed t-shirts at tag sales, so we would could pretend we were locals instead of tourists.
Every night my family has something we call "wishes, hopes and dreams", where we take a couple minutes at the end of the day to open up. Over time we always had the same predictable answer: we wanted to find a Lowcountry place that we could fix up and call our own.
But, the perfect place (and price) always escaped us. I satisfied myself by shopping and junking for cool items to use in my future "beach house" My son, Patrick, would shake his head and say "Mama, we dont have a beach house, why do you want that?" My husband scoured the real estate ads, helped me compose letters to property owners and even bought shelves to hold my "beach house stuff". I like to paint and so I spent some of my energy painting the architecture and landscape of beloved Tybee and Beaufort.
Fast forward through 10 years of collecting, painting, wishing and dreaming. We recieved a call from a house owner who'd saved a letter inquiring if he would like to sell that we had written long ago. He did. And we sealed the deal (well, it actually was a ton of time, trips and paperwork- but does that really matter?)
Yipee! We loaded up a truck- kinda like the Clampetts -and headed east. All that "beach house stuff " fit like a dream, even though we modified it a bit to fit the Beaufort historic district setting, and truth be told-about the only things we had to buy once we arrived were a couch, tv and one bed.
We named it Island Town House simply because it sits on Port Royal Island and it's a sweet little townhouse. You can see inside and the neighborhood if you look here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/26204057@N07/sets/72157605951420575/show/
We have a few more things on the to-do-list, but that's the entire fun of still having a few more hopes and dreams!
And should you like to visit one day look here: http://www.vrbo.com/183456
We'd love to have you!
I remember coming across a story about Gullah culture- and wondering if I may have stepped on a root that made me fall in love with this beautiful wonderland. Over the next ten years we would return for 2 weeks, usually one week on the beach and one week in the historic district of Beaufort. We made friends, and bought local-themed t-shirts at tag sales, so we would could pretend we were locals instead of tourists.
Every night my family has something we call "wishes, hopes and dreams", where we take a couple minutes at the end of the day to open up. Over time we always had the same predictable answer: we wanted to find a Lowcountry place that we could fix up and call our own.
But, the perfect place (and price) always escaped us. I satisfied myself by shopping and junking for cool items to use in my future "beach house" My son, Patrick, would shake his head and say "Mama, we dont have a beach house, why do you want that?" My husband scoured the real estate ads, helped me compose letters to property owners and even bought shelves to hold my "beach house stuff". I like to paint and so I spent some of my energy painting the architecture and landscape of beloved Tybee and Beaufort.
Fast forward through 10 years of collecting, painting, wishing and dreaming. We recieved a call from a house owner who'd saved a letter inquiring if he would like to sell that we had written long ago. He did. And we sealed the deal (well, it actually was a ton of time, trips and paperwork- but does that really matter?)
Yipee! We loaded up a truck- kinda like the Clampetts -and headed east. All that "beach house stuff " fit like a dream, even though we modified it a bit to fit the Beaufort historic district setting, and truth be told-about the only things we had to buy once we arrived were a couch, tv and one bed.
We named it Island Town House simply because it sits on Port Royal Island and it's a sweet little townhouse. You can see inside and the neighborhood if you look here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/26204057@N07/sets/72157605951420575/show/
We have a few more things on the to-do-list, but that's the entire fun of still having a few more hopes and dreams!
And should you like to visit one day look here: http://www.vrbo.com/183456
We'd love to have you!
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