My home: where you’ll find love, family and lots of reggae records

I believe them when they say home is where the heart is. My home is where my husband is, where my dog is, and it’s where I want to be, too. We’ve made our home into a place that’s full of the things we love and that reminds us of moments, people and places that hold a piece of our hearts.

 

This is Pete. Here he’s posing in Chad’s record room. Pete is our 6-year-old black Lab. He loves to take walks around the neighborhood. He loves car rides, and he loves to eat just about everything except spinach. He is a rescue dog and we adopted him from the DFW Lab Rescue about a year-and-a-half ago. He was found on the streets of Fort Worth, Tex., by a volunteer of the rescue. He’s super lovable. He just wants to be with us always. He has a little social anxiety, and retreats to his little bed in our bedroom when people come over. He’s scared of loud noises, loud laughs, thunder and lightning. He has a little separation anxiety, as well. He’s happiest and most comfortable when Chad and I are both home, relaxing with him and listening to reggae. He likes reggae.

 

These are some Mexican prayer candles we keep mostly for decoration. Light them, pray to the saint on the candle, and wait for your intention to be heard.

 

This is Elijah, my cousin’s son. I love having people over. And I’m thankful that my family likes to come over often. I really love being close to my family, and we’re more than being just a phone call away. We’re a few streets away. We gave Elijah walkie-talkies for Christmas, and he tore through the wrapping paper that decorated the many toys he received that night. But his attention wasn’t on the walkie-talkies or the toy trucks or the new clothes he was gifted. His attention was whatever game he was playing on his mom’s phone.

 

This is one of Chad’s pride and joys. It’s an old organ that he found at a garage sale about five years ago. It is so heavy, and it scratched up our hardwoods when we moved it in. I’ve tried to convince him to sell it a few times, since it mostly just sits in this closet. But I found that when those conversations come up, he actually starts to play around with it, like “hey, I can’t sell this, look at how much I use it.”

 

We don’t have much on our walls because we can’t ever agree on artwork. This was an impulse buy. I follow the Sour Grapes Crew @CarlosDonjuan and @armasourgrapes on Instagram. They’re a couple of hispanic guys out of Oak Cliff just killing it. I love that they’re successful artists. They’re graffiti artists, they paint, they’re instructors at colleges, they’re parents, they own houses. Their stuff is relevant. It’s cultural. And that’s something I totally want to help support. They had a studio tour a year ago. I went, hoping I’d see this there. I’m a huge Frida Kahlo fan and love what Erykah Badu represents. I think Badu is so cool, and I love that she lives in the neighborhood. When I bought this, they told me that Erykah wanted it, but they hadn’t heard from her in a few days, so it was up for grabs. She can come to my home anytime and enjoy it as much as we have.

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