Would You Like to Buy My Home in Beautiful Alpine, Texas?

Now that I’m leaving I’m finally unveiling exactly where that little “rural West Texas town” to which I so often refer is actually located. Beautiful Alpine, Texas, nestled in the Davis Mountains in the Big Bend area of Texas, has been my beloved home for 31 years and, although I’m looking forward to my big adventure, I truly am sorry to leave this quiet little town of about 6,000 friendly people. Alpine is home to Sul Ross State University, plenty of real working cowboys and lots of big open country. We’re thirty miles from Marfa, Texas, the town memorialized in the movie Giant and made famous and fashionable by minimalist artist Donald Judd, home to about 2,500 people, approximately half of whom are artists from somewhere else. We’re twenty-five miles from Fort Davis, Texas, home to McDonald Observatory, which is located here because of our dark skies; we take light pollution very seriously around here!

Are you packing your bags yet? Can you tell I love my town? I also love my home and want to finally share it with you! Self-indulgent it most certainly is but I hope you’ll pardon me and enjoy this little peek into my real life! If not, better skip this post! When I get to Virginia I’ll have to go back to anonymously referring to my little rural southwest Virginia town!

My house was built in approximately 1925 and originally occupied five city lots. Thankfully for me who has to cut the grass, it now only occupies 1½!



Isn’t it cute?! The upstairs balcony is off my master bedroom and is completely screened by those trees. It is very private. I can go out there in the evening with a cocktail and I think it has got to be the most peaceful place on earth! It’s like being in a treehouse.



Here’s my side yard with my new raised beds with their deer deterrent cages. This building contains an efficiency apartment and a one car garage in the front and a large shop and some storage rooms in the back. I have a tenant in the apartment who takes care of everything for me when I am out of town. I’m really going to miss her!

Shall we peek inside?



Here’s my living room. It actually looks kind of crowded in this picture but it isn’t really. You also can’t see the great exposed box beams in the ceiling. I love to light a fire in my fireplace in the winter for that perfect cozy atmosphere.



You go through this little hallway to get to the dining room. Just to the right in the hallway is the door to the basement, which I affectionately refer to as Subterrania, an unusual feature in West Texas. To the left is a neat little built in cupboard where I keep all my crystal and stemware. Once into the dining room, to the left is a large downstairs bedroom with an attached powder room. This is the room I was hoping to rent, which, although light filled, is pretty empty.



Back out and passing through the dining room you come to my cute kitchen where I test all my SimplyForties recipes!

Originally this built-in cabinet housed an ironing board. All the mod cons for the 1920’s housewife! Now it’s lined with shelves and is where I keep my spices. Past the kitchen there is a small mudroom, which has a pantry and a broom closet.

I think you’ve seen my backyard before. I’ve posted about my portable chicken run and how I have so much work to do! It really is a sanctuary for me. There is a pergola area out there where I frequently entertain in the summertime. The ex-BF and I built that as one of our projects.

We’ve had a lot of rain lately and, unlike when this picture was taken, the grass is very green out there!

Let’s go back inside and peek upstairs!

See the stairs tucked back there on the left? I like how they go up a little and then turn and are kind of hidden behind that wall.

Upstairs there are two bedrooms and a full bath. I treat the whole upstairs as a master suite, with one room arranged as a bedroom and the other arranged as a sitting room/office. I spend 80% of my time up there. It’s a perfect arrangement for me and why I thought I could rent out the lower room with little impact on my privacy.

See the left behind pug asleep on the couch? That’s where he spends most of his time. As long as I'm revealing all my secrets, his real name is Rage. Remember, a teenage boy named him!

Here’s the door to that great, private second storey balcony, which is in my master bedroom. That blue scarf is from a friend's trip to Mongolia, where it represents the blue sky. I like having it there for cloudy days.

When I wake up in the morning, the first thing I see is the blue sky and the trees outside my balcony door. The pictures over my bed are blown up photographs from a trip I took to France a few years ago. Now that’s some frugal decorating! Here’s the other side of this big, bright, sunny room:

That big desk (it’s really a dining room table) is across the hall in the sitting room now and I have some bookcases in its place.

That’s about it! Do you feel like a voyeur? I’m glad I got to show you my home, which I love so much! Now it’s memorialized for me and I can come back and look at it any time I want! If you love it too and want to move to my perfect little town, drop me a line and let’s talk!

Okay, back to my regularly scheduled blog! The next post will be about another alternative living arrangement. Shell cabins, a sort of contemporary catalog house, are a great way to get an inexpensive home. One of my friends has one and graciously allowed me a look inside. That’s up next!