Miracle on West Hallam Street

(Photograph by Mountain Photo)

A Christmas Fable…

This is the photograph that Pioneer Press ran with our wedding announcement when Mike and I got married.  It’s a pretty nice picture, don’t you think?

Unfortunately, the ONLY thing I ever notice is the space between my legs.

Now look at Mike’s legs.  See a space?  Nope, you don’t.  That’s because he is a ski instructor, and he was skiing as soon as he could walk.  He doesn’t even remember learning how.

He is a beautiful skier.  Really poetry in motion.

Meet The Family Sidebar:  The first time that my brother Kenny flew out to Snowmass to meet Mike, he was giving a lesson on the mountain.  Kenny and I waited and watched as he glided effortlessly down the slope when he spotted us.  Kenny turned to me with an envious sigh and said, “Wow.  Look at that.  If you don’t marry him, I will.”

Somehow this photo ended up in Aspen Magazine- a glitzy but wonderful “lifestyle” publication.  I don’t know how or why it got there.  I know that I had never given it to anybody.

And I hadn’t started my talk show yet.  I wasn’t even a minor celebrity in Aspen’s star-studded firmament.

(Mike, however, was a well-known and well-liked figure around Ski School, and he was coach of the Snowmass Demo team so maybe his celebrity clout got us the ink.)

At the time of our marriage, I had been living in my condo in Snowmass.  It was a great place.  Good location, adorable decor, handy to the slope, everything you could possibly want.

In a vacation home.

As a full-time residence, however, for three adults (Mike, Nick and I) and two dogs (Andy and Killarney) it left a few things to be desired.

The kitchen was designed strictly for the go-out-to-dinner and carry-out trade, and there was no back yard.

We were smack dab on the fifth tee of the Snowmass Club golf course. Picturesque and educational as this was – many’s the summertime morning I woke up to the sounds of colorful swearing as golfers’ drives sailed directly over the green and into the drink- it meant that we couldn’t just open the door and let the dogs out.

We would always have to walk them, and this really put Killarney in a funk as Siberians need to roam around.

So as soon as we got back from our East Coast wedding, Mike and I started to house hunt.

Quick Guide to Aspen Real Estate: The tiniest, fixer-upper, tear-down dump starts at a million bucks.  Then the Rocky Mountain high price tag has NO LIMIT.  Houses you would never ever live in, you could never ever afford.

Think Manhattan, and the Hamptons, and Bel Air, and Montecito. Now you’re on the right ski track.

It was discouraging.  My townhouse was expensive, too, of course, but still it was only a drop in the bucket- a down payment- on any of the real estate that I really wanted to own.

Mike had a place in Lake Placid he was willing to throw into the pot, but even so, let’s just say the project was a challenge.

We looked and looked.  The houses we could afford always had a fatal flaw. The houses we loved… well, I should have married Warren Buffet- not his ski instructor.

And don’t forget Snowmass and Aspen are really small towns.  There isn’t a ton of inventory at any one time.  Another reason the housing market is always price-inflated.

But the fever was upon me.  I was determined to find a bigger house with a gas-equipped kitchen and a yard for the dogs.

We had a patient realtor working with us, but one day, right around Christmastime, Mike and I were driving down West Hallam Street in Aspen and we saw a “For Sale” sign in front of a brand new house.

Mike pulled the car up to a halt and we looked at it.  From the outside it had tons of curb appeal.  And it wasn’t too near the Music Festival, or on the side of town that gets dark early, or any of the other things that had made us nix other promising contenders.

“What do you think?” I asked Mike.

“Looks pretty great.  It must just have been finished.  Funny I never noticed it before,” he said.

“Shall I call the realtor and set up an appointment to see it?”

“Sure, why not?”

And so I called.  And the listing agent said she happened to be five minutes away, and would we like to see the house right then and there?

We would.

As promised, five minutes later a cheerful lady with a key to the lockbox showed up and let us in.

The house, although new, was not empty.  It was staged- furnished within an inch of its life- right down to the Sabatier knives on the never-been-used cutting board.

Every amenity had been thought of by the builders.  And what they hadn’t put in was then artfully added by an interior decorator with one purpose in mind.

To make this house so appealing that anyone would be crazy not to envision themselves happily ensconced there.

Pillows and throws were tossed winningly on every conceivable sitting space.  Yummy duvets and lacy shams clad every California King bed. Towels in the bathrooms were giant, pastel-colored bathsheets that just screamed “cozy.”

And every flat square inch of surface, from side tables to etagères, was laden with cachepots, bibelots, picture frames, vases, and geegaws that bespoke happy, healthy families and the famously-idyllic Aspen lifestyle that would rightfully belong to the owners of such an enchanting domicile.

Mike and I wandered about taking in all the Architectural Digest charm.

This house had a lot of promise and maybe we belonged there.

And then we spotted it.  On the etagère in the living room.  Lavishly framed and prominently displayed.

A photograph of the “owners” of the house happily skiing down the slope.

It was the photograph at the top of of this post.

Of Mike and I.

We were stunned.

But not as stunned as the realtor.

“That’s you!” she said as she followed our gaze to the picture.  “What on earth…?  Why is there a photograph of you two here?  Do you know the people who built this house?  Or the designer?”

Mike and I both shook our respective heads.  We had NO idea how or why our wedding photo had ended up in a house on Hallam Street.

But we knew at once that it was a sign from the Aspen Real Estate Gods.  We were destined to find this house and buy it.  Our long search was over.

It was just like Miracle on 34th Street when adorable moppet Natalie Wood’s Susan made Mr. Gailey stop at the house she thought she had only imagined.

All that was missing from our miracle was Kris Kringle’s cane.

(And $2 million.)

Ho ho ho.

Have a Merry Christmas, everyone.