Songbird

The Montello family home is one of the oldest of the houses in The Neighborhoods. You’re walking down the sidewalk on a warm autumn evening, and Mrs. Montello waves to you from where she’s raking maple leaves in the front yard. The house behind her is white with black shutters, two stories, and lots of windows with scalloped curtains hanging in them.

 

If you were to go inside the house, you would find it to be decorated with the same light-and-dark color palette, with a checkered kitchen floor, white cabinets, and a black refrigerator. Not everything is limited to these shades, though--you see several pieces of colorful Mexican artwork hanging in the dining room. If you were to go upstairs, you’d find more colorful accents: a handmade quilt on a reading chair in the landing, a gallery wall of family photographs of cousins, aunts and uncles, and grandparents, as well as the residents of the house itself, all enclosed in painted multicolored frames.

 

The family’s twin daughters each have a bedroom at one end of the floor, with their parents and grandmother on the other side of the house. One of the girls’ rooms is light and airy, with sheer white curtains and a four-poster bed in the center of the floorboards. There’s a window seat, and against the far wall is a desk with a large desktop computer. The room is neat, but a few small items are out of place--a floral dress over the back of a chair, a book left spread open facedown on the nightstand