Three Sheets to the WindThree beds. Three women. And probably a whole lot of history between them.
There’s something different about putting three women in a room together.
Especially when they’re your women.
The ones you've been crafting beside for years. The ones who know the stories before you even finish telling them. You've celebrated together, cried together, laughed until something hurt, gotten each other through some shit, and probably participated in at least a few things that are better left out of this website description.
That’s what our Three Sheets to the Wind rooms are about.
They’re our three triple-occupancy bedrooms, with one on each level of Outcrop, and they're some of the largest bedrooms in the house. Everyone has her own bed, but you're still together.
And somehow, each room developed a personality of its own.
Wide Open Spaces lives on the lower level, right beside the event center. With three twin beds and a calmer country feel, she's the peaceful one. After a full day of creating, she's ready to shut the door, get comfortable and let everything slow down.
Amarillo by Morning is on the main level. With two full-size beds and one twin, she's a little more mature, a little more elegant, and carries that beautiful, grown-up country feeling. She's been around awhile. She knows who she is. She doesn't need to make a lot of noise about it.
And then there's Friends in Low Places, upstairs beside the elevator.
We should probably apologize in advance.
She's our adult-slumber-party room. Two full-size beds, one twin, and just enough mischievous energy that putting three of the right women in there may have been a questionable decision on our part. She's for staying up too late, laughing harder than you meant to, remembering things you probably shouldn't bring up, and waking up the next morning wondering why grown women apparently still haven't learned to go to bed at a reasonable hour.
Three rooms. Three completely different personalities.
But underneath all of them is the same thing:
Connection.
Because sometimes the best part of a retreat isn't getting a room to yourself.
Sometimes it's looking over and realizing your girls are right there beside you.
WIDE OPEN SPACES
There’s beauty in knowing you don’t have to hurry anymore.
Wide Open Spaces feels a little different from the other rooms at Outcrop.
She’s not trying to be the wild one. She doesn’t need to be the loudest woman in the room. She’s lived enough life to know that sometimes the greatest luxury is simply being comfortable, being with your people, and having nowhere else you need to be.
There’s a reason the name Wide Open Spaces felt right.
The song carries that feeling of having room to grow, finding your own way, and discovering what life looks like when there’s a little more space around you. I think that changes as we get older. Wide open spaces aren't always about running off to find something new. Sometimes they're about finally having enough room to appreciate exactly where you are.
That’s this room.
The photographs on the walls celebrate the plains, crops, and wide-open country, the kind of landscape some people drive right past without realizing how beautiful it is. I think there’s something lovely about that comparison to this season of life, too.
Beauty doesn't disappear with time. It changes. It gets deeper.
Wide Open Spaces is located on the lower level, immediately beside the event center, which has made it one of the most requested rooms in the house. And I completely understand why.
When you've been crafting for hours and suddenly decide an afternoon nap sounds better than finishing that page, your bed is right there. When everyone else finally calls it a night, you don't have to make the trek upstairs. Finish your project, walk a few steps, and you're home.
Currently, the room has three twin beds, giving everyone her own sleeping space with plenty of room around them. Our plan is to eventually upgrade these to full-size beds, as the layout allows. We originally needed to preserve the possibility of adding a fourth bed, but with the elevator making every level of Outcrop accessible, we believe we can let this room grow into something more spacious and comfortable for three adults instead.
And yes, Wide Open Spaces recently got a ceiling fan. At a certain point in life, we stop pretending temperature doesn't matter. It matters.
Right next door is a large bathroom, with plenty of room for everyone to spread out and get ready without performing gymnastics around each other.
During the day, the room is bright and welcoming. In the evening, it changes. The light disappears, the warmer tones settle in, and everything feels quieter.
Close the door. Crawl into bed. Read for a while. Take the nap. Talk if you want to. Don't if you don't.
You've already done the running around.
Wide Open Spaces is for this part of the journey, the part where you've earned the right to slow down, settle in, and appreciate the view.
AMARILLO BY MORNING
Old enough to know better. Still young enough not to care every once in a while.
Amarillo by Morning has a maturity about her.
She’s warm, elegant, and settled. She knows who she is. But don't confuse mature with boring, because put three women who have known each other long enough into the same bedroom, and eventually somebody is going to bring up a story nobody has thought about in twenty years.
This is the grown-up sleepover.
The conversations are different now. You talk about your kids, your grandkids, your marriages, the things you've survived, the things you're still figuring out, and the things you can finally laugh about that definitely weren't funny when they happened.
And then somebody says something completely inappropriate and suddenly you're all giggling in bed again.
Some things apparently don't change.
Amarillo by Morning sits on the main level and currently has two full-size beds and one twin. It's a spacious room with a more mature, elegant country feeling, and it has something no other bedroom at Outcrop can quite claim:
It gets both sides of the sky.
From one direction, you can wake up and catch the sunrise in the east. From the other, you can watch the light change toward the northwest as the sun sets.
And then there are the eagles.
We have eagles nesting in the nearby trees, and from this room you may get lucky enough to see one leave the nest and take flight. That's the kind of thing that can stop a conversation mid-sentence.
There is something about this room that reminds me that getting older doesn't mean the beautiful parts are behind us.
Quite the opposite.
You notice more.
You appreciate the sunrise because you've seen enough of them to know they're never quite the same. You stop for the eagle. You watch the sunset instead of rushing through it. You understand how special it is to have women in your life who have accumulated some years and stories right alongside you.
And you also know that tomorrow morning is going to arrive whether you stay up talking until midnight or not.
Amarillo by Morning is for women who have lived enough life to appreciate the view—and are still having enough fun to occasionally stay up way too late enjoying it.
FRIENDS IN LOW PLACES
The room we probably shouldn’t leave unsupervised.
If Wide Open Spaces has already gone to bed and Amarillo by Morning is having a meaningful conversation about life, Friends in Low Places is upstairs making terrible decisions.
This is the adult sleepover room.
Not the Pinterest version with matching pajamas and perfectly arranged snacks. I mean the kind where apparently our emotional maturity stopped somewhere around fourteen and nobody has bothered to correct the situation.
Friends in Low Places is tucked upstairs beside the elevator, almost in a little world of her own. She’s one of the largest bedrooms in the house, with two full-size beds and one twin—and yes, that third bed is just sort of hanging out in the middle like the friend who drew the short straw.
We know.
Her name is Bob now. Deal with it.
There’s so much open space in this room that eventually somebody is going to suggest building a fort. And you should. You're an adult. Nobody can stop you.
Then you'll start noticing doors.
There are closets, a bathroom, another strange little closet situation, and spaces that make you wonder, Wait...where does THAT go?
Do not break into the owner's closet.
Although we both know Friends in Low Places is absolutely the room most likely to try.
And then there's the elevator.
At 3:00 in the morning, when someone decides riding it upstairs is suddenly the funniest activity imaginable, please remember that there are other women in this house attempting to behave like responsible adults.
You are apparently not among them.
The room looks toward the northwest, giving you a beautiful opportunity to watch the Colorado sky change at sunset. Of course, this requires somebody to climb onto a bed to get a better look through those windows behind the headboards while everyone else yells, “DON'T FALL.”
You'll probably miss the sunset anyway.
You're definitely not getting up for sunrise.
But you'll have stories.
This is the room where somebody says, “Shhh! They're going to hear us,” which naturally makes everyone laugh harder. Somebody trips over a bag trying to find the bathroom. Somebody can't find her glasses. Somebody starts laughing so hard she has to cross her legs because apparently our bladders did continue aging even if the rest of us didn't.
By morning, the room may look slightly less dignified than the women sleeping downstairs.
Clothes somewhere they don't belong. Projects abandoned. Blankets everywhere. One person asking what time it is while another insists nobody speak to her until coffee.
And I have a suspicion that if our cleaners ever discover another mysterious little “Easter egg” left behind at Outcrop...
they should probably start their investigation in Friends in Low Places.
Because growing older is mandatory.
Growing up apparently remains optional.
