<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Soft shades of pink on the walls, curvaceous French antiques, fresh flowers and sentimental family mementos help make the Mitch and Linda Drost home on Prien Lake the perfect Valentine’s Day home story.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Linda Drost shared family love stories as charming as her home. She started chasing Mitch Drost when she was only 13.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">“I know, I know,” Linda said. “Junior high school romances aren’t supposed to last, but ours did.”</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Mitch and Linda Drost have been married 47 years and they will renew their wedding vows in a special Valentine’s Day ceremony.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">“My mother loved Mitch right away and called him ‘the cream that always rises to the top,’” Linda said.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Linda’s parents are the late Bill and Gay Burton Lawton. His parents are the late Charles and Catherine Drost.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Linda was in her thirties when her mother died. She said her mother appreciated beautiful things while maintaining a nature so unpretentious and unassuming it often took people by surprise.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">She was a seamstress and made her daughters’ clothing.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">“She would tuck me in at night and I would hear her go to her sewing machine and start working,” Drost said. “In the morning she would wake me for school with a cup of coffee and tell me that she had a new dress for me and it was laying across her bed.”</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Linda’s father loved her mother and appreciated her fine taste. A cattle rancher, he once sent a cattle truck to pick up one of her antique finds, a large, heavy and very ornate mirror. Linda hangs it in one of the rooms of her pool house.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">After 47 years of marriage, Linda and her husband don’t plan any particular Valentine’s Day gift exchange or celebration.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">“It’s all about the grandchildren now and making sure they have a great Valentine’s Day,” Linda said. “We have five grandchildren, one great-grandchild and another great-grandchild on the way.”</span>

<span class="R~sep~AHeadsubhead">Subtle pink, whimsical touches and sentiment galore</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Pink is Linda’s favorite color, but the only thing reminiscent of the Pepto-Bismol pink that may come to mind when some people think of pink is a painting that Drost’s mother did for her. It hangs in the upstairs hallway with family portraits.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">“She did Santa paintings for everyone,” Drost said. “When she did mine, it wasn’t the traditional red. It was pink.”</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Drost used a subtle shade and thinks of pink as more of a neutral color.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">“The color I used changes throughout the day,” she said. “In the morning, though it’s pale, it feels like hello sunshine. In the evening it’s like soft candlelight.”</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Drost’s appreciation for the beautiful has found expression throughout her home. But the furnishings, décor and ceramics of MacKenzie-Childs, which usually feature black and white checks with an Alice In Wonderland whimsy, seem especially suited to Drost’s energizing passion for life and desire to make her home a place where family loves to gather to celebrate important milestones.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">“Do you need to put the designer’s name in this article,” Linda asked during the American Press interview. “I don’t buy only designer brands. I like pretty things. They don’t have to be a certain designer. I love shopping at Hobby Lobby.”</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Whimsy and humor is welcome at the Drosts. Linda loves flamingos. She keeps a tiny black and white plastic cow figurine and her first grandbaby’s pacifier on display in her kitchen.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Mitch, a lover of all things having to do with water, keeps the myth and magic of the mermaid alive. He also lovingly flew the nautical battleax flag when his mother-in-law was on board his fishing boat. It is framed and displayed in the pool house now.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Linda worries she is too sentimental. Keepsakes are lovingly displayed in glass curios in the couple’s master bedroom and in her master bath. She no longer uses the discontinued pink Balmoral Royal Worcester fine china in the dining room china cabinet which belonged to her mother.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Will her son or daughter feel the same way about it and the lovely but inexpensive glassware used by her grandmother’s father to bring her great-grandmother fresh fruit before they were married? Will her children feel the same way she does about her father’s Phi Kappa pin from the University of Texas with the note written in his hand: “She was mine then. Pinned anyway.” Did she notice her granddaughter’s eyes glaze over once when she was telling the story behind one of her keepsakes?</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Vintage photos fill the curios. Paintings by local portrait artist Belin Landry seem to capture not only the likeness of the Burton, Lawton and Drost family, but the very essence of the person.</span>

<span class="R~sep~AHeadsubhead">Home history</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">The late Russell Stutes built the home nine years ago.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">“He was a dear friend and left his mark,” Mitch Drost said. “We never questioned Russell. If he came up with an idea, we never second guessed him. We went with it. His opinions were solid gold.”</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Russell Stutes Contracting is known for its use of building materials that are reclaimed or finished to look that way. Russell Stutes worked at one time with A. Hays Town who influenced Stutes’ use of reclaimed and recycled building materials.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">In the Drost home, enormous ceiling beams look like reclaimed lumber, but were actually distressed using hatchets and cutting torches.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">“We ended up naming them Mitch’s heart attack beams,” Linda said. Mitch was helping put the beams in when he suffered a mild heart attack.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">The flooring was created using reclaimed pine beams from an old factory that were milled to inch-and-a-half thick planks.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Thomas Bourgeois did the specialty painting in the home.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Six months ago the Drosts added a downstairs master bedroom suite. Russell Stutes was contractor for the addition. Christi Stutes Clark helped with design.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Russell Stutes also completed a pool house on the property next door to the Drost home, which will be covered in a separate story at a later date. Randy Goodloe was architect.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Building a home can change a person, according to Linda.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">“It can teach patience,” she said. “It takes time, always more time than you think. It can rain for two weeks straight and you may have other setbacks. But when it’s finished and your contractor still loves you and your spouse still loves you, well then you’ve achieved something. I feel very blessed. I feel loved.”</span><p>Bringing the outside in makes this peaceful reading retreat picture perfect at the Drost household. (Rita LeBleu / American Press)</p><p></p>