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Thursday, July 24, 2008

A Few of My Favorite Things.......

A while ago I wandered around my house taking pictures of some of my favorite things. For no specific reason, just fooling around with my camera. Now, please note that I did not say anything about "favorite people" or even "favorite things to do", but just favorite things, items in my home. Do our favorite things reveal something about us as individuals? I bet they do.

I ended up with about 18 items so this blog with have to become a 2 parter most likely because I want to chat a bit about each thing. If that sounds boring, feel free to move along to the next persons blog, I'm doing it anyway! Ok here goes...........




I love my red walls! We lived with an interely white house for so many years due to the dreaded "Fear of Color!" We were so afraid of getting it wrong that we did nothing. How dumb is that? Now we have this beautiful dark red in one room & pale yellow in another & a yummy butterscotch in the kitchen! Loving all our color!



Why is that very first swallow of your morning coffee so perfect? I love my coffee in the morning, either here at this cute little pub table looking at my backyard or on my swing in the backyard. I feel sorry for all of you who have your first sip of dark delight out of a cardboard cup while driving or riding to work. I am lucky enough to have semi-leisurely mornings before work if I time it right. MMMM I can smell it now!



This is how my bedside table almost always looks. I love books! I go to the library every couple of weeks & bring home a stack to enjoy. If a book does not capture me in the first few pages it goes into the "go back" basket & I move on to the next one. I love all kinds of books, mostly fiction, sometimes silly & sometimes serious. I will not tolerate predictable plots though. If it does not challenge me with new words or new cultures to explore I'll leave it be.



The color combination of blue & white captured me when I was still in high school & I began to collect dishes in this pattern called Blue Calico. When I got married at the age of 23 I chose this pattern as my fancy "good" dishes in rebellion to the gold trimmed stuff that others had chosen. I still love it & have cupboards full of it. My house used to be so completely blue & white that my husband said he felt like he was living in a black & white movie! I have moved beyond being strictly blue & white now, because I am tired of the "country" look that I worked so hard to get years ago.


Speaking of blue & white & country! I still adore my old beat up blue calico chair! It is so comfy & totally perfect for reading & blogging. As you can see, the arms are worn so have to be covered with cloth napkins. It has great sentimental attachment for me. The first piece of NEW furniture we ever bought! (About 15 or 20 years ago. ) But as I have been slowly getting rid of all my country style things, it is beginning to look like it came to the wrong party! (Can't lose the maple table behind it. Belonged to my mother-in-law & hubby is quite attached to it!)

Believe it or not I won this beautiful oil painting at an art gallery in Hawaii! It is worth many $$$ but I got it totally free! Yah for me! It was pretty funny actually. We were in Hawaii with some friends because my husband & I inherited the trip from a friend who died & wanted us to get to go there at least once in our lives. Well, that part is not funny, but the other gallery people sure were! We had spent a day wandering through random gallaries enjoying all the crazy expensive & beautiful items & I filled out a slip for a free drawing that would take place later that night. At about 8 or 9 that evening we were done swimming & were all dirty & sandy etc. & someone mentioned the drawing in the art gallery. We debated whether to go or not but decided to stop by & see what would happen. The gallery was full of very dressed up people with their glasses of wine & slightly snooty expressions. I mean, fur-coat dressed up! In Hawaii on a warm evening! Well, you should have seen their faces when this tank-top & shorts lady won the painting right out from under them! Ha! The artist loved it & had his picture taken with me. Very cool! Plus, it reminds me of my late friend.

This pile of firewood makes me just giddy! No, we do not need it right now because the temps are hitting over 100 degrees thank you very much! But in the winter this is a life saver in our house. Our fireplace has a wood burning insert so it heats the whole house without ever turning on the heater! I am a temperature sensitive woman & hate to be either too hot or too cold, & to me "too cold" is worse than "too hot". Love that firewood!

Sure hope this isn't boring you cause I'm having a great time! I am crazy about this Yoga Video! I found a set of 2 in a bin at our Walmart store for only $5! Can you tell that I love a deal? She is easy to listen to. I have listened to some online that had voices that would cancel out any relaxation that the moves inspired! It is easy & SLOW so I can actually do it & feel really good afterwards. Love it!

This really has gotten too long I know, but gotta mentioned my loverly collection of flip-flops! Can you have too many? I don't think so! Should we do one more Favorite Thing? Okay, one more......

That large book on the bottom is my giant antique library dictionary! Isn't it amazing? I found it at a local garage sale for about $8 & lugged it down the block to my home. It really is quit beautiful to look through & it is full of unusual ancient words that we no longer use. I think it's a treasure.

Do the things we love tell others about us? We have had hundreds of fires here in California this summer & it makes you wonder what you would grab as you evacuated your home. I know I'd have to grab my laptop even though that does not sound very romantic & sentimental, but it has all my best photos on it & letters etc. What do your favorite things say about you?

2 comments:

  1. Thanks, Brenda. I enjoyed the tour of your house and the little story behind each of your favorite items. The flip-flop basket is a neat idea. I've recently acquired so many, I didn't know what to do with them. Now I do.

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  2. Yup, the stuff we love does show a picture of who we are and what delights us. The pattern on your pitchers is so pretty! And your painting is fabulous! I play piano and love that there's one in the painting; you don't see them a lot in paintings. And how nice that the painting reminds you of your friend who's generosity allowed you to go on the Hawaiian vacation.

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Hi Thanks for reading! Please leave a comment even if it has nothing to do with the specific blog, it's great to know that you are writing stuff that real live people actually read, ya know?
Brenda