Home Design Blog: shelters

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

For those of you visiting from a Linky party, click on my header/logo above to view other posts on my blog. I think you'll like those also. I'm not usually boring and have lots of beautiful things to look at as well as stories to read, which can be quite amusing. ;-)
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I've updated my tutorial on the new blogger interface here. This one is about blogger wanting you to upgrade for more storage space and telling you that some photos and/or posts will be deleted because you're using too much space. You really need to read this tutorial. Go to the bottom of the tutorial for a bit of advice on what other options you have.
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Washington state is the prettiest state I’ve ever seen. Oh, I love California and our new state of Idaho, but Washington has such a lusciousness that it muffles noises. It was one of the first things hubs and I noticed the first time we went to visit our granddaughter when she and her family moved there—the quietness of it. It’s also very, very lush. Foliage everywhere. Wet. Dewy. Lush. I’d live there in a heartbeat if it wasn’t so expensive. But their first home—their starter home—cost them $600,000. That’s beyond my budget. Too expensive for us retirees to live there so we just visit a few times a year. It truly seems as if the traffic is quieter also.

Anyway, we’ve noticed there and in Oregon that they build the house down from the street level. We first noticed it in Oregon when we went over to a niece’s wedding. A lot of driveways off the street to the houses would slope down. Now, I don’t know about you but it would seem to me with all the rain Washington and Oregon get that the water would drain into the houses and garages. Just doesn’t make sense to us. I’d never seen that until then because in California all the driveways I’d ever seen go up or are level but certainly not sloped down from the street.
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I know a lot of women prefer blue so here are a few blue bedrooms for you. Aren't they stunning?

This one is ethereal. Absolutely stunning.

If I had this door, I'd use it as a door on my office, and I love my office door now, but this one is my kind of door.

Cute vintage kitchen items. This is an English kitchen. I can tell because the cookie jar is called biscuit jar. Darling.

I adore this little étagère. The woman has all her little items displayed lovingly.

If only. Right? ;-)

A unique custom paint job on a vintage dresser really gives this pizzazz.

A quaint small bedroom straight out of an Agatha Christie novel.

A pretty pantry with all sorts of items showing through.

A small European apartment patio. They don't come any smaller than this I think.

Pretty garden surrounding a pool

A dream place we all would like to go to relax and while away a bit of time.

I. Love. Polka Dots.

A beautiful entry to a home or to a garden pathway. I absolutely LOVE moss growing between stones on a walkway.

Lots of pink and white.

While this looks like a wedding canopy, it could well be an easy place to have in a back yard.

Just something about this entry I like.

Caaauuuute!!!

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I like my pancakes with enough syrup to cover my Camry!
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Linking up with:
No Minimalist Here
Savvy Southern Style
At the Picket Fence

Friday, June 29, 2012

About 15 years ago, a new giant grocery store came to the town we lived next to before moving here. It was one of the biggest grocery stores I'd ever seen and cannot for the life of me remember its name now, but I think it was a store out of Oregon or Washington or maybe the mid-west somewhere, but not known here in Idaho at all. Anyway, it had full service in it: regular foodstuffs, organic food, coffee bar with exotic coffees, a small place to buy and eat fresh sandwiches, a pizza place in it, a deli, huge vegetable/fruit selections, bulk food items and an ice cream parlor. It was the ice cream parlor that fascinated me. :-)

They made the ice cream right there in that little section. It was so cute with pink and white canopies surrounding it and the requisite pink and white chairs. So one day I asked if they'd make me a special ice cream. I'd buy it all, of course, if they could. The lady there said she'd give it a try and seemed happy to do it. I wanted piña colada ice cream and told her it was coconut and pineapple in an ice cream mixture. I left the basics to her but told her what I wanted in it. I love pineapple and coconut! Love it.

So she agreed and I gave her a couple of days and went back to the store. I asked her about it and she went into the back and brought it out. I sampled it as she was telling me, "I also put in banana for you." I hate bananas! Right then I knew I wasn't going to like it. Now, I was very specific in how I wanted it and I was willing to pay for the whole bucket/gallon or whatever it took, plus as a customer requesting something and willing to pay whatever price they wanted, I assumed she would have met my requirements as to ingredients. I was so disappointed. But it taught me a lesson: always be as specific as you can. I usually am to this day but I sometimes fail. This happens frequently with the hubs. I won't go into that because this story is about a disappointing ice cream mostly.

The store folded after a short while—perhaps two years at the most, if I'm remembering correctly, and it became a Home Depot. I always wondered why such a huge store came to a relatively small demographic area of Idaho and Oregon.

So, recently, we bought a small Cuisinart ice cream maker and made our first batch of just plain old vanilla, just to get a feel for the appliance. It came out fantastic. I'll now work on doing strawberry perhaps before I work my way up to pineapple/coconut piña colada. ;-)
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A place to dream.

Smell the roses or tulips in this case.

Pretty and neat bathroom organization. Is there any person alive who has only this much in their bathroom storage? My stuff in both our bathrooms could fill a ROOM all my itself!