My Grama's Soul

Our home is an open room concept with the small entry space, dining space and living space all in one large room.  We have incredibly high ceilings....which I think are too high by the way.  To wallpaper any of these walls would require a major cost of both time and money, so I decided to paint my entryway a fun color pattern to attempt to delienate it from the rest of the open space.   Once again, it is just paint and can be easily painted over at some point in time. I have used colors that occur throughout my home....you can see that I'm not a three color kind of gal.  I have lots and lots of color in both  art and furnishings. In fact, I think this paint sort of looks like a painting all by itself.  Cost so very little to accomplish all you need is painters tape and paint.  You can do this with whatever color palette you love and it will fit right in with your decor. Well, that is my money saving tip...

For those of you living in colder parts of our country, I wanted to share pics of what it is like in Arizona right now.  Flowers are blooming like crazy as it has not turned so hot yet. The jasmine has bloomed and the fragrance is truly heavenly...but it doesn't last for long.  So we do enjoy it while we have it. The lavender and dianthus are taking off as are the bottle brush bushes.  The bees are especially fond of the lavender and the hummingbirds LOVE the bottle brush. We have a resident humming bird who lives in a tree nearby and often vacations in our little courtyard.  He loves the Buddha fountain I have hidden under the bamboo. Most evenings he comes here for water and to take a little bath while Skyler and I are in our TV room watching a movie.  We can see him through the window as he often comes to show us how lovely he is by putting on a display in front of the window. I always like to think th...

It seems as though I rarely post on my blog anymore.  Not that I am that busy mind you.... My outside activities mostly consist of just living...seeing friends, going to clubs I belong to and getting together with family. However, lately I have been messing around the house again.  Painting on some of our walls in our sweet little spot.   I really would never consider myself a real artist but I do enjoy the process and my thought is that you can always paint the wall back to its original color.  Although, in this case I think you would have to put on a heavy coat of primer and I have used some pretty dark colors here. I have many pieces of art hanging on my wall but not a single piece of art ON MY Wall!! hahaha.... Hope all of you are having a great day....I am. xo Jo

This is a picture of our kitchen when we purchased our little house a few years ago.  The only things we updated before we moved here were the kitchen floor and the appliances. Here is another picture from a different perspective.  you can see the light countertops and tiny white tiles that were at least 30 years old.  These white tiles also were on the floor...but we HAD to replace those when we moved in. This kitchen is fairly small so we could really not reconfigure the layout...but we did want to freshen it up a bit. Here is the update with just a few small improvements... Did not replace the existing cabinets as that would have been much too costly so we had them refinished.  Installed a "leather" granite as a counter top.  This granite has a lot of texture when you touch it and is matte finish... not the shiny kind we have had in the past. We live here and this is a WORKING kitchen so it is not styled to per...

I've posted before of the difficulty  of a spring or summer garden in Arizona.  In fact, gardening in AZ can be a challenge any time of year....here.   We have lived here going on three years now and I never tire of changing things around or sprucing things up.  In fact, at 70 years young I still get a kick out of decorating and fluffing up my house. These are photos of both the front and back gardens of our home.  Most of these plants have been here for the whole time and they just keep thriving in spite of AZ weather.  As you can tell.....I like a "full garden" look and the more the merrier I say.   For all of you who are still dealing with snow and slush....here is sending spring to your corner of the world. ENJOY!! JO

Allright......I will admit it.  I love having things in my home that are homemade...not store bought...and are like nothing you will see in someone else's home.   I also love mixing the quirky with the refined  ~~ something homemade with a fine piece of art. Since downsizing and moving I'm finding myself with many things that I can no longer use or are just simply wrong with the feel of this house.  So I end up taking things apart and reusing them in new ways. The little lamp above was made from an old lamp base from World Market and a shade that had ripped and torn over the years.  I incorporated various lamps parts of other fixtures that we are no longer able to use here...and  voila'!  A new little lamp that is both funky and artsy at the same time.  My dear husband loves the idea of the shade being there and yet not being there.   I only use a flicker bulb in these lamps as they are really more for decorati...

My husband and I have only been in our new spot since August of this year...and with family happenings and just life in general...we have not been able to finish  some of the projects we want to do around here.  One of them is our little back yard. I love to garden and aim to have a wonderful garden in this house as well. I garden in pots for the most part as our soil here in AZ is so bad....although, we have made a small raised bed in the yard. It is visible in the above photo.  We have not decided what to plant yet but that will be done by the end of the month or early March.  Many of these plants were brought over from our big house and have managed to survive our hot, hot summer so I think they will survive in this new spot. I'm trying vegetables for the first time this year.  I have never attempted to grow then in pots so we will see what happens.  Above we have strawberries and red swiss chard along with oregano, thym...

O.K. for those of you who asked.....a few more pictures as we are getting settled in our little spot.  I indicated before that we used all of our existing things in this move.  We had to sell many of the larger pieces as they would no long serve us here...but we got full use of the stuff while we had it. The above pics are really the whole living area in our home.  It is an open room concept so the living and dining area are all in one big area. Some of our art pieces that we have had for over 20 years are now able to have "pride of place" in the few little niches we have above doors, etc.  The above piece is RAKU....does anyone remember that?  It is called HIS BEATING HEART and was made many years ago by a local artist in Flagstaff.  It simply got lost in the old house....but here it can be shown nicely. Above the door is some of my cross collection.  I used to use this old bread board to display my junk hand made jewelry....

This is a long post.... O.k......let's start off with the loo.......LOL LOL...... this is actually the small guest bathroom.  Since we have decided to move any guests we may have to a local hotel....I wanted to use the bathtub as a wonderful place for my inside plants.  There is a huge skylight in the ceiling allowing tremendous light...and by grouping them all together they get more of a greenhouse effect.  Oh....by the way.....this bathroom is off a short front hall just a little to the right of our entry door so you do notice it first thing! This move was a big downsize in square footage for us 1,400 square feet to be exact so I have had to use my existing things in new unexpected ways as we certainly could not go out and buy new. The dining room has pretty much the same things as in our last house ..... but we did have to purchase a little inexpensive dining table. High ceilings and huge windows at the ceiling give the house an expansive fe...