A Few Of Our Favorite Things

When we moved to Florida we decided to downsize. Well actually, are plans were to become minimalists. But we're still working on that one. Downsizing we could definitely do, even though we were sad to see our memories go, we sold most of our heavy beautiful furniture. We did keep a few of our unique pieces though. I kept this "one of a kind" potting bench.

It never fit quite right in any of our homes. But I've held onto it for about six years because I knew that one day it would serve a purpose. It's now on it's way to becoming a delightful dry bar sitting right by the foyer.

Mi Miguel and I both knew for sure we wanted to keep this charmer of a corner cabinet. We used it in our St. Louis area home. 

And we used it again in our Indiana home. And decided to hang onto it because it's always an eye catcher.

I can't decide which corner to put it in or what dishes to keep in it, but it is in our Florida home.

I've had this set for years. And it matches the walls really nicely. But there again, we've had it for years.

But this set is new to me. If I use this set I can incorporate that beautiful chartreuse green that I so love. 

I was given a huge set of the chartreuse green pattern from a friend here in Florida. The cabinet and melamine cups came with the dishes. It's from a Florida restaurant, but I have no idea which one.

While trying to decide what to do with the decor on the inside, I've been plotting and planning my layout for the pergola on the outside. We have a lot of work to do on the exterior of the house and the backyard as you can plainly see. 

These beautiful azaleas are growing along the back of the house. I've never seen apricot ones until we moved here. I'm hoping to find a way to work around this bush. Once we get the house painted I think the azaleas will really pop against a contrasting background. If you enlarge the photo above you'll see that it looks like two different bushes have fused into one.

Correct me if I'm wrong. Isn't there both an azalea bush and a hibiscus bush intermingled here?

I have no idea what this is. I love that all the flowers are apricot. However, against the currently peach house, you don't notice the unique color so much. Is this a tulip? Does Florida have tulips? 

We have a magnificent 5' fountain that was left with the house in the front yard. We absolutely plan on scrubbing this one down and get it working again.

But we can't decide if we should take the time to refurbish this 4' one and get it working as well. It's in pretty rough shape and we know nothing about fountains. What to do, what to do? Do we need to running fountains?

As you can see I've started pulling up some of the concrete edging. I'm really eager to get this back yard from looking like this to looking like....

this dream of mine. We have a lot of work to do before we reach this point. A balance of fun of work is required when renovating a home. It's that much work! Over the next few days we'll be going on a bike ride with some new friends and also checking out our letter J restaurant. If you missed our previous A-I restaurants just check out my Facebook page. 

https://www.facebook.com/groups/220701894778842/?ref=ts&fref=ts

Today while unpacking our home decor boxes, I noticed several stacks of cut planks from the ceiling. Of course my mind started thinking of ways that we could use these pieces. I discovered that if you flip them over they look like solid planks. Each piece is about 28" long and they are 5" wide. Why can't we stain them really dark, let them dry and then lightly whitewash them? Once that dries we can then do our master bedroom walk-in closet floor with them. It's like getting a free floor! When I presented the idea to Mi Miguel over the phone, he calmly said, "We need to build the walk-in closet first though." 

Anyhow, I'm off to the back yard to finish clearing everything out of the way so we can build that pergola.