Lighting Like Manna From Heaven

 A funny thing happened Saturday morning on the way to The Jay Starkey Park. A flea market caught my eye, which caused a knee jerk response from Mi Miguel. The next thing you know, we're strolling through the booths in our hiking boots and cargo shorts.

We've been looking for lighting for the living room, dining room and over the counter in the kitchen. This flea market was so much nicer than the one we had been to a few months ago. It's not as big as the Wagon Wheel but the merchandise is more of what you would expect to see at a flea market. As we neared the end of the booths and shops, I saw lights strewn about in boxes outside one of the shops on each side of the entrance. The big boxes didn't intimidate me, I'm not afraid to rummage, I'll dig if I have to, and so I did. Until, Mi Miguel poked me on the shoulder, pointed and said, "Look in the doorway." My eyes rode down his arm, then along his hand to the tip of his his index finger. It was like manna from heaven. This is what I saw...                                        

 more lights than you could ever imagine. We all use the word, amazing so often without any real reference to it's meaning. I can honestly say, this lighting store is absolutely amazing!
  

There are more lights than you could ever take in with just a glance. There are so many lights that it made me dizzy. It was so overwhelming that my blood sugar levels dropped which forced us to have to leave just half way into looking at the lights. I tried to fight it off but Mi Miguel knew I was about to go down. Not taking no for an answer, he made me go with him to get a sugary drink from a snack booth.

While waiting in line at the snack counter, we spotted my dear cousin Brian's throne. Standing there in front of it, sipping our drinks we realized we needed to get a picture of it for him. Before Mi Miguel could swipe his phone screen, a little five year old, sitting with her grandpa at one of the booths announced, "Just so you know, that's my chair." We smiled at her and she kindly gave us permission to proceed with the photo. Half way into the Fanta orange soda I found myself back in business. We returned to the light store with a mission of not leaving until we found all the light fixtures that we needed.

We searched for three hours and found four lights all for under $100.00. It's my new favorite store. That's the owners in the picture above. They are incredibly helpful and all about customer service. Each piece is carefully checked to make sure that it works and to point out any flaws.  

If you're ever in Northern Florida, add the Gunn Highway Flea Market to your list of things to do while visiting the Sunshine State. Make sure you stop in the Leppert Lighting store, you'll feel as though you've died and gone to heaven. I know I did. 

 We never found the park, all we could see were construction signs announcing new homes being built and their price range. The acreage was laden with concrete piping to be  installed. In truth a subdivision is being built. But in reality what's happening is that the residents of this county are losing such a beautiful view. We got frustrated with our GPS trying to find an entrance to a park that seemingly no longer existed and ditched the trail hiking idea. We did see this moss laden tree along the road.

It's cool to look at but sad that the moss eventually suffocated the once thriving tree.

Colorful turkeys reside in Florida, who knew? The Midwestern turkeys are always brown or some variation of it. I'm not sure if you can see the multi-colored feathers in this photo above, but now I know why kindergarten teachers have students make each finger a different color when we making hand print turkeys. 

On our way out of the park...I mean new home construction zone, we saw two black, grumpy looking birds. I'm not sure of their species. Maybe our friend, Steve knows. "Steve..."

Here's a few more shots of the birds. And as you can see in the photo below, they got frightened and flew away.

Their wings are huge. When I said black earlier, it's a deep rich black, lacking the sheen of a crow. 

They flew to safety in the tree and waited for us to leave and then returned to their watering hole.

We made it home, gobbled down food (turkey pun) and decided to head out to Lowe's to look for concrete stain. We found everything we needed. But, they wouldn't accept the driver's license veteran status as our proof of being prior military. So, we abandoned our goods at the checkout and proceeded to Home Depot. We bought our stain, concrete patch, cleaner and other supplies for our bathroom floor staining project. Home Depot kindly gave us our veteran's discount. I've always been a Lowe's customer, but I'm liking Home Depot more and more. 

The next morning, yesterday...Sunday, Mi Miguel went to the electric box, found the dining room switch and shut 'er down. Within an hour he had our flea market chandelier illuminating the planks with a cool design. I love it when light cascades something artsy on the ceiling and/or walls like this.  We chose this particular light because I convinced Mi Miguel that it had a Restoration Hardware Store look about it. I know that my description of this chandelier showed him that it had a gaslight feel to it too. He nodded in agreement, but I'm pretty sure he liked it simply because it meant one light down, only three more to go.   

The moment this one caught my eye, I knew it would look great in the living room. It has a jellyfish look to it. Can you see it? Mi Miguel couldn't either.

Maybe you can see it now. Doesn't it have the feel and look of a jellyfish underwater? Mi Miguel tried to see it too. He even squinted and got closer but he still couldn't see it or feel it. 

 

I've been looking for anything glass that has fish scales on it. I need it in order to create a certain ambiance that I'm going for in the living room and dining room. Mi Miguel came climbing at me through all the light fixtures to show me this beauty. I asked if there were another. He said, "Yes." 

I dove in this time, with a little persistence I gently collected a second one out from underneath several pendant lights of all colors shapes and sizes. As you can see Mi Miguel got both of them installed as well. While he did this, I finished the second coat of paint in the bathroom and I put a first coat of paint on our foyer closet. 

After experiencing Leppert Lighting, I now know what it's like to trip the light fantastic! I highly recommend that should you ever get the chance, you should trip it too.

With all of our concrete staining supplies sitting in our bathroom, we need to figure out how the heck you stain a concrete floor. It was too much to process after all the lighting chores. I should mention that we started organizing the garage yesterday and clearing out more clutter that's now sitting on the curb. 

We're tired, our minds are muddled with comprehending what technique to do with the bathroom floor. I made us each a nice cup of hot chamomile tea. Mi Miguel provided us with a mindless movie so we could kick up our feet, relax and enjoy marmalade toast and chamomile tea. We then went to bed thinking of nothing at all.

Just Stain It

Cooler weather turned us outside to build a pergola and paved patio area. Which was put on hold to build an updated boardwalk/dock. which was put on hold to hire someone to build a new seawall. Why can't life be simple? We don't know if we're working inside or outside. But somehow we just keep trudging through with a smile on our face.

So now we've turned our focus back inside. The living room is looking great with the progress we made in my last post. This week I painted the guest bathroom along with the hallway, in a lovely shade of green. All we need to finish is the guest bathroom floor. That will be enough progress to enable us to open our doors to friends and family.

Mi Miguel said, "No." When I asked him if we could go ahead and just tile the bathroom floor even though we can't purchase the tub, commode and sink that we want right now. We've busted our budget with the seawall. If we start tiling, the fixtures in the bathroom have to be considered and removed.

While out running errands today, it occurred to me, why not stain the bathroom floor for now? Why not? We're wanting to stain the master bedroom floor but we have no clue how to do it. Why can't we practice on the guest bathroom? Why can't we? And then when we're ready to buy the new fixtures we can tile over it and learn a new skill in the process. Seriously, how hard can staining concrete be? By the by, Mi Miguel cringes when I say, "How hard can it be?"

I called Mi Miguel and he is all in with this project. All in and all for it. This evening we'll start Youtubing and deciding what method and color we'll be doing. I'm excited because I've been wanting to stain all the floors in this fixer upper but Mi Miguel is pretty adamant about tiling the floors. 

I'm hoping once the intimidation is over with the staining process, he will want to do it for sure in the master bedroom. The minute I saw the concrete in the guest bedroom when we first started ripping up the carpet, I wanted to stain the concrete in that room and every room. While we have no clue how to do this fancy style in the picture above, one can dream. 

Who knows maybe we'll get really good at concrete staining like we did with the herring bone style tiling. One can certainly dream. 

Seawall, Living Room And A Homemade Sofa Table

 

Pergola, poogolla....geez. Who knew it would open up such a seawall can of worms. I'm really excited about the whole backyard project. But, I have to say ever since I've heard the first bid on this seawall reconstruction all I want to do is sit around and do nothing at all. Maybe if I ignore it the whole seawall thing will all just go away. Right? It wasn't just me feeling the air leave my sails, Mi Miguel was feeling a lack of motivation too.

Step away from the pergola project until we can get a handle on it, that's what we'll do. Change our focus to much needed furniture for the living room.  Wow, sticker shock again. For the price, the quality just isn't there. You want how much for that leather blend sofa? It's leather blend not leather!

Feeling frustrated about the house, rather than going after each other like a couple of well trained gladiators, we decided to chill out and look for a gas fireplace until we're capable of getting a handle on the seawall and the furniture situation.

What I'm looking for and what Mi Miguel wants are two different things. This is what I want. A casual gas fireplace with a small shell motif.

Mi Miguel wants this media center gas fireplace. So, we put the fireplace shopping on hold until we can decide on a happy medium. 

Meanwhile over the weekend, as we both sat stubbornly at our home computer, him researching seawalls and me scouring the net for furniture. He found more options for estimates. I found just the thing on one of the many selling sites. (Image from clipart)

Because I hit the local social media selling sites daily, we stumbled across this sofa bed and a matching love seat. It was incredibly low priced. I just saw a similar set in a local furniture and wanted it for the coastal look, but it was way too much. This set was purchased by the owners for $1700, it won't fit in their new condo, we bought it for $275. Now our spirits were starting to feel lifted. 

Mi Miguel didn't want to pay the $300 for the coastal living sofa table I liked so he said he'd make me one. He doesn't make furniture as a rule. I wanted it to be beachy but have the elegant coastal living look about it. He said he could do that. I got my gladiator gear back out because I was pretty sure this was going to go south quickly. Instead, off to Home Depot we went.

Home Depot employees were just putting flawed lumber on a cart marked 70% off when we entered the store. I grabbed a piece that was six feet long and had them cut it in half for us, we grabbed four spindles and we were on our way.  I got on board with Mi Miguel so that he would feel confident in making this table, "You can make it however you want. It doesn't matter to me as long as it's plain and simple."

To keep from micro managing Mi Miguel's project I decided it was high time I started a mural. We had a dull wall that needed to match the furniture and the rug. The pitter patter turquoise color I painted the entire living room and dining room with,wasn't going to sit well with the soft indigo furniture. 

After much painting and a lot of work, the wall is finished. This is a sneak peek, we're not ready for the big reveal yet. Big difference from the pitter patter wall, huh? Mi Miguel loves it and that's all that matters to me. If he's happy, I'm happy.

This is what Mi Miguel came up with for our table. It's perfect for between the wall and sofa. I got up this morning and painted it and washed it over and then rubbed it down.

This is the effect I got from my technique that I used. You can see the difference in the two photos directly above. I made the plain wood have a distressed driftwood look.

This is the finished sofa table. I love it and I've already found a great purpose for it. 

This is eventually what we'll be using the sofa table for, these colorful glass vases. When we get our new window coverings, the sunlight will come in and hit the glass creating a beautiful kaleidoscope effect.

Now about that seawall...

 

Renovations End Of 2015

If you've been following the blog you know that we closed on our house July 2015. As of December 2015 we have two guest bedrooms and the living room and dining room done as far as walls prepped and painted, popcorn effect scraped from ceilings and floors leveled and tiled. All curtains and decor will be done later due to the dust that gets stirred when we reno a new room. This guest bedroom is pretty much finished except for curtains and a few more furniture pieces and wall decor. 

Once we have it the way we want it, I plan on doing a mural on the wall and hanging our spoonbill picture up from our Indiana house. Same picture but I'm going a different route with the mural this time. Rather than a heavy marsh effect, it will be brighter and more light and airy. This will be done in the bedroom in the first photo above.

With cooler temperatures we shifted our interior renovations to outdoor projects. This pergola is our goal.

We chose our pavers before the close of 2015 and marked off the area for the pergola. Right when we started tearing into the boardwalk unearthing a major hidden cost rearing it's ugly head.

 We discovered that the seawall needed to be inspected and possibly replaced by someone other than us. We've had two estimates so far and quickly learned that this will blow our budget for our outdoor costs. 

In the meantime, we said goodbye to 2015 celebrating with wonderful new friends here in Florida. We said hello to 2016 by pruning away at an unruly schefflera plant and other invasive branches and vines that were hiding the front of the house. We also made a purchase that has drastically changed our lives here in the sunshine state.

We've been making do with a super tiny fridge since August. You can see the dorm fridge in the lower right corner. Even though we haven't started renovating the kitchen, we know we want simple appliances with soft edges. After much searching we found this great deal at a local outlet. The fridge is a fraction of the cost of the fancy ones we have always purchased in the past. I like white after having the polished silver and other versions of the chrome look. And guess what, this very inexpensive, easy to move fridge keeps our food every bit as cold as the super expensive ones. Imagine that.

I'm still cooking on the porcelain top range that was installed when the house was originally built in the early 80's. I prefer gas but if I had my druthers between a glass top and a porcelain, I'd go porcelain for sure. The heat definitely radiates and cooks more evenly than the glass top. Unlike the glass top, the porcelain can maintain a simmer temperature. Hopefully we will find a way to make a gas stove work when we get to that phase of our renovations.

Mi Miguel is just thrilled to have home cooked meals once again. We've both missed eating the good stuff that you just can't seem to find in the restaurants. 

We've spent the last six months wondering if moving to Florida was the right thing. Actually, I've spent the last six months soul searching and wondering if this is the right thing for us, for me. Mi Miguel however, sums it all up with this photo of him visiting his grandparent's farm in Indiana as a child. He hated it as a child and after a two year trial run as an adult, he still hates it. He doesn't do cold weather, ever.

This is Mi Miguel as a child living in Florida. He grew up in Florida. He attended all years of school in Florida. He loves hot weather. He loves Florida, always. 

This is me in Indiana. I can be happy anywhere. Once you realize that happiness comes from within you can make the best of just about anyplace you choose to live.