My Shabby Home

I was home alone the other day for the first time in ages! Every since my husband retired and my 22 yr old son moved back home, being alone just doesn't seem to happen often. So I turned up the radio loud and just did my own thing, and alone! Well the dog and cat were here but they don't count. I actually enjoy them being around, lol! Don't get me wrong, I enjoy my husband and son too; but hey we all need some alone time!


Anyway, I took advantage of the situation and took some pictures of my home and some of my most loved treasures. My style is Shabby, although not what I would call "Chic." It's just my style and is ME. Most everything has come from estate/yard sales, hand make gifts from my kids, thrift stores and sometimes Amazon or Ebay. Take a look!

My Kitchen Window. Notice the vintage Colanders. I have a thing for old Colanders and can't leave one behind if found. The blue pottery was made by my son and is a cherished FAV! I'm also have an avocado rooting in a sugar cup. And of course Flamingos!!

Top of the fridge. Vintage jar, old baby weight basket which came from my Mom's collection of vintage, and a vintage mixing bowl. I also have a thing for those too and will bring them home even if they have damage...it's a sickness.

Kitchen wall with various treasures. Mosaic spoon holder by ME as well as the top of the blue cabinet.

I love this old doll head!! She had a huge hole on her head so I glued on the rose. This also came from my Mom.

Kitchen wall on way out. The surfer art by my son when he was 10 or ll.

This vintage hutch sits in the room off the kitchen...it's our "catch all" room, my mosaic room, and the pet eating place. It's the one room in this house we never got around to tearing down the wallpaper,. (this house was wall to wall wallpaper when we bought it) The painting on the top is my Mom, painted when she was maybe in her 20's, if that. Here sits some of my mixing bowls, a palm tree pencil painting by my son, various other things and the cats food and water.

The wall in our "office". This room was really to be used as the dining room but this is where we have the computer, printer and fax. We eat in the kitchen and/or in the living room. We are classy like that. The dog bowl with the greenery belonged to our now deceased Black Lab, John John.

Mosaic table, again made by me, next to the computer desk.

Now we are in the living room. I've had this old trunk forever!  My aunt restored it for me when I was just a teen and I have hauled it around all these years. (I'm now 51)  The green pitcher is a vintage "Hall" and the two babies pottery piece is from an Art's Fair. It reminds me of my two boys at that age.

Our coffee table...it's an old 2 sitter school desk. My Mom gave this to my boys when they were little for a play table. My husband wants to refinish it but I'm not sure? It just has so much history in it! This also doubles as my husband's "office".

I also have a thing for these vintage lamps as you will see as we move on. The swan painting was found at a yard sale for 1 buck. The peace sign is another of my mosaics.

My FAV thrift store find! I just love, love this painting!

Highwaymen artist AL Black's version of  "Eddie's Place". Read more about Eddie's Place here.

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Another vintage lamp! This one with mosaic. The drawing is of JohnJohn and I bought it for husband on Ebay's Charity Drive for Hurricane Katrina. The little frog is vintage McCoy.

Love this watercolor of dogs! The black one reminds me of JohnJohn. Another thrift store find.

Another mosaic table I made. The little vintage flapper girl sits in a teacup on a old lamp base. The pillow, a thrift find, looks like the flapper so I paired them together.

Mermaid window decal on sliding door to the pool area.

This is the hallway between the bedrooms. The vintage medical cabinet was from my Mom. The 2 paintings on the wall were done by my kids. (sorry they didn't photo well). 

Hallway bath...and yes, that is the trash can hanging on the wall. I try to pick my battles with the puppy.

Another Highwaymen painting; this one is Johnny Daniels. The painted signs were both yard sale and thrift finds.

Still in the bathroom...this awesome Mermaid painting was an estate find. It wasn't framed and I paid a whole buck for it!! It's a real conversation piece!

Our bedroom. Okay, this may look very un-classy but for me it's VERY special! This is my memorial to our JohnJohn. He was 12 when he passed, and alone in the backyard. NOT because he lived outside but because he had doggy doors to come and go. He went out to "go" and never made it back in. It BROKE my heart into a trillion pieces!! We knew he was ill but he was being treated and doing soooo much better. It was just so sudden. I tied together all his bandannas together (and yes, he wore every one of these at one time or another. They usually hang all the way to the floor but Dane, the new puppy, has gotten interested and so I pulled them higher to keep him from them.)  And his collar is hanging on the Door Crown above the bed. I slept with that collar for months! And yes, the bed is on the floor with no bed frame. Also because of JJ. He had two knee surgeries back to back when he was 6 yrs old and we took the frame off so he could get up and down on the bed. Yeah we are crazy in love with our dogs like that. :)

An old drop leaf table with mosaics. The cross stitch pillow on top was an unfinished piece I found at a thrift. I finished it up and made into a pillow.

Also in our bedroom. Notice yet another vintage lamp. The house drawing is of my Mom's house, a Victorian in Mobile, AL.. The other two drawings are of my Mom and me, back when I was maybe 3 and living in NY. Of course I have lots of puppy Dane pictures also.

So wow, guess that is it!!! Hope you've enjoyed looking around! If you are here, and have a blog, please post a link so I can visit. Better yet, join my blog!!! I'll be back later with a before and after post of my vintage concrete flamingo that my dear husband did for me. He was after all the one who broke it! Come back to hear that story!

Home Sweet Home ~ SpaceCoast, FL

We live in a fairly small yet cozy home. We bought it at the end of 1999, right before the huge housing boom. (Thank God for that!) We were living in a townhouse but when we got our (now deceased) Black Lab, JohnJohn, we figured out that townhouse living was just not for dogs! What brought us to this house was the location (close to the kids' school at the time as well as their friends), the yard and the pool. And although the actual house isn't that big, it still has lots of room; 3 bdrms, 2 baths, large kitchen, living/dining as well as a small den. So it works for us. And it worked for JJ and now works for our puppy Dane as well as the kitty Max. (We have installed dog doors so this house is very pet friendly!)

Anyway, while hanging outside late this afternoon with Dane, I decided to get a few photos of our little world outside. So here we go:

This is the front...there is actually another window to the right and a garage to the left not shown. But at the time of taking the pic I was more interested in getting a shot of the front porch area.

Our Texas Olive Tree...it was more like a twig when we first got it. It has massive pretty white flowers almost all year long. We love this tree, mostly cause we thought it would never grow...it took years to get this way.

This is an old glider iron bench that was my Mom's. People always want to buy it when I have yard sales. The pink flowers are wild and just appeared on their own...more about that further down.

A mosaic birdbath and birdhouse.

Front Door...notice even more flamingos???

Pool and back privacy fence...and yep, more flamingos!

More of the wild pink flowers.

And this one flower is how it all started. We were walking with JJ on the bike trail near our house a few years ago and I spotted it. Hubby dug it up for me and planted it and now we have pink flowers everywhere!! They are awesome cause they are pink, pretty and seems you can't kill them. Love them!!

Side yard and struggling tangerine tree. The fence around it is to keep Dane out, lol.

Hubby's prized Pomelo or sometimes called called Shaddock tree. There is no fruit on it now but when it does produce, the grapefruit are about 3/4's the size of a basket ball. From the net: "An oversized grapefruit, often with delicate pink segments. The difference between grapefruit in pomelo is that one can eat pomelo plain. Many people who hate grapefruit actually love pomelo. It tastes sweet and sour."

Back yard showing Max the kitty and Dane. Behind Dane is another side yard, not shown here. They both have it made!! (Right after I took this pic Dane chased poor Max behind the shed. Sometimes it is like Tom and Jerry around here.)


So that's all for now...I've taken some photos for my post about Mosaics and will have it ready in the next day or so. Please come back and take a look!!

Oh and one more!! Playing with Dane earlier...he's growing and growing and growing!!

We have a 9 month old Choc Lab puppy named Dane. We call him "Dane Dane" or "Sweet Sweet Dane" or "Puppy" or "Sweet Baby; all depending I guess on our mood as well as his. I won't get into what we may call him when he's been bad, lol. Anyway I was looking around on the net for things to keep him busy and found some ideas on how and what to stuff his Kong with. (besides the fattening peanut butter I've been using). Long story short, many of the ideas I found were more complicated then I felt they needed to be. Soooo, I just stuffed his "Binky" (Kong) with pure pumkin, froze it and there ya go...sucess!!! Instead of maybe 5 min's it took him 20 to 25 min's to to finish it off. To us that is just AWESOME! I'm sure I'm not the first to invent this but since I just discovered it I thought I'd share. Maybe staying off the PB will also help him rid of his (what I like to call) baby fat.

His Fav place. This is a built in planter that we made into a couch. The "arms" are covered with foam and fabric after a terrible accident when I fell over our cat and hit the brick with my  forehead. It would likely never happen again but why take chances right?

What a handsome face!

My Fav pic is this one taken by my son on Dane's very first day in his new home.