Corners of My Home

I started to do a home tour on my old blog ages ago so I'm sure that family out there will appreciate this post, mostly I'm just putting off folding laundry by playing with taking pictures and editing them honing my photography skills.  Our house is a pleasing mixture of old and new.  Part of it was originally two flint stone cottages, that is cottages built out of flint rock not built by the Flintstones I'm pretty sure it's not THAT old.  In recent years a modern addition has been added to the house to add a very nice sized kitchen bathroom and a room to use for whatever you like (a bedroom for us because the actual bedrooms in this house do not accommodate adult furniture).

Today I'm going to show you our entrance.  The layout of our house is interesting as there is no "front" door.  The house is a U shape around a large patio (or court yard if you want to sound fancy).  There is a proper entrance door along with two sets of french patio doors, we don't use the small door as it goes into my sewing studio.  The doors we use are the patio doors from the kitchen.

This is almost an entire wall of windows!  I love it, this kitchen has the best lighting on sunny days, not as good on dreary winter days like today but still brighter than the living room which is in the old part of the house.  I have done some changing here recently.  I had the curtains on rods and had them on all the windows and the birds of paradise plants were in the narrow windows.  I got tired of that, for one the curtains just created dust bunnies, for another I really wanted to be able to show off and use those tall narrow windows.  My fix was to buy a couple of shelves from IKEA, they fit perfectly.  If I ever remember to go pick up some potted herbs I will have them on these shelves, I have visions of green peeking out from these shelves and possibly even spilling out.

In theory this basket will keep things that I need to grab when going out the door, my coupon book is in there right now, along with a couple of packages that need to be mailed.

This is for my mom.  Mom just so you know there is no shortage of clocks in my house now, as long as you don't go to the kids rooms, but hey they can't tell time anyway.

I bought these birds of paradise plants the first summer we were here so three years ago.  I had wanted some for the longest time but could not bring myself to pay for a mature plant, they are lots of money and I was afraid I would kill one.  One day we were at Homebase, a chain here like Lowe's or Home Depot, and they had little ones on sale for what worked out to be about $4 each.  Score!  I could totally not feel guilty about killing a $4 plant unlike killing a $100 plant.  I got two of them and they are still alive, they love the light in this kitchen.

You can see the tall narrow window here.  Total sun trap in the summer, not so much in the winter.

Since we walk right into our kitchen and practically right on top of our dining table when we enter the house we have to find a way to corral all the coats and shoes. Around the corner down a small hall way we put this wardrobe. It's holding our shoes, hats,, gloves, scarves, etc.  Next to it we have a coat tree and next to that is a dog kennel that really has no good home.  I had a picture that showed more but I don't know what happened to it.

Hope you enjoyed!