Friday Five: Home Sweet Home

Bird bath at my Mom's house

Songbird is thinking of home today and offers this RevGalBlogPals Friday Five:

1)  Where was your first home?
I was brought home from the hospital to a little ranch house on Corozal Road in El Paso, Texas.

2) Do you ever dream about places you used to live?
Yes.

3) If you could bring back one person from your past to sit at your dinner table, who would you choose?
My maternal grandmother.  Many a good time was spent around many tables with her.

4) What's your favorite room in your current living space?
That's a tough one.  Right now, it would probably be the kitchen. It's where the coffee is!

5) Is there an object or item in your home that represents home to you?
Anything flannel. The robe, the sheets, the back of a cozy throw -- these represent comfort and, for me, home is all about comfort and rest.

Color Me Happy!

Today's day-dreams are brought to you by the color ... green? ... red? ... mauve?  I don't know what color. And that's my dilemma.

I have been dreaming of paint. My day-dreaming was inspired by an 87-year old woman I visited recently whose home is sweet, small and impeccably painted in white -- yes, white! -- and she does the painting herself. Regularly. Still. At age 87.

I confess that, before home Communion was served, I interrogated her at length about painting. I was hoping that she could infuse me with some of her expertise in painting and some of her quiet confidence about style. I'm sure she would laugh if she heard me say that she has style, but, in my eyes, she does. All of her walls and woodwork are painted white and yet still her house is cozy and not at all stark. She used color in beautiful ways.  She used, tastefully, a color I love:  red.  I was inspired.

So color me HAPPY that I found a fellow blogger who also delights in finding her decorating colors. She recently posted something really fun over at This, That, and The Other which she got from Lisa Clarke's blog, Polka Dot Cottage. What total serendipity! For I am pretty sure that "Cottage" would be somewhere close to a label for what might loosely be called my "personal home decorating style." "Shabby Chic" is casual and tattered enough but a little too soft and too pastel. I'm only a little bit "Country" and, beyond that, I'm not sure what the categories of decorating style even are.   But I digress ... !

About finding those colors: Check out both blogs for a cool tool called The Color Palette Generator. You can use your own photo from a vacation spot you loved or choose a photo that gives you a good feeling -- say, happy and content, or energized, or inspired.  This tool lets you see the individual colors that could make little parts of your world feel the same way.

Enjoy!  

Friday Five: Love the One You're With

Today's RevGalBlogPals Friday Five invitation:  Please name five things you like about where you are living now... and as your bonus - 1 thing you don't like.

The view from my deck

1.  The view from my deck.  It looks out over a river valley and up a modest mountain in the distance.  Along the side of the mountain, I can see the tiny cars on the turnpike and the tunnel they are approaching or exiting.  The Applachian trail runs lower along the mountain following the path of the river.  Sitting on my deck, I can enjoy sunsets, moon phases and fireworks. 

The diner and train

2.  The almost-world-famous 24-hour diner.  Just a three-block walk from my house, I have enjoyed some very fine conversations with some very special people over some pretty decent meals there.  I wish they didn't have a sign that says, "We may refuse service to anyone for any reason" and I wish their coffee was better.  They make great chocolate milk shakes, though!

3.  I can hear the train from my house.  I like a distant train whistle in my world on a semi-regular basis.

4.  I have wonderful next-door neighbors.  The last three places I've lived, I've been blessed with better-than-good neighbors.  That's something that you can't make happen.

5.  "Some" people look down on where I live.  It's a small town that is considered, by some in these parts, to be not the coolest town around.  It was once a very blue collar mining town.  It's the kind of place people fancy moving up from.  Strangely enough, that makes living here all the more appealing to me.

BONUS:  One thing I don't like:   The freakin' firehouse sirens!  C'mon guys, it's 2010.  Put technology to work and ditch the sound pollution.