Happiness

This week I received the Happy 101 Award from the lovely Victoria of the Art House Design blog!

She wrote me that my blog makes her happy every time she comes over! Isn’t that wonderful to hear?!

Victoria, you make me so HAPPY with this! I appreciate it a lot! Thank you so much!!!

For those who do not know Victoria’s beautiful and inspirational blog, please click on the header of her blog.

So Victoria asked me to tell about 10 things that make me happy.

Here I go!

1/My family : my husband Jan and my son Anthony make me happy.

I love raising my son into a good and respectful young man. He is 14 years old now and I know that time is going on so fast and that he is growing up so fast. I have to enjoy every moment with him!

My husband supports me in everything I do and together, we are managing our business in the best way possible.

Watching my husband being happy with his grandchildren makes me happy!

2/ Family reunions : I so love gathering with our family. Especially when Nele (my husband’s daughter) and her husband  

                                           with the 2 grandchildren come to visit us.

My husband and his daughter with the grandchildren Alexa and Tristan.

I especially love summer reunions. Here a family reunion at my sisters last summer.

3/ Flowers : I really love flowers and love to decorate with these beauties.

This is a rambler rose, named Kir Royal, at the back of our house.

I can’t imagine living without flowers! Every week I bring fresh flowers to decorate my home.

4/Decorating : it is a way of destressing to me.

Sometimes it happens that I decorate and redo that same corner twice a week. I can’t help!

5/Inviting friends : to prepare a good meal (I have to admit that my husband is the best cook at home.) and setting the table for

                                         friends and guests is making me happy.

My private cook!

6/France : going to France is making me so happy.

                      A city trip to Paris,  spending our holiday at the south of France, visiting the wine castles at Bordeaux,

                     a search for antiques at Isle-sur-la-Sorgue,….. I adore the French way of living. It makes me happy!

                    

A few years ago at the Ritz in Paris.

A view from Eze Village on the Mediterranean Sea, I took 2 years ago.

Me in one of the antiques shops at Isle-sur-la-Sorgue.

 

7/ Castles : I love visiting castles. In Belgium there are a lot of beautiful castles to visit. Lucky me!

                        The interiors of them give me inspiration for my job!

                    The Castle of Beloeil.

8/Satisfied clients : one of the very important things in my life that really makes me happy and that gives me satisfaction!

9/ Reading books and magazines : mostly related to my job.

 

                                     It is relaxing reading a book or a magazine, in the evening, after a busy day of work.

10/ Blogging : It makes me so happy that I met all these wonderful people through blogging!!! Some of them became

                              very good friends! I am so thankful for that.

This is my home office, where I also spend a lot of time blogging.

 

So now it is my turn to tag 10 other bloggers with this HAPPY 101 Award !

I would love to hear from them the 10 things that make them happy.

1. Miss Baptista

2. Oakview Cottage

3. Malvini Puur

4. Toile de Jouy

5. Holding Court

6. French Kissed

7. Trouvais

8. Splendid Willow

9. Desde my Ventana

10. Céline Chollet Aquarelles

 

Have a wonderful weekend!

xx

Greet

Happiness

This week I received the Happy 101 Award from the lovely Victoria of the Art House Design blog! She wrote me that my blog makes her happy every time she comes over! Isn’t that wonderful to hear?! Victoria, you make me so HAPPY with this! I appreciate it a lot! Thank you so much!!! For those who do not know Victoria’s beautiful and inspirational blog, please click on the header of her blog.

~Kentucky Oaks~

Flickr

Well, What time is it? It's off to the Kentucky Oaks time this morning, of course....maybe hoping to see some celebs but mainly just have a great time! I decided not to wear my Amy Butler dress but just some black slacks....boring, I know! But looking at my legs they look horrible, so I decided against it. I will still have to show some photos of the dress on here though! Have a great Friday!

Plants!!

Both Andy and I love plants so it was natural for us to want a house full of plants. Unfortunately, we just haven't had the money for lots of plants, so we started slow. While we were visiting a good friend she gave us a cut-off of one of her plants. We placed it in our window and watched it sprout all sorts of little roots. Soon it was ready for dirt, and now it is a wildly growing little plant. Since then we have gotten another plant and babies from it. We also bought seeds for 6 kinds of different herbs and of course they are also growing like crazy. Our apartment is composed of lots of windows and just a few walls, so it is an easy place for a plant to grow.

(our first plant!)

Since our plants were all bursting out of their little pots we decided it was time to give them more room to grow...bigger pots! So last weekend Andy came back from the Rockingham Co-op with lots of pots, little plant sprouters of tomatoes and peppers, and a huuuge bag of dirt. I took one look at the dirt and said, "we don't need that much dirt!", but Andy just shrugged it off and said "Oh, just you wait".(The herbs before we re-potted them. They love the sun!)

So the re-potting began. We took everything onto our wonderful wrap-around porch and dug in. The dirt was glorious, the sun was shining, and the neighbor kids were fascinated. :) Soon, our dirt ran out, and we hadn't even finished yet. I couldn't believe how fast we went through so much dirt! So we got more, and then that dirt finished. We could have used a third bag of dirt, but the place was closed so we worked with what we had. I was almost ready to go digging in the back yard.(The first time we potted plants was in the bath-tub, it quickly got messy though.)

Finally we were done. We brought all our newly potted plants back upstairs to our apartment and spread them out. With the addition of tomato and pepper plants, our window room is officially all taken up. The next step will be to take the plants outside and into a garden, but we can't do that until we move in July. So until then, we will keep our little garden in the house. We love it!(Our first plants, now this window seat is covered in plants!)

Some Outside Whites for White Wednesday

A few of my outside whites..

Headed over to Faded Charm for White Wednesday.

Garage Sale Haul !

Last weekend a local charity opened up their 5000 square foot warehouse of donations for a public sale. They really had some great things and the prices were amazing.  I was able to purchase things for my shop as well as for myself.

Love the large mercury glass bowl, especially for $2.00. 

Ballards has very similar Santos for $79.00 each. Mine were 50 cents each.

Eight foot long needlepoint aubusson runner. Great condition!

See the original price for one of these mirrors?  I got two of these.

I bought everything I showed you today for $32.00!!!  Now that is thrifty.

I also want to show you two of the great items I won recently in giveaways.

Aren't these hour glasses divine? I can't tell you how much I love these.

Thank you so much Laurie for your sweet and generous gift. Please stop by and visit the beautiful and talented Laurie at Laurie Anna's Vintage Home.

I also won two of the cutest flower barrettes and a key chain wristlet  from Paula at Paula Grace Designs. Paula is an Interior Designer and has the most amazing photos on her blog.  Below is a picture of my adorable granddaughter Sadie modeling one of the barrettes.

Paula, Sadie loves the barrettes and they match perfectly with her new dress. Thank you so much for this lovely gift.

I really appreciate you visiting and all your support.  Please visit the parties below for creative ideas.

Tales From Bloggeritaville

Southern Hospitality

Thrifty Decor Chik

Coastal Charm

decormamma

New art and the closing of our gallery

I wanted to share with you some of the newer artwork that I've done lately. The first painting I actually did last summer, so it's not entirely new, but I love this painting. It just happened so easily and wonderfully. I was so happy with the way it turned out. The only problem though, was that I sold it two days after I finished painting it! That was great, but I really didn't get to enjoy it very much, so I miss it. Hopefully, I can do another painting like it some day.

The little doll I made recently. She's very funny, silly and odd. I love making little dolls and little people and creatures. She's like a grandmother, a quirky, funny grandmother. Doesn't everyone wish they had a grandmother who was fun and different?!

The following paintings are somewhat new. I was very happy with them as well. I love to paint. It seems like sometimes, though, I just cannot paint anything I like and then all of sudden, that goes away and I am able to do some wonderful paintings again. It's frustrating but I'm just glad that I am able to get out of my slumps after a while at least. Some of these are just parts of particular paintings, not the entire canvas. The one painting with the yellow cup was done with a lot of experimental materials. I used a kind of oily eye shadow, lipstick, shoe polish, acrylic, oil pastels and some other things I can't remember. It was wonderful trying out some different things; was really inspiring and fun.

The photographs I did recently.......just trying to do different things with setting up little scenes with the pretty things I have. I don't know how to use my camera very well, though. I like how some of these turned out. I should really take a class on photography; I love it but wish I knew more about it.

Some very sad news.......we are having to close our art gallery. We've been there a year and have just loved having such a wonderful, big space to work on our art and show it, too. It was our first real studio/gallery. We were part of the Gallery Strolls once a month in Salt Lake City and every month was great. In the warmer weather months, of course, we had tons of people and it was so very exciting to have so many people in our gallery. They loved our artwork and our space, the way we displayed everything and it was so motivating to hear their great comments and encouragement. We created so many great paintings and sculptures and little fairy houses, there, too. It is going to be really heartbreaking to leave. This Friday is our last day there. I have to go there today to get the boxes of materials (tons of boxes) and bring them back to our apartment. We're having to put all of our art and supplies in our apartment and it is getting so unbelieveably crowded. But it's also nice to have all of our art here where we live, too. So, I guesss there's always some positive things to an experience that might seem totally sad and disappointing. Something good will come up soon, too, I am sure; a new experience, a new part of our artist lives.

If you'd like to see video of our gallery, (which, by the way, was called "Marcel & Florette's Curious Menagerie"......a wonderful name, I think)......just go to our Youtube site......natureartists and you'll be able to see some great short clips of what our unusual gallery looked like. I will miss it so much!!! Some wonderful, cherished memories of our time there. What a blessing it was to have that space to use. We are so grateful that we had the chance to have our gallery there. I know now that we have the confidence and ability to have another gallery or shop some place else and even make it more unusual and wonderful.

Hope you are having a great day. It is snowing here, can you believe it?! Part rain, part snow and it's almost the end of April. The trees are blooming and everything is turning green. I guess we just need the moisture. It's wonderful, too.

Would love to hear from you. Keep smiling!!

Debbie