About Life & The Beach Cottage Computer/Guest Room

*Hello Ladies of Bloglandia....


**Warning: long post and lots and lots of pics.....small pixels, but lots of them.....

I'm just going to express myself freely thank you very much, for those who read and understand.
This is a difficult one, I cannot seem to be cheerful and so I must be what I am right now, and such is how I will write.  Maybe all people want to hear is happy happy happy or good news all the time, but life is not always like that is it? and am I not to blog because I am not happy? I think all feelings should be shared, because true kindredness comes when things are not all good, especially when they are not all good.

I dont mind hearing of others pains and sorrows it doesn't scare me nor put me off, in fact it pierces my heart, and another opening has found a way to share my Heart Light out towards them.

Posting has become a lesser and lesser thing as life takes it turns, more like spins actually,  and I get slower and slower at recuperation. Joys are more cautious at coming out to play these days, more than before, more reticent than they used to be, but some elderly folks say this is the norm as one ages. I never believed it.  Until now.  However I don't believe its aging, its more of a Spiritual battle between light and dark. So there is a hint of who I am and what "I do" for a ''living" :-)
I just cant seem to get my head above water before another tidal wave comes in and I'm so tired, just so bone weary tired. And I cannot speak to another Spiritual Activist who doesn't say the same.

It is healthy and humane to share and release what ails you with other compassionate beings. Keeping it in is toxic. Faking ''all is well'' is a slippery slope into both deceit and delusion.


Blogging had slowly become a joy and then that became more and more sparse as life happened.  And I'm seeing so many people who used to find joys in  ''decor'' are also not finding these material thrills to be as long lasting as before.  They are silent now too. I wish I could hear from them more. And I am sad if they are silenced because people dont want to hear it. People are strange that way, talk talk talk when materialism is working for them but otherwise, silence. We heal by sharing, not hiding.
I don't want to get anyone down. However this IS my blog and I write what is happening with me honestly without trying to be this thing or that thing, I am merely my self, and it has been tough lately. And there is nothing that I admire and respect more than those who are fearless and encouraging in the face of others pains. This fearlessness is a Spiritual Integrity that comes from deep personal experience but mostly love in their own hearts for others.

There is one blogging lady Nicole of Cauldrons and Cupcakes who chronicles her journey of Herculean bravery in the face of her lyme disease, She writes of the enormous degrees of pain she endures with drug therapies etc, how she feels, the details of her mind, body and psychic conditions, what she can accomplish in a day or not accomplish, the way it feels to not be able to move at all. She is a marvel of inspiration to read from her almost every day!  Her strength bravery and heart just blows me away. She writes how she feels and gets so much support from her readers including me. I love all those people. I had hoped my blog would be like that.
It seems I have fallen into the ''beauty bloggers'' realm, if you don't post of cheerful thrift finds and the latest home beauty shot, there is not much going on. I am sad if my blog turned into that really, I never wanted it to, but I began to post on my home improvements here and it seems it slid insidiously into that realm where only home fashion is remarked upon. lolol.....has it come to that? really? Not on my blog. I will know who true spirits of the heart are by who responds, and who remains here.

Onwards to my humble on the penny transformations, with very little money and lots of thrift store blessings............this is why I share this so others can see you can make a very nice difference without spending lots of money, and keeping things simple. I hope something in here helps you.

I am finished with actual work in this room the past 2 weeks and now I can only do nothing and I really really like it....doing nothing that is.......the days fly by. The summer is here upon us and in South Florida it is the time to hide, not to be active, and going out needs preparation because the heat and humidity can literally take your breath away and if you're out there for too long it will take your energy away, for sure. I'm talking zonked, not merely a hot flash, but literally done in for the day.

I am also sad because none of my seeds for flowers or bulbs have come up and I planted alot......and though people tell me all the time Florida is just too hot and humid, I still try. It is sad really, as I became a florist because of my intense uncompromising need and love of flowers and nature and yet it is so cruel that we can only grow tropical ones and those beauties we find in nurseries have such a short life it depresses me.
I recently bought Queen Anne's Lace seeds as I've seen them growing like weeds, literally they are considered weeds up north, and growing on the sides of roads and highways, they'd be everywhere wild and beautiful and sometimes I'd stop the car and pick them. I cleverly kept cutters in the glove compartment just for these emergencies lolol. But even though they are weeds and grow in every kind of soil they haven't grown for me here. I will try again, and then again, until I can grow some Queen Annes Lace. I could never get over the beauty of that flower considered a weed, how such a perfectly beautiful snowy white lacy mandala could be referred to as a weed.....but ignorance runs deep.  These beauties are Living Snow Flakes in Lace! that is what they are....look at this!....
they are the Natures White Lace, the Queen of Delicacy.....





They are living Mandalas.......            

 

 Look at how the spaces in between each grain size floret flows in a perfectly spaced spiral.....
you may have to stand back and unfocus to see the perfection of the negative space.....

 
              


They even come in pink.....

 

 I want to cry to think how they grow like weeds all up north and I cannot grow them here, and lots of other flowers I cannot have anymore like lilacs and peonies, stock, and delphiniums, and so much else from up north. The flower shops here should be ashamed of what they carry here, literally a selection of maybe 5 flowers in different colors....thats it, everywhere.....mums, carnations, scentless roses, sunflowers and gladiolas. Not much more, entire flower shops everywhere here filled with only the same thing everyone else has. It is a far cry from when I was buying flowers every week directly from Holland for some pretty nifty custumers, and they say it is in bad taste to name drop but I did do flowers for Oprah and Madonna and other huge names who had homes here in South Florida....and Holland being the largest producers of wholesale flowers anywhere with the greatest varieties of everything, and we had the pick of Mother Nature's litter!  Literally anything I wanted I could buy. But before I was buying flowers, I used to live in New York where everything IS available and every other corner veggie store wanted to carry something different from their competitors. And if I wanted something exotic I only needed to get in the car and drive up north, and I'd have loads of flowers of all kinds. Well I'm done ranting. For now.

Anyway in this post, I want to talk about this middle room. It was the one I avoided and procrastinated with and that is not easy for me to do, but this one I did. I had boxes still there from when I'd buy my house with my beloved ex. Memories of that including things I'd bought for that house were in here in boxes safe from view and hidden behind a Japanese screen. I just couldn't face doing this one.....but things get done when forced to. This smallest of rooms was the most trouble and work.
Well the hand was forced and I did it. We found termites flying in here too and so the entire room had to be cleared so the wood floors could be exposed for treatment. What a nightmare. It is one thing to do things because you want to but to take a room apart because you have to is something else> I've beend not only psychologically terrorized by termites who were destroying the very floors and furniture which is my physical support!..... but emotionally unprepared to face handling items for a life of dreams that never happened.

But I'm ever so glad its done and I've even been having fun sleeping in this room, my own Bed and Breakfast Beach House Room  it seems to feel like to me since having had to abandon my own bedroom for a time until the termite mystery in that one was either solved or timed out of their season. Once this middle room was treated I've not seen anything so sleeping in here was fine.
Soon I am moving back into my bedroom, moving my bed back in which has been up in the hallway, and moving my bedding back in and I will sleep in there and pray with all my might I don't wake up to swarms of termites both flying and crawling ON MY BED even with a mosquito net, this is the part that freaked me out so often ...... I got rid of the wood bed frame I loved so much because of one single pinhole size hole where pellets had come out, sad!....., and replaced it with a metal one, still we found termites at night, swarming every night and we'd be doing termite patrol with a vacuum cleaner sucking them up. I got rid of the plywood I used as a mattress support and replaced it but it wasn't that either. I got on hands and knees and searched the floor for pin hole size holes with glasses, flashlight and magnifying glass and found one the size of the nails used to nail the wood down, imagine that, every nail hole was suspect for being the entry point for swarms of termites....but I found one, closed it up and I've only since seen a handful of termites in over a week, so I am feeling I may be able to breathe again because I have been creeped out to the point of sheer disgust and now even paranoia over this for 2 months now.

But this middle room is done and now I'm ready for guests again, but much more proud than I was before.
Here are lots of pics:

This is not quite a fair image as I'd already begun to remove things from my room into this one before this one got treated, but you can get a gist....huge desk John bought because he doesn't know how to buy furniture to scale of the room size, but it was used well. He had chosen a cantaloupe color for the walls and while a cozy color, I'm into white and light now.
' ' S T U F F ' '      is all in its place or gone now.

another corner.......

and the corner that had a Japanese screen to cover the ''dreamers'' contents but that had to go too.....and now the process of going through my previous life and plans which didn't work out, which turned into turmoil. I went through them all in one day, and had boxes of stuff for goodwill.
God bless those people for taking our ''stuff''.....some of it good stuff some not. I did give them some treasures which made them smile.

The entire room was cleared out including the closet, and the floors were all treated for termites with a natural treatment which we used for the entire house. I simply was not going to have all my vines and trees and plants killed with fumigation, so we went natural.... but at least we didn't have to leave the house and stay in hotels and remove foods etc, what a nightmare that would have been.

First....we recaulked the entire room.......I believe its absolutely hermetically sealed  now !!

I chose a beautiful color for the walls, "By The Sea" by Olympic, which is a pale aqua blue. with tints of pale green.  It is the best color because during the day it looks pale aqua and by night pale sea foam green!  My favorite colors of the sea. :D:D:D

I had shelving from my bedroom I never got rid of, and they came in handy in here. Painted white. We also already had brackets from IKEA.......IKEA was very helpful in this venture I have to say.

 In this picture you can see the bottom half of the new secretary desk from IKEA...... yes I have painted this particular knob silver and added a tassel lol......

Then the floors...oy!  John never took care of these floors when he moved in and this room was mostly used to store things, and he never treated it with polyurethane to finish the wood. It was very very dull. Sooo......I swept and swept, then mopped. Then we scrubbed it and mopped it then scrubbed it then mopped it again. Then I polished it by hand with pure coconut oil....I saw this done in Bali Indonesia, at one of the palaces I stayed at. The manager there showed me how they worked their beautiful woods there, they are masters! And they used coconut shreds and coconut oil for the most beautiful sheen I'd ever seen. I never forgot it. So I used coconut oil and polished it once and it soaked it up then I polished it again. It then blended with the rest of the wood floors of this house which have the original wood floors. This house is the first one built in this city, it is old.

Here you can see the half I began to polish and the half not polished......

 It IS a dramatic difference......
First polish done....I did it again and it had more sheen, nothing slippery or oily or anything, just beautiful dark sheen. It did give the floor some glide which it needed since I had to move furniture around and it glided nicely.....not dry and stuck and staticy, but nice and smooth......sigh.

Now the room comes together......

My new secretary desk is a much better use of this space,...taking up the wall space and not the floor.....I love this desk, it hides storage.....and I didn't have to paint it white! :D
It came with black knobs and I changed them out with crystal knobs I bought years ago. :D

I have to make a cover for the chair but for now I'm using lace or whatever will sit nicely.

 The old bookshelf I had outside to take to goodwill, but as I began to put things back, I found I needed some more shelving for storing particular things, soooooo.......
I had to bring in the bookshelf and.............. paint it white......

 and then because I wanted something prettier, I  kind of saw in my head ''flowers'' as a pattern  for these shelves, but I was not about to paint them, when I remembered I had some pretty shelving paper I also bought years ago along with those crystal knobs and thought I'd get good use from them and I did.....I couldn't believe how perfect the color was, with sea foam green, and pattern was....not flowers, but pretty enough......so I put shelving paper on the shelves.

 Another piece I needed was storage for all the fabrics I'd been collecting the past 2 years which were sitting on the loveseat in the living room covered up with a tablecloth.....

 I bought a ''box'' from the kitchen section in IKEA.....just the box 88" tall, was supposed to be 30" wide but we didn't realize they gave us the wrong size until we put it together!....another hiccup in the drama here, but I didn't want to take it apart and return it....but this one is 24" and 24" deep...... with 2 extra shelves which came as a pair. I put all my fabrics in there including all the crafts I decided to keep in a clever little storage thingy also from IKEA......so everything is put in its place. I simply must live with ''a place for everything and everything in its place''. My brain doesn't work otherwise.

and the rest of the room......

I keep a crochet and a length of tulle in the doorway, I abhor square corners anymore....fabrics breaks it up and softens it....nothing softens a room like fabrics and flowers......
I had a special damask bedspread I saved for ''my house'', one of those things in the boxes, but I decided to pull it out and use everything I love and get rid of everything I don't use.....it was an exercise in deep honesty and restraint.....but I did it. I put the damask on the bed.....
Also I had found at the thrift a set of a small wicker chair and table for $30.00....I got them and .............painted them white.
The ceiling fan was brown with an ugly light cover.....I painted the blades white, got a nice cover with etched glass from Lowes, very Victorian looking and a crystal pull chain.  John couldn't believe how it changed the look. It was the first thing to go in after being painted and he was in awe. lolol

There is a mix of things in this tiny room, lots of shabby deliciousness. I love the Victorian look with pale colors, reminiscent of the Beach in less populated days. I have a wool Persian rug I spotted on amazon at 77% reduced now for $60.00  but will have to wait until more funds come in, but it is very pretty and has blue in it.

 

This is the bookshelf painted and with shelving paper to hold my essential oils cabinet, CD player and a few other things. You can see the crystal knobs on the secretary from IKEA.

 

 


I used the shelving we put up on the walls to store my Himalayan Crystal Tea Light holders, which I adore, and to have a place for something new and whimsical......a Tea Set ! LOL
 I have a silver tray, creamer and sugar holder, and I bought the most delicious teas in beautiful floral or ''shabby'' tins from Home Goods....one is English Breakfast which I am addicted to right now, and the other is Earl Grey Tea. I wanted this room to cater to the graceful woman or guest and to be self sufficient, to give the feeling of being taken care of and independent at the same time. So a tea serving was the thing for me to do. I wanted an all white serving set but it wasn't happening easily. I happen to have a lovely silver Moroccan Tea Pot and at the thrift store a silver creamer and sugar set were on sale for $5.00 total.....they came home. I polished them up and they are beautiful. I think this cool room could use the bling of silver.....  :D
The basket was a Chinese birds nest basket I didn't want to get rid o,f I loved it. But it was a deep mohagony red wood, and didn't work here so I....wait for it...... :D ....painted it white. I got a tip that gloss paint works better for cleaning and I discovered it is true, so I painted all the ceiling fan blades, chair and table, etc in gloss.. which does clean much better! This Chinese basket now holds selections of other flavors of teas in the top half and tea linens in the bottom :D:D:D     happy dance .

 



I used my Rachel Ashwell bedding in here, just folded the duvet in half and slept on top of it with a heavy linen tablecloth with crocheted edges I love sleeping with as a blanket......

 

I love all the variety of textures in similar colors....

One thing I've never had is a bedside table. I had purchased a bunch of books by Victoria Magazine on amazon for a penny each and one of them was about bedrooms, and the cover transfixed me, I needed to have this in my new room.....

I searched on ebay for a bed-stand or night-table, and found a lovely one I could afford....
it is perfect! with a crystal knob already in place and already white! when it came in the box, it was the easiest thing to put together......all of life should be that easy. I also added the same shelving paper to the inside of the drawer. I keep my reading glasses in the drawer, some tea lights, a lighter, nail file and other small things I used to keep laying around...so nice to have them all away now yet so conveniently close!

 


 



At the thrift I also found a white wicker magazine holder which I knew I'd need for my new routine of looking at only beautiful picture books before bed, reading nothing but glorious words of beauty and grace, serenity and how lovely life can be, how luxuriously tea and dinners are set, tables set for beauty comfort, love and romance, how to make beautiful gardens...all of it.

Beauty is my life and I want everything in my life to be Beautiful.
 









On the night stand at first I had a bowl I made from Xmas time believe it or not, but I love it so am  keeping it up....



Then I moved it to the old/new white bookcase.

Here I had the Tea Set Tray on a display stand until I set up the shelf properly.....love the silver!....roses in vase and gardenias floating in water created a nice scent at night. heavenly.




After finding the thrift store silver creamer and sugar holders, I set up the shelf with the Tea Servings....and then oh oh....I need to find a way to actually serve it......stay tuned......

but I replaced the tray with an antiqued mercury glass set  from Home Goods......... a tray, you can see here  holding a lavender opalescent candy dish and perfume bottles....
 

a soap dish   ..............I use for my earplugs and earrings etc.
But the bottom shelf got a tissue box holder and a small vase with a lid which WILL come in handy shortly, I simply love this set from Home Goods! Mercury Glass forever !



It turns out the ''wrong size'' box from IKEA was good because now I could fit the small wicker chair at the foot of the bed.....



and the window got lace curtains also from IKEA.....I told you they came in quite handy! lol




and the wicker table beneath it.  I get to use some of the thrift store linens in here alot. :D

I wanted this whimsical Tea Serving Set to be useful and used so I went through in my mind, as a guest, how I would use the set.....so one would get the silver tray, add the tea pot, sugar and creamer and go to the kitchen to get hot water, add it to the teapot with tea, and come back in and......lay the tray where? the top of the nightstand was taken up, but......synchronistically I was looking for something else online, ebay again, and saw this, the answer to my needs and I ordered it and it also is from the same company as the nightstand and it is simply perfect and took 2 minutes flat to put it together, in fact there were only two parts, the tray and the legs..... sigh.......simplicity and beauty and function!

 The tray has working drawers, so I can put the tea linens in there :D    I love this set, both this serving tray and nightstand !

Today I cut some wild growing thing outside that has little purple flowers, and some white plumbago, I love them together in here, but then, I love all flowers :D

 If you hung in this long, you deserve an award, you may have a chance as I'm giving away some beautiful gorgeous Christmas display ornaments which were used for an exclusive store for a Christmas display, some rare pieces......I simply don't use them anymore as they have memories, but they are beautiful and I'll be making a post later on this year about a giveaway for them.

Bless you and stay well, healthy and happy everyone!