Some Of My Favorite Things ... Casa Bob y Carlos

Since we were supposed to be out of town, I had no 'Random Musings' for the week, so i figured I'd take you on a tour of our house and show you a few things that I really love .... besides Carlos and the kids.

Let's take a walk, shall we?

That's Mom and Dad on their wedding day, and yours truly in the upper right, with a group photo of me, with my sister and brother as cute [?] toddlers.

These are a couple of shots of gay men. An Old West couple, and a couple of Brazilian men dancing.

My original Pee Wee Herman Talking Doll ... and it still talks decades later ... along with a Flying Cat soaring in the sunroom that we bought while visiting Seattle.

Two pieces of stained glass: the one on the left hangs in the guest room, and was a gift from a friend; the bird hangs in the sunroom and was made for me by my Dad. I've had it since I first moved away from home and it's been every with me.

There are two Bark Paintings that were gifts from Carlos' ... and now my ... Aunt Gloria. We have several more I need to get matted and framed but I procrastinate ....

We picked these four up at an antique shop in town; for some reason Carlos, a Latino, and I, a Gringo, love Asian art. Go figure.

These are in the foyer; the boy and the Asian prints were gifts from a friend and have become favorites of mine. The three ...Asian ... again ... prints, we discovered in a shop in Columbia.

These are two watercolors that i found in a restaurant in  California years ago, and asked if I could purchase. They are both by the same artist, Verna Gannon, but really make me feel different things when I look at them. one is a cold foggy woods, and the other seems to spark feelings of reincarnation.

A nook in the house that i love; Carlos brought the desk and chair from Mexico, and I bought the photograph ... it's a picture of a window shade with broken bottles along the sill ... at a winery in the California Foothills.

Carlos had this in Miami when we met, and now it sits on a high wall in the sunroom. i like that you can't see it until you come into the room, sit down, and look up.

Ah, our former kids, now dearly departed clockwise from the left: Thomas, Sweety, Spunky, Lady, Voncie and Scruffy. It wouldn';t be a gay house without a Cat Shrine, amirite?

This painting is Carlos' favorite ... he loves horses,and used to have a horse in Mexico. He brought it with him when he moved to America and now it sits above our fireplace. There are little stone Asian ... again with the Asian ... warriors on the mantle.

Also on the mantle ... that's the anniversary clock my mother and father bought when they married in 1955, and next to that is Twisted Kitty, a wrought iron sculpture I bought in the Tenderloin District of San Francisco many moons ago.

In the kitchen is a painting my mother did about twenty years ago; it's painted on an old kitchen cabinet door and makes me smile every time I see it. The next thing is a calender we bought on a trip to Asheville. If you look closely at the pig chalkboard you can see Carlos' scribbles about buying plants for an area alongside the driveway ... it's been six years ... no plants. Oy, and I thought I procrastinated!

These are photographs I took at the Brookgreen Gardens in Myrtle Beach, and at a Railroad museum in Snoqualmie, Washington. They're in our new pinstriped bathroom.

This is another watercolor ... by Heidi Wilson ... the mother of two very good friends of mine. I bought this in California years ago, and chose the dining room wall color because of it.

Carlos loves Lucy in Mame and I love Cher ... a magazine cover that he had framed for me and surprised me with one Christmas; a sweet gift I never expected.

The two tiles at the bottom my sister sent to me from Spain when she lived there in the 70s,. and the two smaller tiles Carlos brought with him from Mexico.

And last, but not least, an African clay pot, with a carved wooden stand, that we bought at an art show in Aiken a few years ago.

So, that's the tour of some of my favorite things; collected when I was single, and collected with Carlos. But they've all traveled a great distance to be in our house.