Mom's 1890's Victorian.

Some sneak peaks inside my moms 1890's Victorian. The inside has pretty much been restored. All the original woodwork is still there and was never painted. It has three sets of pocket doors. The hardwoods were refinished a couple of years ago and the only room that is carpeted is the family room. The rooms are very spacious and the ceilings are 12'. It has two sets of staircases. The formal set by the front door and a back stair leading into the kitchen. There are four bedrooms upstairs and two full baths. Down stairs there is also a 3/4 bath.

In past posts there are photos of the outside and yard.

This angle shows the Parlour leading to the front door. This room moves right into the living room. There are two sets of Pocket doors.
This is the set of stairs as you come in the front door. Luckily no woodwork had ever been painted. If you go straight it leads you into the dining room. Immediately to your left is the Parlour.

The dining room is rather large. The window is basically bumped out a bit. The hand carved horse is all wood. I bought the horse at an auction in California before moving to Missouri. It is absolutely beautiful. She has hand carved roses carved on her hind end. Well call her Rosebud and my dad calls her Rosebutt. This area is in the main living area. The bay style window has the original woodwork.

Garden Flowers

There are many varieties of Clematis but these two different varieties take the prize.

Yellow Tree Peony.

Climbing Rose. Autumn Sunset.

Clemetis. I believe this is Belle of Woking. It is so beautiful.

Memory Board

A few years ago I was at a friends house and as I was leaving I spotted this interesting framed art on her wall. At closer look, I found it was filled with all kinds of little trinkets. I asked her what it was and she told me that it was little things her and her sister had collected when they were kids. I loved the idea and went home and made one of my own.

I had saved all these crazy little things over the years and just kept them either under the bed or in an old jewelry box in the closet. It was a lot of fun gluing these little things onto the glass. Nothing of importance or understanding to anyone else but me. It ranges from my diaper pin, a molar the tooth fairy never got, picture charms of my daughter, fools gold from Knott's Berry Farm and those round tokens that you used to get from these machines. They said your name and age. This says I was 7 years old!!

Mostly it consists of some very crazy earrings that I once wore. (Yikes! No wonder my ear lobes are down to my shoulders.) This little memory piece gives me a smile whenever I walk by it. I highly recommend everyone do this with their little bits of history. You sure can't enjoy them if they are sitting in a drawer, under the bed or in your closet now can you??

When You Are Having A So So Day.............

Play a game of Jacks!!!

Floral Gallery Glass Transpariences

Unfortunately the camera does not pick up the vibrancy and color glow of these transparencies. The most fun about doing them is choosing your colors. I have a limited amount of gallery glass bottles so I try to mix and match colors for more variety. I enjoy sitting and painting them in at night while watching TV. I let them dry overnight and then cut out the image the next night. Amazing enough the gallery glass bottles go a long way. This butterfly is loaded will all kinds of colors and some glitter. I went a little crazy with the one Hydrangea and used several colors of blues in the top Hydrangea. In person I think this is my favorite. This picture came from a coloring book. The rest of the floral copies came from a 20 year old clip art book I have. I have used this clip art book for many years for many different projects.

This lily I colored in is actually a champagne color with a golden sparkle color.

I colored in this orchid in lime green ( I love lime green lately) and the other orchid in berry colors. The gallery glass gives them a lot of dimension in person.

These Rubrum Lily's are done in berry shades and pinks.

Unfortunately again you cant tell but there is seed beads layered in these two orchids. One is celedon green and the other yellow. I enjoy doing odd colors combinations.

A close up of the orchids.

These Phalanopsis Orchids are being shown as one cut out and one not. The pink has already been cut out. The grey/light blue orchids are not showing well as far as color goes. I thought it would be fun to do in one in a color you will never see in nature.

A close up of the pink.

The blue purple Iris is showing a bit dark. It is actually very nice to the eye.There are several shades of purples and blues for shading. I think the yellow is my favorite though. The shadings came out fairly well. I used two different colors of yellow and brown.

Even with all these transparencies I have a lot of paints left. So no doubt I will be finding more clip art to copy and paint.

Red Oak II

This was once the Black Smith Shop now a photography studio for Lowell's daughter. She does beautiful work. All his children are very creative.

This is Lowell's house. The crazy green part is actually part of Belle Starr's home. He added a log cabin to it to make it a big bigger. Belles home is his art studio.

This is called the Mother in law's house. It over looks a pond. It was built as a playhouse for the kids.

A Victorian style house once a Bed & Breakfast. When I worked there it was Pink!

This log cabin at one time was a Bed & Breakfast. I cleaned this cabin many times when I worked there. It is now a private home.

An old Route 66 gas station that was moved and fixed up. Most of the buildings at Red Oak II were given to Lowell.

One of the many humorous vignette's at Red Oak.

I was on vacation with my parents to SW Missouri and ended up in this small town filled with these wonderful Victorian homes. While on vacation my parents bought one of these houses. So we went home, put the house up for sale, I quit my job and moved. When I first moved to Missouri I had no idea what I was going to do for work. Someone had told me about this little place outside of town that was owned by an artist and he had moved all these old places out there and fixed them up. It was free and you could just go and walk around and go in these old buildings. So my dad and I trucked out there one day to check it out. We ended up meeting Lowell Davis and his partner who also owned a home out there. He hired me to work in the General Store selling Lowell's artwork and the other unusual items in the store. This place was amazing. It had a peace and quit and beauty that I couldn't even begin to describe. How lucky was I to get to come here to work everyday. Lowell at the time sold prints of his originals, figurines and a couple of books he had written. Little did I know that he had a HUGE fan base as well and actually was the #2 figurine sales in the world behind Precious Moments (which also happens to be in this town). Selling his figurines was easy. The are humorous and well done. Lowell is a kind person, a little on the shy side and actually fairly quit. I worked out there until I opened the Tea Room. I enjoyed every minute of it.

Over the years many trials and tribulations happened out at Red Oak and at one time it was in pretty sad shape. But I am happy to say over the past few years many of the little homes and cabins are owned by individuals and it seems to be in a re-birth. Red Oak II was a very large place and huge expense for one person to keep up. There are way to many great homes that I haven't added.

My Favorite Things

I am in to Buddha lately. I found this piece at Target and had to have it. The piece has a spot for a candle but I made it into a little altar. I have an evil eye from Greece around the neck with a mystic bell. I have a dragonfly pin, seashell and a clear marble. This piece is in my living room and it always gives me a peaceful feeling.

This is my other Buddha. This one has a lotus flower that lights up at night. I have it sitting in a glass bowl surrounded by seashells. I am crazy for the ocean and I am crazy for seashells. Many of the shells I found on my beach walks and many I have purchased. I guess you could say I have a mismatch of Buddha and Angels. I just want my home to always feel calm. I love being home so it must be working.

I had this wedding cake topper custom made over 26 years ago. I combined all these elements and ended up with this amazing topper. It proudly sat on top of my cake. The McKenzie Childs cake plate is beautiful. I love this piece. I have one in blue as well. I bought it and a month later they doubled in price.

I found this old bust in an old clothing store going out of business. It was natural wicker and it took several coats to cover. I bought it for $1.00. I then had to add all kinds of ribbon work to it. I have it hanging in my bedroom.

And my #1 favorite thing? That would be my one and only daughter. When she little, her and I would go every year to our local mall and get all glammed up for one of those dorky glamor shots. It was a blast sitting in the makeup chair getting your face spackled and your hair poofed up to the size of a small planet. (Check out those horrendous earrings we had on.) It was quality girl time. My daughter would then proceed to tell the girl what color backgrounds to use and how we should be posed. She was eight years old at the time. But she was right and the photos looked better. It must have been a precursor because she takes amazing photos.

The candy jar was a Christmas gift from my daughter. She found it in a local flea market. I just love that candy jar. First of all it is very unique and she did a great job finding it. (Again a great eye at a young age.) Second it was something she found and bought herself. Now a grown woman, she lives in New Orleans. When we went to her Law School graduation in May she gave me that wonderful Mardi Gras mask. It is beautiful but yet again something she picked out and knew I would love.

My #2 favorite thing you ask? That would have to be my mouthy little replacement child named Ginger. My daughter thinks I like the dog better than her. Actually the two of them are pretty much alike. Both bossy, opinionated and always right.

Beginnings of Art Journaling

Work in progress. Deciding what colors I want to use for the second butterfly. I need to add some glitter and seed beeds and experiment. I have not cut out around the butterfly's.
This came out really colorful. When you hold these up to the light they are very vibrant. I used multiple shades of pinks and purples for the flowers. This has been cutout already.
More individual colorful butterfly's already cut out.


Well I love gallery glass but I am completely running out of windows in my home. I hated to just let these paints sit and eventually go bad. Some already had to be thrown out. Paint just doesn't last forever. I found an old butterfly coloring book I had bought for my daughter at Caloway Gardens many years ago. I decided to make transparencies from some of the designs in the book. The nice thing about that is I don't have to start from scratch and lead any lines. All you have to do is pick colors and go for it. After the transparencies dried, I then cut around the designs. You really cant appreciate the colors in the photos. In person they just sparkle and are so beautiful and vibrant. I think it makes a relaxing and enjoyable nighttime activity as I sit and listen to TV. I have never been one to be able to just sit and watch TV anyway. When finished I let the paints dry overnight and cut out the following day. I have additional transparencies I plan to add as well. Dragonfly's, bumble bees, flowers and whatever else I can figure out. I happen to be using gallery glass paint but I am sure I will also be using my acrylic paints once I am out of gallery glass. I need to start adding seed beads and glitter to the transparencies as well.

I have to come up with other solutions for my visual art journaling. I have NO drawing abilities what so ever. All of you who are blessed with Artistic Creativity I am so envious. I happen to be blessed with FLAW-TISTIC Creativity. Layering collage work is going to have to work for me.

Summer Flowers

Mini Hollyhocks and Roses. It doesn't get much better than than. Most people who have rose bushes choose reds and pinks. I wanted to be different and pick peachy/apricot tones with blue accent flowers. Of course we all know how difficult blue flowers are to find so you basically just try to find colors close to it. I must warn you about these little hollyhocks, those little seeds germinate everywhere!! Be careful when planting these sweet little plants. I now find them growing in the craziest places throughout my yard. I know someone who planted them in a big whiskey barrel and I think that is a great idea.

The roses on my arbor are climbers. I bought root roses which I highly recommend. When I planted these roses they were about 5'" tall. By end of summer they were prolific and fully blooming. These particular roses have to be constantly trimmed though. I easily cut 100' off a season on these two climbers. It almost seems like that is all I do is trim these roses. I almost wish I had just planted a clematis or passion flower vine on the arbor instead. I have since taken one rose bush out and have added a clematis plant on each side. I think I get bored and enjoy changing flowers around. For now it is just to darn hot to be playing in the yard.