Party Hopping!

It's Monday and I want to join 3 parties.

Sally of http://smilingsally.blogspot.com/

Susan of http://betweennapsontheporch.blogspot.com/

Mary of http://dearlittleredhouse.blogspot.com/

But wait, since I am showing a lot of tabletops and it's almost Tuesday and I might as well join Tabletop Tuesday also, which is hosted by Barb of Grits and Glamour. To see more outstanding tabletops, go visit her at http://gritsglamour.blogspot.com/

Can you guess what this is? It's blue and it's also my contribution for Blue Monday.


Ok, I'll show a little bit more of it. Do you know what it is now?


Yep, it's a hula hoop. Can you twirl a hula hoop around you without it falling on the floor?





I can probably do about 150 turns without it falling but that's nothing compared to my sister, Tess. We were cruising in Hawaii one time and all 3 sisters joined a hula hoop contest in the ship. All the contestants' hoops have fallen (including mine) except for my sister and as the music kept going, her hula hoop kept going too. She was asked to stop and then was given another one and she had to use 2 at the same time. Again, the music gave up before her hoops did so the emcee just kept adding more and more until she had all 7 of them. Would you believe that none of them fell and the emcee just gave up, turned the music off and declared her the winner. Even I was really impressed. I couldn't believe how good she was!


I moved the game table close to the glass doors. We do not use this particular door to exit the house, we use the other one on the right. I originally moved the table so I can vacuum the rug really well but then I realized I can do my hula hooping here until I get tired of it. I thought it might be a good exercise for the legs, abdomen and hips. Maybe I should do some yoga too cause I desperately need to exercise.

Ok, now I'd like to show you some minor changes in our living room for Met Monday. You will see the lion chair pushed back all the way to the corner and some tables under the windows and 3 more occasional chairs.

This is how to used to be.

I moved the 2 smaller chairs to the dining room and moved the tables to our guest room for the grandkids.

Then, I moved the lion chair and the other one closer to the sofa to create a more cozy conversational pit. I think I like it better this way because it is less cluttered and it's making me breath better.

Janie of http://blondiesjournals.blogspot.com/ wanted to see a full picture of the painting I made for the sofa wall, so here it is. If you haven't visited Janie, you should. You will really enjoy her blog. She is an excellent writer and she has 2 gorgeous homes that she shares with us. I printed the picture from the internet and copied it so even if it is my original oil painting, the pic is not an original creation.

Since I am already showing you our living room, I might as well show the table tops that I did not show for last week's Tabletop Tuesday. This is the side table to the left of the sofa. On top of it is an astral lamp, a red Meissen compote, a celeste blue Meissen lady vase, a fairy lamp, a Sevres casket and a cherub planter I bought from a store closing downtown a half price. I won this oval marble top end table on my very first estate auction. I got a pair of them.

Below are what is on top of the end table on the right side of the sofa. It has an identical red Meissen compote, astral lamp, a Meissen boy vase, cherub porcelain and a gold crown tea light candle holder.

It was very hard to take of picture of the lamp when it is lit so here it is when turned off.

Did you notice another change here? I sewed 2 pillows using an identical material to the window swags and replaced the throw pillows that used to be there. Mamalinde from RMS was so nice to send me the material. She wouldn't even let me pay for it nor for the shipping. Thanks, Linda!

How do you like the new look?

Here are 2 wall shelves hanging on the walls dividing the foyer from the living room.

Hope you enjoyed the tour of our formal living room. Even if we do not actively use it on a regular basis since we have a very John and child proof family room with the TV and a pool view, John and I would sit in this room every now and then just to enjoy it. And sometimes, I have caught John sitting here by himself just staring and admiring it. Even when I do not see him, I know he's been here because I see the pillows messed up every now and then. He never puts anything back in place and I know it's him cause there are only 2 of us here......unless we have a ghost, lol!

Thanks for taking a virtual home tour with me.
Thnaks to our lovely hosts, Susan, Sally, Mary and Barb for all these fun parties!

It's Wet in Copenhagen!

Yep, Saturdays are always double posts for me. I have this urge to take you on a trip for one thing and I also want to show you something pink. I hope you will come along with me to Copenhagen in Denmark even on a lousy and gloomy weather. And for more pretty pinks, do see Beverly at http://howsweetthesound.typepad.com/my_weblog/
For my pink contribution, I want to show you my cute energizer bunny. Isn't he a cutie? I have friends who call me an energizer bunny but I think Lynne of http://lynnesgiftsfromtheheart.blogspot.com/2010/01/thief-in-broad-daylight.html is the real one, lol.

But I keep him in front of me by my desk anyway, kinda like a reminder for me to keep working.

Hope you enjoyed the cute pink bunny. He better really keep going cause we need him for spring, don't we?

And now, let's drive around Copenhagen. It looked pretty good from the ship but once we got out, the rain started pouring really hard.

This is pretty much the only one we saw because rain or not, we went out of the bus for we weren't going to miss seeing this "Little Mermaid" icon of Denmark. I tell ya, we were soaked! And I think it was worth getting wet for this lovely bronze sculpture.

Well, let's just drive around, ok? And sorry, I can't tell you anything about the buildings cause I could not even understand what the tour guide was saying. The rain tapping on the windows was just too loud.

Some colorful buildings here.

a beautiful church

My sister managed to organize this big group together in this tour. A lot of us are related, distant aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, etc. The one sitting in front of me on my left was my classmate in 2nd grade and I haven't seen her since. It was a lot of fun touring together. I think there were 36 of us. Some of them are in other tables.

Thanks again for coming by I hope you did not mind the rain one bit. See you next Saturday for another sightseeing and hopefully it will be a dry one!

Living Room Mantel

I love parties so here I am joining another one. This time it is the 3rd mantel party hosted by Beth at http://bethcrabtreehunter.blogspot.com/. Don't forget to visit her to see more wonderfully decorated mantels.

Last week, I showed you our mantel in the family room. Shown below is our mantel in the formal living room. We have 3 fireplaces in the house. The third one is in the kitchen and maybe I'll show that to you next week.

The painting above the fireplace is my childhood home in the Philippines.

We have a collection of Sevres urns and I placed some celeste blue ones here. In the center is a Waterford crystal clock that a friend gave me for Christmas. We were shopping at TJ Maxx and I saw it and told her I really like it but will think about it for a while and decide later if I will buy it or not. After a while, I went back to get it but it was gone. I was kicking myself for not buying it. Unbeknownst to me, she hurriedly bought and paid for it and had the cashier wrap it fast so I wouldn't see it. And then she surprised me and gave it to me for Christmas. Isn't that sweet?
Do you like the shell shaped urn? Or maybe it's not called an urn. Do yo know?

We bought the crystal finials from an antique shop. They came with a mirrored tray and 1 more for a total of 5 finials. The tray and 5th finial are sitting on the coffee table right now. Nothing is ever permanent in our house except for the heavy furniture that I cannot move, lol.

Thanks Beth, for hosting another mantel party and thank you all for coming for a visit.

Dragonflies

Does anybody here like dragonflies? I think they are so cute and they do not bite nor sting so I like them in the garden and I cannot wait for spring to come so I can start working in the garden and see them around again. Maybe I won't see them outside right now so I just decided to create a tablescape using them as my inspiration.

Tablescape Thursday is hosted by our most gracious hostess, Susan of http://betweennapsontheporch.blogspot.com/and if you want to treat yourself to some awesome tablescapes, you need to go pay her and her participants a visit.

I bought this copper dragonfly from a local frame and gift shop. It's quite big and I really like it. I kept it on top of our corner china cabinet in the dining room with just the face showing and almost forgot about it. One day while in the bathroom, I suddenly got a glimpse of a pot with a topiary in it and noticed that it has a dragonfly. You see, I had to bring a lot of plants in the house before it got cold, to save them from freezing. The pot reminded me of the dragonfly sculpture that I have, which also gave me the idea for this tablescape.

Don't you just like those cobalt blue eyes?

I bought these dishes last summer from Marshalls. When I saw "Rice, rice, baby", on the bowls, I just had to have them too. We eat rice here day and night.
John and I still have our bad colds so we had some hot homecooked soup. And of course we had to have some rice with it. I got the hobnail plate chargers sometime last year from Dillards. They were 75 % off but I can't remember how much I bought them for anymore.

I like the shape of the dinner plates, so unusual. Somehow, they remind me of something turkish, of a mosque. I use dipping sauce with crushed hot pepper when I eat so I use a mini saucer with my setting. John doesn't.

How many dragonflies do you see here?

Did you see all 4 of them?

I hope you like this casual setting. Thank you for coming by and thanks, Susan for hosting one of my favorite parties.