Happy Places in my House

There are some places tucked into my home that just make me happy. Here are some of them.

 This is the corner table in my living room. I love the handmade doily. I love the photos of family. I love the ceramic bow lamp and the gold-leaf picture of the woman in prayer. I especially love the little paperweight in the middle. More about that in a minute. I know it's kind of funny that the phone is in the background, but I love that, too...it's my line of communication with my grown-and-flown children!

 Here's a closeup of that little paperweight. It fits in the palm of my hand. My father made it by hand when he was in college, before I was born. He had to hand machine the metal to square edges, drill the holes and thread them, and make everything fit together perfectly and all lined up. It took him 12 weeks - one whole term of a class in college in 1953. He gave it to me for Christmas this year, and I cried when I opened the box. I felt like he was giving me a piece of his life.

 He even stamped his name--Ken Jenkins--on the side of it.

 These jars are in my kitchen. I love how they line up under the window sill, filled with healthy goodness. They are all different whole grains that are so delicious. I can cook them easily in my cheapo rice cooker--genius! Basmati brown rice, quinoa, millet, short grain brown rice, and lentils. Almonds on the end. Yum!

 This is a corner of my dresser. I love little ceramic or glass or metal boxes. The grayish box in the back (with doily on top) is covered with quilted fabric. It used to be lavender. It used to be lovely. Now it's showing signs of age, but I love it because my father gave it to my mother years ago, when "hankie boxes" were an important item for a lady to have on hand. The tall wooden box in the background was a gift to me from my brother when we were in high school. He made it out of cedar--smells so good--in wood shop. Those are Julia's baby shoes on top of it. It makes me happy to have trinkets and treasures tucked away into the boxes.

 Here is my nightstand. I love settling in to bed to read for a little while before drifting off to sleep. The green book on top of the stack is a wonderful hand-made journal that Kendra made. That's such a good photo of my sweetie in the background. And above his photo, the little wooden plaques are hand-painted with miniature flowers. My best friend in high school, Ann Barrows (now McConnell) painted them for me.

Final stop on the tour: the bathroom counter. I picked up the line of rocks when Mark and I camped near Trinity Lakes last summer. The little ceramic girl was a birthday gift to me when I was a child. It says "May" (my birthday month) on the front of her apron, and she's holding some Lily of the Valley flowers. The little basket is holding a bunch of soap stones I collected as a girl at Camp Natoma in the foothills of the Coast Range in central California.

PS: One more thing that makes me soooo happy!

A new camera!
I used it to take all* of my "happy pictures." As you can tell, I am still learning how to use it. But it is SO much better than the old camera I've been using for 6+ years. Kendra had a camera like this when we visited her in Kansas last week, and I instantly fell in love. So simple, and just sophisticated enough for me.

*Of course, the photo of the camera is the one photo I didn't  take with the new camera. I used my cell phone...clever me!