New Florida Residence

Mom went to Florida last year for 3 months and really loved being out of the winter snows, and just liked the area in Lakeland.  While we were in Alaska, Dean discovered that a home in the park was going up for sale at an amazingly low price so Mom bought it.  Now she can come and go whenever she wants and doesn't have to worry about whether something is available to rent. Last week, Mom and I flew down to see the property and see what kind of decorating, etc needed to be done.

The home is located a couple of streets from Dean and farther from the clubhouse, but there's is less traffic than the one that she rented last year (both vehicles and foot traffic).  The home is a bit smaller than the one she rented last year and needed some cleaning and painting.  So, we spent the first three days cleaning and discovered lots of really great dishes, furniture, and appliances.  The floors are in great shape and the walls were all freshly painted in a nice creamy white so we had a clean palette to look at.

Then, we painted for the next two days.  The master bedroom ended up a beautiful shade of pink, with two shades of chocolate for the master bathroom.  Mom has a palm tree picture that became the inspiration for the master bathroom, and we found awesome palm tree towels and rug, and some cute monkey accessories (soap dish, toothbrush holder, etc.).  Everything turned out really cute.

There was a large oil painting of flowers that had the most beautiful colors in it, so we painted one panel of the bedroom wall a darker mauve color to accent the lighter pink of the walls -- both colors picking up shades in the painting.  Since the bed in the master bedroom had no headboard, the painted panel and the painting above ended up serving the purpose of a headboard.  These are great Florida colors!  Too bad I had to take this picture with only a lamp to provide the necessary light for the picture.

The hallway is a nice light blue and the dining room is a soft gray -- both of which were inspired by a print that Bill loaned to Grandma to hang in her hallway.  I'm nuts about the colors and by the print.  We all had different reactions to the print; it reminds me of Long Island and I'd love to have it myself.  I had part of the blue paint done and a bit of the gray, and Dean finished it up after we left.  Sure looks nice, but I wish the painting was hanging now.

When we first arrived at the home on the Saturday night we flew in, we had a welcome committee in the form of a great big frog stuck to the side of the home next to the door.  We had those suction cups on his toes and proceeded to walk up the side of the building.  It was pretty cool, really, and we found a metal frog to hang on the siding to remind Mom of her welcome to Florida!  Then, over the next couple of days we saw frogs that were smaller than a fingernail.  Dean said that he never sees frogs there, but they've had so much rain that it's like a swamp everywhere.  It rained pretty much every day we were there with high temps (90s) and humidity equally high. 

The plan now is to head back down in November so Mom can be moved before the snow starts, and she'll stay through the whole winter -- probably until April.  That's a lot of trips to Golden Corral!