Sunday, September 4, 2011

Farewell Florida!


























Farewell for now Florida Home.  We arrived back In Toronto on Friday to hot and steamy weather to find cat and daughter both well and happy to see us. I am already missing the gorgeous Florida kitchen with it's custom cherry cabinets and granite counters....and the space.....much bigger than our kitchen here in our 1979 suburban home.  It's hard to believe that the Florida house is worth half what ours here is....it seems so much nicer and better finished.  We were lucky to be able to buy it in a depressed market.  

The granite is called "Blue Eyes" and comes from the Arctic Canada...only harvested a few months a year.  It has bright blue chunks of some stone that gleams a bright blue...like blue eyes...through the stone.





The clock above is the "Roost" clock made from recycled aluminum bits....Again the window sills in this house provide the perfect place to display my Bits....this window houses my Crown jars.....some are 90 years old.


And this is the garden.....the elephant fountain will become a feature in the one-day pool....and it is full of lizards ......everywhere you move there's one...or more.  This one below is the brown kind....the black ones look very evil.....they apparently eat lots of bugs so are a good thing.... 



A lot of the historic houses here have alley in the back where the garage or parking pad is.  Originally built as a carriage house, this house has a very large set back from the road and really no backyard.  Thus the front yard is really the back yard.....this fence will be replaced with black wrought iron as it makes the house feel like a walled compound when you can;t see the street. 

20 comments:

  1. Gorgeous kitchen! No fair that homes in what I consider vacation spots are cheaper than where we live! You are lucky to have a second home!

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  2. A lovely house.The time seems to have flown. Quite sad you have to leave it for a while but Spring will soon come around again. Chania - the house with your name on it. I love the picture of the lizard too.

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  3. I love that blue-flecked granite - like butterfly wings, eh?

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  4. It just goes to show... I love an enclosed garden for the privacy, and find suburban open front lawns quite sinister! I long to turn them all into potagers~

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  5. You should print out and frame that photo of the jars in the window! Loved that! Your kitchen in Florida is spacious and well laid out. You will do lots of entertaining there, I'm sure.
    Brenda

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  6. Great !!..i like the crown jars!!!!!!!!!!!! wowwwwwww.......love from me....xxx...

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  7. The kitchen is gorgeous! I love the story of the granite. When are you renting it out???

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  8. I agree, that kitchen would be very difficult to leave! I do like your "jungle" :)

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  9. Love that kitchen Chania! And your yard looks very familiar to me as ours is quite lush at the height of the summer. Learn to love the insect-eating lizards. They are everywhere! Ann

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  10. chania!! i am just lovin your forida home!!! gorgeous kitchen indeedy!! and those window sills are fabulous...your crown jars look great....i cherish the one you sent to me last fall. o.k. if that is the "carriage house, then i wonder what the main house looks like? the gardens look so very tropical and florida-ee...love, love, LOVE.
    erin
    xxoo

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  11. Hello Dear,

    I can see you are going to pine for this home and anxiously await each return visit. It's lovely, so happy for you guys. <3
    xx
    z

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  12. Beautiful house! Love the old jars. I have a Blue Ribbon Coffee jar that my grandmother gave me many years ago when I first got married. It was to put my grated Romano cheese in. It is still in the fridge, empty now because I grate my cheese fresh these days. But I love the jar and would never give it away.
    I also got some jars from my mom for canning and noticed there are some really old ones that she must have gotten from her mother. They still work fine with the rubber rings for canning my tomato sauce.

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  13. If you want, I'll hang out at your house while you're in tropical Toronto.
    m.

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  14. All righty then,you ready to rent?tehehe
    ~Jo

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  15. I've just caught up on your time in Florida, Chania. Wow. Wow.Wow. You guys have been so busy and your new place is looking fantastic. It would've been really hard to leave. You know how much I love all your collected pieces. Those crown jars are just amazing too. xxx

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  16. It must have been so hard to leave! Love your little lizard friends, and your jar collection is fantastic.

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  17. It's such a lovely place - it must have been so difficult to leave! I love the coziness of the front garden and that red Muskoka chair just draws you in. :)

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  18. I just love your Florida home Chania...you have refurbished it with such flare. Can't wait to see the new fence.

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  19. What a lovely place! When do you get to go back down? Kit

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  20. Wow. That really is a fabulous kitchen. As someone born and raised in Florida {Tampa} I can attest to the cheap real estate.

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I love to read each and every comment and are thrilled that you take the time to send one. Thank you so much. Chania