My Home Sweet Home

As many of you know I just had two of my blogging friends here visiting me in California for five days. As they entered my home they both remarked on how different my home looked in person. They had an idea of what it looked like through the images I had posted on my blog and in the Puttzer chatroom. I was surprised at how surprised they seemed to be.Well not really since I am not very good when it comes to taking pictures.

They said it was larger, more open, and brighter and lighter in person.

I am so glad they got to see it in person, but more importantly I am glad I got to spend such a fun time with them for five days!!

Since they seemed so surprised and I needed to add images for my navigation bar above I thought I would do a post that took your through my home. It is a bit lengthy and full of pictures. I hope you enjoy!!!

MY HOME:

Welcome to my sweet little piece of California Suburbia. I live in a 1970's ranch. We are the original owners, and this little home has proved to be a wonderful place to raise our three son's. It is now the home that our grandchildren come to visit, Grammy and Papa.

 This is where I sit in the mornings listening to my fountain and birds as I drink my first cup of morning coffee.

The impatiens love their spot under my bay window to the left of the porch.

You enter into my home through a full French door. I love the wonderful light that streams in first thing in the mornings.

Welcome!!!! If you look to your left you will step down into my living room with the bay window that you saw from the outside of the house...........

This room was called, "The quiet room," when I was raising my boys. We read books in here, played the piano,which has a new home now, and good visits with family and friends. I use every single room in my home!!


As we step back up into the entry we will be going to the right where we will be entering the area where we do most of our living and entertaining..........

 You can see the kitchen breakfast bar through that door. The kitchen dinette will be on your right and the U-shaped kitchen will be on your left as you enter............

It was amazing to me what a little bit of molding and paint could do to transform my 1970's kitchen into the sweet vintage look it has today. It is one of my favorite rooms to be in.

 We took out the overhead fluorescent light box (remember those?, what were we thinking back then?)
By adding stacked moldings and a vintage chandelier from the 1940's it looks totally different.

 We purchased two new glass front doors and added lighting inside. The back of the cupboard is covered with mirror for more reflection and a window-like feel. I have great fun changing out my dishes for the different seasons.

This is the look of my kitchen cupboards for the majority of the year, since all white dishes are what I use on a daily basis.


 As you continue through the kitchen you will enter into my family room. It is truly a "family" room!!

If you need to use the guest bathroom you will go back through the kitchen and you will see it straight ahead of you......

 As you continue down the hallway the first door on your right is the play room for my grandkids. It is a favorite hang-out and a great place to read books and sleep, especially in the nook with the curtain pulled. It is like their own private tent.............

 If you continue down to the end of an almost thirty foot long hallway you will enter my Master bedroom. I love to sleep in this cozy room. I am a big fan of the ocean and I wanted my room to evoke the feeling and colors of the ocean waves. I must admit I think my blood pressure lowers upon entering this room............

That is the end of our tour, but not the end of my time, "Enjoying the Process," with my loved one's in our little California suburban home.

I hope you enjoyed your visit here,

Kathysue

May I introduce............

If you read my last post on how I began my journey in blog land you know about the wonderful group of ladies in the Puttzer Chatroom!!

I asked their permission if I could share the five ladies that are actively blogging in blogland today.

First and foremost our founding sister :

Deb: Confessions of a Plate Addict (She is the brain behind our blog, and she helped me with any questions I had about the computer when I first started blogging. She is generous beyond belief.)

Marty: A Stroll Through Life ( our Eveready bunny, she can work circles around any of us. This woman has a heart of gold.)

Kat: Empty Nester (Another very hard worker and a lady to respect. She has a wonderful writing ability. I know someday she will be a published author.)

Barb: Grits and Glamour (She can get more done in a week than I could get done in three months. Her ability to talk about food, and recipes can make even me want to cook.)

Lastly I must include a non-blogger. I met her on Rate My Space, and she was my first real internet friend. We shared the front page at RMS, her kitchen and my bathroom......

 I guess you could say we were drawn together by our rooms to begin with. We traveled to Micasa together and we remain close friends to this day.

You all might remember her from this image:

Her kitchen has the all time most views over at Rate My Space, totaling 656,006. I would say, they really loved her kitchen wouldn’t you? The lady behind this kitchen is even more lovely, warm and inviting than her kitchen. If you would like to go and visit her page to see more of her lovely home, you can go HERE!

Without the encouragement of each of these ladies I would not be blogging today. Words can not describe how much each and every Puttzer means to me.

Thank you to all of you for following along with me on my journey in blog land. Blogging is much more than sharing words, and images it is the connections that keep us going on the days we might not feel like writing.

As long as you keep reading I will keep writing!!

Kathysue Is Going to:

“Enjoy the Process,” for a very long time!

The Story Of How It All Began!

I am back in blog land ready to start blogging again after my brief one week intermission. As many of you read I took my intermission because I was going to be entertaining two blogging friends here at my home  in California.



What only a few of you know is the story of how we all became friends. This post is going to tell you of my wonderful journey of a destiny that would attach me to a wonderful group of ladies.....

Three years ago HGTV had a show called Rate My Space. I am sure many of you will remember the days of RMS. With the introduction of the show on television there was also an online site for HGTV where homeowners would post images of rooms in their homes hoping to be chosen for a makeover, or as the inspiration room for a makeover.

I loved to see the makeovers and also the beautiful rooms that were chosen as inspiration for the homeowners that were in need of help in designing a beautiful room. The show was hosted by Angelo Surmelis. He was a delightful host that set the mood for the whole show with his enthusiasm, and ease of design.

After watching the show for quite awhile, I decided to post my kitchen. I felt I did a fairly good job using inexpensive, and good ideas to redo a 1970’s kitchen. In fact my title for my kitchen was, “ A 1970’s Redo!”

This is the interesting part, I had never even turned on a computer at that time.

Luckily I have a very supportive hubby, and he helped me along the way.

After just a few hours of posting my rooms I had received very positive comments, and wound up on  the front page, which I found out later was a really exciting thing to happen. Remember I have no idea what I am doing here.

As time went along I posted more rooms in my home and truly was, “Enjoying the Process.”

In my comments I received a comment from a lady who invited me to visit her blog. I did not pay much attention, since I was such a newbie, and had no idea what a blog was.

I then received another invitation from another lady. Well, if two ladies with homes I had admired invited me to the blog thingy, I guess I should check it out.

The first invitation came from Susan from, “Between Naps on the Porch.” The second invitation came from Cindy from “My Romantic Home,” blog.

I had NO idea this world even existed!! For a design enthusiast this was like a kid in a candy store. I don’t have to tell any of you out there how exciting my new journey was, because I know you all have had somewhat the same experience when you made your own discoveries about blog land.

As time went by I was beginning to realize that there were a lot of nice, like-minded people on-line.

I am not sure how or why, but I received an invitation to join another online site called Micasa. It was much smaller than RMS, which by this time had become a whole different place due to some not so nice people.

I was lucky in that I had never been attacked with unkind comments, but I had seen others that became a target of these not so nice people (they were called trolls by some.)

I posted rooms on the Micasa website, much like I did on the RMS site.  Comments were left by some very nice ladies on my rooms, as well as  other member’s rooms.

As time passed we seemed to be developing a kinship with one another. I would look forward to my morning cup of coffee as I would log onto Micasa. It actually became somewhat of a chat room. We would laugh about having our morning coffee in each others, bathrooms, bedrooms, etc. Not physically, but mentally as we would post our comments under the pictures of each others rooms.

Over the months we became closer, and closer. One dreaded day we all received the announcement that Micasa would be closing their site, due to lack of interest.

OH NO!!! what would we do? None of us had each other's email addresses. You don’t post your email address in a public online forum. We were all afraid we would lose touch. This just could not happen, what  a sad thing it would be to not correspond with these wonderful ladies.

As luck would  have it, there was one very smart lady that took it upon herself to open a private chat room that we all could continue to meet up with our morning cups of coffee.

She posted an email address where we could all contact her and give her our email addresses. She would close the email address after we were all notified. It was all settled we were about to start a new journey in our very own private chat room.

We had to have a name to call our group, and also we needed an avatar. Throughout our many months of corresponding on Micasa I would refer to my plans for the day as Puttzing. The definition of puttzing around the house is a day full of, wearing sweats, a ponytail, no make-up and just doing as little, or as much of the household chores as I wanted to do. Puttzing days are actually my favorite days of the week.

The other ladies came to  refer to their own days around their homes as a puttzing kind of day also. Soooooo…. We will be called the Puttzer’s!! Since our day always started with our first cup of coffee, and a good conversation among the ladies, our brilliant founder thought a coffee cup would make for a perfect avatar.

The Puttzer’s now had a place to continue cultivating our ever growing friendship. That was three years ago………..

Since that time I have had the privilege of meeting in person four ladies in our group. The first time was when hubby and I planned a trip to meet up with two of the Puttzer’s in North Carolina. I will never forget seeing them for the very first time.

We made plans to meet at a B&B in the town we were visiting, Asheville North Carolina.

As we pulled our car up the graveled driveway, there they were!!! Two beautiful ladies glowing with amazing smiles and jumping up and down like school girls.

I told my Hubby to STOP the car, I had to get out. We looked at each other, squealed with delight, cried, looked at each other hugged and squealed some more.

It is so hard to articulate this type of experience, but if you have had the pleasure of writing someone, and having a long distance relationship, and then meeting, you know exactly what I am talking about.

I finally got to meet two of my Puttzer ladies!!! We started talking and did not stop for 3 days, or since, for that matter.

The following year we were invited by one of our ladies who owned a beach house  for another Puttzer meeting. I flew out to North Carolina, this time by myself, and met her for the first time, plus the other two ladies that I had met the year before. We were together for five wonderful days in a beautiful little beach town. It was as if we had never been apart, we picked up where we left off just  like we had been sorority sisters.

I had never been on an East coast beach, so it was a first for me, and one experience I will never forget. I also got to see my very first  firefly. As my southern hostess explained to her husband, my reaction, “She is just giddy!!” (in the cutest Southern accent!) She was right, I was giddy and full of delight with my whole experience.

This brings us to my recent intermission………..

Two of our Puttzer’s flew to California to stay with me for five fun filled days. One lady I have had the pleasure of spending time with on the previous visits. The other lady I had never met in person so this was her first experience of meeting any of the Puttzers. Again……… we hugged, cried, laughed and jumped up and down at the airport.

We started talking and never quit except for sleeping, which we got very little of for 5 fun filled days in California.

(I will post more about their visit in up-coming post.)

That brings us to today…..Since starting the chat room we now have five ladies that are actively blogging. It is because of the encouragement of these wonderful ladies that I started blogging. I am forever grateful to them for all their support and encouragement. Half of us have met each other, and we are planning future visits so that someday ALL The Puttzer’s will have met each other.

Just think if I had never taken that first leap into cyber space at RMS? I would have never had this amazing journey, or would have never met these amazing ladies.

We are beyond friends we are,  The Puttzer Family and I for one can say I am very proud,happy, and honored to be a member!!!

Kathysue is still: 

“ Enjoying the Process!”

BTW: Come back for my next post where I will introduce you to the Puttzers that are bloggers!!