Artists are different. 

Artists are in a perpetual search for inspiration... for beauty, joy, light, magic. 

Artists are inventive, expressive, adventurous, and intuitive with an overwhelming desire to share their world. 

I am such an artist. 

Each Friday, I'll share with you a few beautiful, delicious, intriguing treasures I'm grateful to have discovered.

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♥  Sunlight, warmth, long days

I love hanging laundry on the line on a warm, sunny afternoon. The aroma of rose, honeysuckle and privet are nearby, and it just feels like the linens soak up the sunshine.   If I could create my own signature perfume collection, one of the fragrances would be a combination of rose, honeysuckle and privet. 

♥  Air Conditioning

My father tells the story of the first car he ever saw that came equipped with air conditioning. It was a tangle of pipes and wires and cogs coiled in the back. He thought to himself, "I hope I never see the day when I am such a pansy, I have to have air conditioning in my car."  Now he, like most everyone else, wouldn't consider a car without it, let alone a House. My house was built in 1921 and didn't have air conditioning, but there are tall ceilings and lots of windows. I often imagine what it was like without it. 

♥  Paper Straws

Recently I switched over to metal straws at my house. I was forever dropping and breaking the hard plastic, reusable ones, and I thought I was doing something really good for the environment. That is until a friend of mine from California said I need to switch to paper straws. I remember paper straws from my youth that would collapse as soon as you started sucking your Coca-cola, but then I found these vintage-inspired chintz ones. Aren't they adorable??

They are completely biodegradable and won't kill any wildlife or sea animals.

♥  Cornflag

The house next to mine was the original farmhouse to the farm where our neighborhood was built. In fact, my neighbor who lived there said it was her husband's grandparents house built in 1880. Ms Bobby is gone now and the house has been sold to a young man who is restoring it, adding air conditioning, and bringing it back to life after having been closed when Ms Bobby moved to a nursing home years ago. 

Matthew knows I like flowers and gardening and was taking me on a tour of his roses and azaleas one afternoon, and said that this summer his favorite flower would bloom. He didn't know the name or when it would bloom, so we've been anxiously awaiting its return. Turns out it is the Cornflag, a graceful variety of Gladiola.

♥  iTunes 

Talk radio and a variety of podcasts are my first choice of listening when driving or in the studio painting.  Music has always been a minor, mood-setting, part of the background. That is until I decided to create a playlist on my phone of happy, sing-along, fun songs to listen to while I walk Lily Belle in the mornings. On iTunes, you can basically search for any song and purchase it for about $1.  Think back over the decades. What songs stand out as fun, make you want to jump up and dance songs?  Here are a few I chose....

Swing the Mood

Sweet Caroline, 

Let it Shine 

Magic

Afternoon Delight

Stand by Your Man

Somewhere Over the Rainbow

Candyman

A Little Less Conversation

Moma Told me not to come

♥  Blue

Whether it's Robin's Egg Blue or Porch Ceiling Blue, the color blue has brought a lot of joy this week. With all the flowers and fruit trees in my garden, we've attracted lots of birds and bees to Windy Acre Cottage. As much as I love to have them here, and set out feeders for them, I don't like them building nests on the porch or in the hanging ferns.

While visiting Natchez, Mississippi, several years ago I observed that the stately antebellum homes painted their porch ceilings the color of the sky to deter birds from building nests about the swings and rockers where the residents spent ample time in the late afternoons and evenings. 

A visit to Sherwin-Williams resulted in the selection of a variety of blue paint swatches that I took outside to determine which one was the best color to represent the sky and paint on the ceiling of my porch. After several considerations, I decided on the color that matched the best. The name of this mysterious sky color? Porch Ceiling Blue.  

And here are a few of the beautiful, delicious, intriguing treasures you are grateful for and shared with me last week.

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♥   a Perfect Sunset

Susan Confehr shared a photo from Nokomis Beach, Florida, of a beautiful sunset.

♥   Iris

Linda Dean shared a photo of a beautiful Iris that blooms at her daughter's house in California. 

♥   Pride and Prejudice

Colleen Farrell is grateful for the re-airing of the 1990 BBC special "Pride and Prejudice" starring a young Colin Firth on PBS on Thursday evenings. And who doesn't love Colin Firth?

Count your blessings! Name them one by one!!