Thursday, January 10, 2008

Island living

As mentioned previously we stayed with good friends during the rental, and here are a few pictures from their house. The design is very open with characteristics people associate with island living.

Up first, their view, which is above all the number one thing people want when they are searching for a home on the island, everyone wants to be able to gaze at the ocean. Here is a shot from their kitchen, the arch is highlighted with old brick and is open through to their deck:




I'm standing on the deck for this shot, you can see their dining table (still decorated for New Year's Eve), and their view which is clearly spectacular:




Another staple for islanders is dogs. A lot of people keep dogs outside for both protection (locals don't want to deal with dogs) and also to keep away the creepy crawlies such as rats, lizards etc. Here is a shot of our friends' two pooches, they both heard something outside and immedately stuck their heads out to see what was going on. The house is built on a hill (big surprise, there's hills everywhere here) and the driveway is many steps down from where the dogs are, so in this picture they're looking towards the driveway:




From the driveway it's cute to see their heads poke out to see who you are; it's also intimidating as hell when you realize they're now bounding down the stairs with you as their target. The little one is fine, he's just hyper and jumpy, but the big one? He has rottweiler in him, and some mastiff (I think), and I was frozen the first time he came to say 'hi'. However after staying there we got to know them and they're both dolls. I also found it reassuring knowing they were out there.

When you live in a climate that is warm all the year 'round you will inevitably find yourself at a plant nursery at some point. There are some kick-ass plants, flowers and palms that grow around here, and our friends have a ton of plants around their property. Here is a shot from their couch looking at another part of their deck (and yeah...that's our Guitar Hero on the floor - we brought it with us for New Year's competition):




They have plants in pots, plants in the ground, plants in hanging planters - it makes for a cool look as you make your way up the stairs to their front door.

The last shot has nothing to do with island life - but it cracks me up; their kitten throwing caution to the wind as she hiked herself up on their screen to get closer to something that caught her eye:





Daredevil.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm trying to think up a hilarious caption to that cat picture. It just won't come.

I loooove the sound of island life. I told my husband I really wanted to live in Hawaii or somewhere like that one day. He scoffed, but I was serious. I could definitely handle a bikini-and-sarong uniform year round. He says "maybe when we're retired," and I'm like - dude, I would prefer to rock the bikini now (well, not exactly this minute, but a few months post baby!) and not wait til my boobs are in my shoes.

Leah said...

hey good to "see" you! nice little blog you've got going here. i like the pictures. i'd like to use more pictures in mine too, but sometimes it seems like to much work to remember to take them, download them, sort them, blah blah blah ... ya know.

about the contacts, i did buy a 6 month supply that i stretched out to last a year, but i was down to almost the end of my supply. of course it's the new year now and my insurance will cover more now, i just haven't done anything about it yet. so i guess i'm not allowed to complain anymore haha.