Renaissance Man

Yesterday Steve and I drove to Ojai to visit a young man we haven't seen since he went off to college 30 years ago.

We parked beneath a giant oak tree and entered a property alive with creativity.

Scott began taking pottery classes when he was an engineering student at the University of California San Diego.

He worked as a mechanical engineer for 7 years, but this Renaissance Man needed to be working with his hands.

For the last 20 years Scott has been honing his craft.

Seven years ago Scott moved to Ojai, California and bought a piece of property 

that is a work in process.

An old barn sits at the back of the property

and I hope he never touches this chippy goodness.

I am curious what plans he has for the outhouse.

The potter's wheel is in the main house, but there is so much more going on outside.

This is the wall of one of the work spaces - the vines that appear decorative are actually hops he grows for making beer.

Two different varieties of his three world class home brews were tasted.

I remember Scott as a teenager interested in space camp and surfing so I was totally surprised to get a glimpse of Scott's varied interests.

He recently finished building this kiln using his engineering skills.

He is refurbishing a guest house on the property by himself,

but it's taking a lot of time

because Scott is making every single tile for the kitchen himself.

He made this beautiful hollow, wooden stand up paddle board in the style of Tom Blake.

He raises chickens and grows veggies -

of course I love the color palette of his crops.

The gardener in me fell in love with his flowers -

 how about these sunflowers!

Before we left, we strolled through this building to pick something out and I was torn between white or colors.

We settled on this beautiful two toned jug.

It was so fun to reconnect with someone who was just 18 years old when we last chatted.

And, we hope he invites us back for homemade pizza from the outdoor pizza oven he built.

 You can check out Scott Chatenever's work at Village Potter.

little by little . . .

 

Little by little,

I am ticking off things off the list.

The yard looked like this last week

but you can see that I have made some changes.

The first change was to move the yellow cupboard from the porch to the hallway and give it a new paint job.

This old cabinet has been many colors over the 35 years I have owned it and this time I created a mint green using Annie Sloan Chalk Paint in Antibes, Pure White and Marine Blue.

A touch of yellow peeks out on the edges

and a little bird knob graces the front of the cabinet.

We are planning to paint the walls white, but for now I am content with the green cabinet against yellow walls.

The reason I wanted the cabinet inside the house was to store placemats and table runners - the pottery was added for fun!

The removal of the cabinet from the porch led to moving the baker's rack from the side yard.

I tried a lot of different items on the shelves until I settled on pottery.

While I was painting the cabinet, Steve was working on another project on the list.

A friend gave us this bench in January and Steve freshened it up with a couple of coats of polyurethane.

Another project on the list was to spice up the vintage window hanging on the wall.

My hand is healed enough that I can sew once again and it took just a few minutes to sew up a little  banner I stenciled.

The area was finished off with an old ladder that got bumped from the living room.

The curtain for the garage door is finished and

 tomorrow I am tackling the "jungle" in the garden.

With only 7 items left on the list and 2 weeks to go before JP's graduation party,

life is definitely good!

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