beyond cinderella

Now that Bill and I are all settled in at San Tan Mountain Regional Park, and loving every minute of our new lifestyle as full-time RVer’s… I wanted to start working on adding a few “creature” comforts to our patio area. With the beautiful winter weather we enjoy in Arizona, which is why we want to always spend our winters here, we want to take advantage of every minute we can get outside…

After all, just look at the views we have from our park host site.

From every angle, all around our host site, we enjoy these views… And, at night, it is even more beautiful as the lights of the San Tan Valley try to compete with the beautiful desert sky… It’s magical…

Our new neighbors, Evelyn and Terry, one of three other park host couples here at San Tan, just arrived last week. What a fun couple they are. All I can say is it is already shaping up to be a really fun-filled winter season here at San Tan!

Evelyn and Terry were barely parked, and hooked-up, before they started decorating their patio with all sorts of potted flowers, lights, etc. to make their outdoor living space more comfortable and beautiful… The RV they live in is what is called a fifth-wheel that they pull with their truck. As you can see their fifth-wheel has multiple slide-outs that expand the inside living space just like our motorhome has. And just under the front of their RV was a perfect place for a pot of flowers..

They also have potted climbing plants and other potted plants placed all along the front side of their RV patio.. Sarah, the park supervisor, said we can have all the potted plants we want but we can’t plant anything in the ground… The park is in the process of planting trees and other desert plants within the park host sites for us to enjoy and to add shade to our sites… She also warned us that if we decide to put out plants, we take a risk of rabbits and other creatures coming by to enjoy our “creature” comforts as a free meal…

Well, I thought Evelyn and Terry’s potted plants looked lovely. Especially at night when the rope lights they placed all around them are on…

However, I have NEVER had any luck keeping plants of any kind alive… But I still wanted some pretty flowers to perk up our patio area, but I was not going to spend a lot of money for something that if I didn’t eventually kill it, the rabbits or other critters would… So what to do…? Off to Walmart of course where I found all these pretty flowers for a grand total of $7.76.

I brought them home and was lucky enough to find a cinderblock brick behind the maintenance shed. I turned the cinderblock so the two holes were on top and placed my silk flowers in the holes… and WALA… I have a mini-flower bed…

When I saw our neighbors Evelyn and Terry the next day, Evelyn said she noticed my pretty potted flowers and told me that she thought my flowers were so beautiful she was going to “flower-nap” them and add them to her potted flower collection…. Of course she didn’t come close enough to really investigate them, or touch them, or she would have known they were silk flowers… She laughed and laughed when I told her they were fake.. 🙂

So now our little patio area has potted flowers that not only give us “creature comfort”, but also keep the critters from having a “creature comfort” buffet out of any live plants I might have purchased…

And for $7.76, I think they add a mini welcoming touch to our outdoor space… What do you think?

Stay Tuned!