Hello Visitors of StyleJunket. This is America Peals. I am the progeny of the blog’s head mistress, my mom.It was our vision as mother and daughter, to write about something we take enormous delight in. Actually, I would help with the blog and Mom would showcase some of her creations and that of my uncle Paul’s on a nice piece of virtual real estate. You see my mother and Paul grew up in a family of 8 kids. My mother is the oldest with Paul coming in at number 3.
Now, I realize in this country everyone thinks they are an artist, a genius or a writer. I am neither here to confirm or deny this. Mom and Paul…well…they are not in their twenties living in Williamsburg living out the starving artist paradigms. They have had families, careers and yet as they came into their fifties, their creativity emerged as a more pressing endeavor for each of them. In fact, their mom, Mimi, who lives in Osterville, Cape Cod, became a poet at the age of 70; she has had worked published and despite a recent medical hiccough can be found writing like clockwork at her Dell desktop over looking Joshua’s Pond.
So, I will cut through the crap. I am going to step into the Style Junket from time to time to talk about cool widgets I pick up with my firefighter father and Jackson Pollack aficionado. I will also be ghostwriting for Paul. Paul is a master furniture maker and is infinitely more comfortable in the wood shop than at the computer. In fact, I will probably have to send him a direct link for him to read this.
Paul and I recently have come to become more close in my mid thirties, as we have reconnected wildly enough about reclaimed wood. I am addicted to design that uses the environment and creations of times long past to infuse my home with style. I have a collection of South American sand molds used to create gears and cogs for machines pre-Industrial Revolution. Anyway, I asked Paul, can you make me a table with reclaimed wood that looks like a gear?
A month later:
Entirely made of wood, it actually resembles maybe a bike gear or machine tool. Very cool and will look great in my space, as well as in someone’s city loft space.
Another table he is working on resembles a ship’s compass. The reproduced artwork gives the impression that the top is convex instead of flat. It is actually flat and he is custom fitting a glass top for it. I hope you enjoy his work and would love comments. 
Today I’ve been musing about how much I like to create the things I do. My husband has quietly watched me over the years and I thought that his only creative “juices” were to monopolize the tv remote and switch channels from game to game. Boy, was I wrong! His passion is antiquing and finding that item for a steal that makes his heart sing. The items vary with time. Sometimes its baseball memorabilia, other times it might be hotel silver, persian rugs,etc.,etc. It changes and I don’t know what inspires the change. But whatever, he finds, he cherishes.
He was amassing a stack of them. Please don’t ask me why, because I honestly don’t know. He is a mystery to me at times. I came home from work one day and saw that my garage door was open and he was merrrily splashing primary colors of paint in random patterns all over one pair of his blue jeans. I thought he had finally gone nuts! I said nothing and proceeded into the house. The only thing I could think of was Jackson Pollack creatively flinging paint to create his masterpieces. 
I finally could not control myself and teased unmercifully re: his “art”. He was proud of his work and was going to wear them the next day.
I am going to be careful that I don’t deck myself out head to toe w/ all of my animal creations for fear of being mistaken with Snuffleupagus. Trust at this point in my life, I wouldn’t be pleased AT ALL with the comparison.
