About Me

About Me
Hi, I'm Angela, also Angie, and Angi. I'm thrilled that you came to visit my blog, Southwest Cottage Designs, a place of home and garden interests. I love flowers and love to take pictures of them in each season. Fall is my favorite season, but I enjoy observing plants, flowers, and birds in every season. It's all so fascinating to me.
The home I often refer to is a cabin type of cottage in a high desert area of the Southwest surrounded by beautiful mountains and cacti. You'll find articles about a cabin/cottage fixer upper, RV living, flowers, gardening, home decor, seasonal interests, and things related to home and family. Other than the photos of flowers and other types of nature, I take pictures of special dishes of recipes I create (see more about food at my kitchen blog). I enjoy exploring interesting places with my hubby, coffee shops, unique, antique, and thrift shops, visiting tea rooms, and reading.

I enjoy blogging and other nonfiction writing such as articles and memoirs. I've written a collection of WWII and OSS (forerunner to the CIA) memoirs, Phantom Seven, a self-published book scheduled to be released through WinePress Publishing in 2011. I'm a member of the California Writer's Club, a critique group, and previous member of the Golden Triangle Writer's Guild. I type and edit manuscripts and coach beginning and intermediate bloggers on blog tips, blog set-up, and post articles on various blogs. My most recent blog is about people and places in the High Desert of So Cal.

I am proof that you can return to college for a degree later in life. My preacher dad agreed to let me marry at 20 if I would promise him that I would finish my college degree. It took me years of attending various colleges, working part time and assisting my husband in leadership while he was a pastor of a church in Texas, starting our business in Southeast Texas, traveling across the country with my husband and daughter in ministry work for nine years, and finally graduating from Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas in 2004 with a bachelor's degree in General Studies with emphasis on business, family and consumer science, and sociology. Yes, it took years, but I did it. My dad and  mother both attended the graduation.

I love to receive comments from current followers and new visitors to my blog. Thank you for visiting Southwest Cottage Designs.