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Where flamingos are Christmas decor

By ELIZABETH BETTENDORF
Published December 29, 2006

APOLLO BEACH - Who hasn't leafed through a magazine, spotted their dream home, and longed for a cottage on the Maine coast or an apartment overlooking New York's Central Park?

For Steve and Debbie Wenz, dreaming was only the beginning.

Flipping through Coastal Living magazine two years ago, Debbie spotted a house in MiraBay, a unique waterfront development of picturesque Key West-influenced homes in Apollo Beach.

At the time, the couple were living in San Luis Obispo, a pretty college town on California's central coast.

They liked it well enough but were looking for a warmer climate and wanted to live close to a major airport and good hospitals.

"We came down and looked around," Debbie Wenz recalled, "and we were enchanted. It was so unbelievable that a place like this existed. I mean, look at this. Where else would we go?"

So, in 2005, the couple bought their dream house in MiraBay, one very much like the model they had seen in the magazine: a 4,100-square-foot, four-bedroom, four-bath home on a serene lagoon.

"Every day, we get up and say we live in paradise," she said. Like her husband, she is a native of the West but now shivers at the mere thought of snow.

College sweethearts, they've been married 30 years. When he took her to his small Wyoming hometown to meet his parents, the temperature plunged to well below zero. They display his grandmother's snowshoes - she was a cook on cattle drives - in the front hallway as a tribute to the chilly climate they left behind.

"They say California is warm, but it's really not," Debbie said. "The Pacific Ocean is way too cold for swimming."

The Wenzes' two-story yellow house, with a charming front porch and water views, is decked out for Christmas with Debbie Wenz's usual artistic zeal: an evergreen wreath she embellished with a wooden pink flamingo, palm fronds and plenty of tulle ribbon in her theme colors: pink, lime green and turquoise.

The house has a small pool and a screened lanai spacious enough for an indoor-outdoor living area where she built a holiday tiki bar with a grass skirt, pink canopy and flamingo lights inspired by a Martha Stewart creation. "I love Martha!" she said with a laugh.

Tulle bows adorn the backs of dining room chairs. Her handmade felt stockings hang from a banister, including two for their children, Matthew, 22, and Ashleigh, 17, and three for the family dogs, Bugsy, Capone and Ozzie.

"I wanted my own take on Christmas. I call it 'fun Florida,' " said the artist who owns a kiln and makes ceramic "big buttons" in tropical shapes for straw purses, flip-flops and pillows. For Christmas, she made ceramic reindeer napkin rings to match the Pottery Barn reindeer dinnerware collection her sister adds to each year.

For Steve Wenz, who runs a hedge fund and works from home, the best part is getting to sit in the great room by the Christmas tree. He points out the mosaic breakfast table and bar that his wife made.

Above the table, whimsical flamingo ornaments dangle from a chandelier, tied with pink ribbons. Debbie Wenz recently hosted a potluck and ornament exchange for "The MiraBay Girls," a group of 34 friends she has made since moving to the community.

"What I love most is the people. I've made dozens of friends," she said.

Steve Wenz agrees. "The people are great," he said. "It's country living but still close to the city."

The couple are involved with boating and kayaking clubs, and Debbie Wenz has joined a group that focuses on community volunteering. She's also an altar server at St. Anne's Catholic Church in Ruskin.

They make good use of the lanai, which is cooled year-round by breezes from the lagoon.

"I love to open the slider and feel the outdoors coming in," she said. "We don't get any of the harsh sun because of the direction the lanai faces, so we can really be out here all day."

The lanai features an outdoor kitchen and fireplace. She decorated the space with comfortable, all-weather furniture and recently sewed striped beige and white canvas curtains separating the living area.

"I wanted them to look like canvas boat sails," she said.

A talented seamstress, she converted an upstairs bedroom into a sewing studio. She decorated the room with a whimsical upholstered chair and a mannequin wearing a tulle skirt, her own creation. The view looks out over the lagoon and pool, her daily reminder that she lives in paradise.

For Christmas, she asked for her kiln to be rewired so she could throw herself back into her business, California Clayworks.

Her big, colorful ceramic buttons depict fish, starfish, flamingos, beach chairs, Christmas trees, palm trees and other tropical images that look great on any kind of accessory - home or fashion.

The only catch is that she might have to change the name of her fledgling cottage industry.

To Florida Clayworks.

They're here to stay, the Wenzes said.

"We love it here a million times more than California," Debbie Wenz said. "It's like we died and went to heaven. There is nowhere better to live."

Elizabeth Bettendorf can be reached at ebettendorf@hotmail.com.

[Last modified December 28, 2006, 11:26:55]