Leslie Heuer of Long Beach, Calif., has lived in her Cliff May ranch-style home for 10 years, slowly restoring it while working with the original design. After taking a look at her Flickr photo gallery, we decided to pick her brain about her inspiration, her furniture, and her very cool avocado tree.

What do you use this area for? "This is the area between our master bath and the bedroom closet. All the bedroom closets in the house are free-standing, large boxes built into the room. This closet acts as a privacy wall to the bathroom and has this little nook. It has the original built-in shelf with drawers, and I put a display shelf above it. These ranchos are lacking in storage space, so you have to get creative. The shelf holds my perfume, jewelry and thrift store finds, mostly anything breakable to keep out of reach of the kids."

This is a cute room. Where did you pull together the furnishings? "This is a corner of our main living area we use as our dining room. The table is from Modernica, and I found these matching chairs on ebay. The seller changed the seat covers to blue and even gave us the extra fabric. They are kid-friendly, industrial strength and made of vinyl. The light fixture was another ebay find; we have a few of these Sputnik lamps, even in the bathroom! At night they look magical from the outside looking in through all the windows."

Why did you decide to plant black bamboo? "It's extremely easy. We had it in one corner of the backyard and liked it so much we planted the 'forest' along the side yard. It is a running bamboo rather than clumping, so I am a little nervous about how aggressive it will be. So far it is filling in nicely and is virtually zero maintenance. I love the contrast of black poles and lime green leaves. My father still has groves of bamboo around his house that have lived for more than 25 years. I have fond memories of playing in and around bamboo as a child."

Nice avocado tree. What do you use the fruit for? "Honestly, the avocado tree was one of the main reasons I fell in love with this house. It has amazing, HUGE avocados that are so delicious. I am a vegetarian and these are truly the 'steak' of my world. One year there were so many, I admit I made avocado pie and avocado ice cream (neither were any good), but it was fun to look up recipes for avocados on the Internet. My daughters and I have packed them into our jogging stroller to hand out to neighbors on our walks, and we have made many friends this way. Sometimes I find a bag of lemons or other garden treats on my doorstep as thanks. The only problem is the non-stop dropping of leaves on our patio. This tree drives my husband insane, but year after year we relish the gift of free avocados. I have even given boxes out as Christmas presents!"

What do the kids do here? "The kids' section of the garage is used for painting and organizing kid friendly crafts. Our garage was built with two narrow doors rather than one large door, and it is clear it has never had a car in it (no car can possibly fit in either side). We love the look of the two doors so we converted one side into storage and added a side door to the other side. I designated a section for the kids so they can draw and paint while I work on my own stuff. I love it because they can make a huge mess, and I don't have to worry about it. We can also open up the large door and get a nice breeze going in the summer."  

Tell us about the lamp. "This was one of the first purchases I ever made at our local flea market. I really love it! We went on a lamp-buying spree for several years and bought about a dozen vintage mid-century modern lamps, some from ebay and some from the Long Beach Vets Stadium Antique Market held monthly in our area. This was more of a '70s style but I loved the green and the cutouts. It is ceramic with paper in the cutouts. The ranchos have high clerestory windows, and at night you can see the lamp glowing from the street."

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