Do you ever have those dreams where you’re in a house you’re not supposed to be in, and then you get caught? Or almost caught? Boy, I hope someone says “yes.” I have those dreams all the time–which worries me sometimes, in that I’m pretty sure I’ve never done that in real life. Until, that is, I happened upon this quaint Upcountry ranch… I know, I’m being a nosey neighbor, but hey, the door was open…

In looking at what interior decorator Ellie dubs the “ultimate Hawaii homestead”—Oprah’s Upcountry hale—I think, what is that? Could the great Oprah possibly have a faux deer at the entry of her house? Seems a little Bass Pro, to me.

More likely, she paid a real deer to stand there for the photo. Deer are hard up these days too. Then, I looked closer. It was a horse. Not just some horse, but some sort of Clydesdale (I’m guessing, I don’t know much ‘bout horses, but I do know a little about beer… bad beer, apparently).

To have confused a horse for a deer, my perspective on home sizes is clearly not calibrated to the Oprah scale. Especially when, “[Oprah] liked [the home’s] small scale… She already has a large home in Santa Barbara—this seems to go back to something real and personal. It’s a great house for her and two or three friends,” says a September 2008 article in O, The Oprah Magazine.

Scaled down, I suppose, but the horses also have a home inside–so it can’t be that small. “On one of their shopping trips, a late-19th-century American weather vane in the shape of a galloping horse caught Oprah’s eye, and Ellie made it the centerpiece of the room.”

“At first, Ellie and her team researched Hawaiian fabrics and antiques, thinking that the rooms should reflect the locale. But that wasn’t what Oprah had in mind,” says the article. “They came with pineapple doodads and big flower things. They had everything but a hula skirt,” she recalls. “I said, ‘Whoa! If I want to see Hawaii, I’ll just walk out my door.'””

See it in all it’s hula skirtless glory, with Oprah inviting you inside with a 10 page slideshow, at oprah.com

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