Decorate

Thursday was a cold rainy pretty awful icky fall day which was bound to happen. So I am turned my thoughts to inside stuff.

First off after doing the outside stuff, I sat down and worked on my budget. You have no idea how absolutely droll that is. Well, you probably do know.

Then I went to the grocery store and gasped at prices like everyone else is doing these days. No meat in my cart and it was still $$$.

I came home to do some deep cleaning, organizing, putting summer stuff away and 👇

adding a few touches of fall here and there.

I went out in the rain and cut some flowers to put on the sideboard too. There is a Frost Advisory for areas around us. 

The afternoon got so gloomy that I decided to take my 'Ghost Train' set and try some photography with it.

The set is a 3 in 1 creation set. Last year I built the haunted mansion and enjoyed it. 

The set has 3 alternate builds. House, Ship, and Train.

During last winter, I took it apart and built the haunted ship. A few weeks ago, I took everything apart again and built the haunted train.

I didn't take a lot of photos of the Mansion or the Ship, but I figured to give the Train a good effort to see if I could come up with something interesting for Halloween photography.

To add the moon, I took an old photo from this spring and dropped it in the black above the train. I really didn't do a fantastic job at lighting everything properly, but it was a fun effort.

I need to learn some more tricks and tips at doing this sort of thing. 

Learning is the thing that keeps my brain functioning.

I re-arranged things again and took a snap with my cell phone. This was so much better! 

Table top photography is something I like to study on Fall/Winter evenings.

Lego sent me a gift when I purchased a new set a while ago. It is Halloween themed also.

A spooky tree the lights up when you push a button in the back of it. For the photo I taped the button on so I wouldn't have to hold it.

The 'fog' effect is from a Face Mister that spits out a light mist. I placed it behind the little light I used to light up the ghost from the left.

I got frustrated by not being able to light up the little witch on the right properly. 

Instead of figuring it all out, I just quit.

I needed to move on.

I took apart the Haunted Train and put it away. Next year in September I'll bring the bricks back out and rebuild the Haunted House and add the Spooky Tree to the set. 

Before all of my creative juices ran out for the gloomy day, I rearranged my favorite planter with some fake flowers and real pumpkins.

Once I get started arranging things, I often do more arranging. Besides, it was pouring down a hard rain outside.

Now the tree has something to smile about.

My other planter looks a bit more grumpy. Maybe it is because the twin sister witches were creating spells near him.

I'll have to go out and pick more flowers this afternoon, they just changed the Frost Advisory to a Freeze Warning.

It will warm up again next week so there is more outdoor fall to enjoy.

I can't believe it already the middle of October.

Toy Time!

My set up on a craft table in the house. 

The photo of Princess Sara arriving at King John's castle with her entourage of elves.

Poor Princess Sara, I've left her wandering about on her Quest for nearly two years! 

Here she gets ready to meet with King John along with the Little Red Dragon and Stick Horse.

It just dawned on me that this Princess has never been without her Stick Horse. I've decided that Stick Horse must be an integral part of the story. Is Stick Horse an advisor? I bet he is! He never has left her side since her Quest began so long ago!

Who can resist the mysteries with a Princess, a Dragon, a Stick Horse, a King, and Wizards?

It has been a long 'dry' year for all the enjoyment I used to have with my Legos and Toys. Princess Sara, The Odd Brothers, Homeless Joe, and so many others.

Fall seems the best time ever to bring them out and explore some imagination.

I'm looking forward to Fall!

Busy is a busy does

I've been working with a magnet, a rake, and a broom to clean up the concrete slab and the small bits of metal that are in the dirt around it. The 'good stuff' that was hidden in the garage included old rusted coffee cans full of old rusted nails of every size one could think of.

I do know that Rich's father also collected nails, even straight used ones. My Grandparents' generation never threw out things that could be re purposed or reused. My mom was the same way as was Rich's folks and Rich. For those that lived through very hard times, repurposing was not a fad but a necessity.

So, if the garage had never been crushed or inundated with water, most of those nails could have been useful to build something with the lumber that is in the dry confines of our machine shed.

Unfortunately, the clean up dropped a LOT of nails and chunks of miscellaneous metals all around the all garage. This weekend, I filled two 5 gallon buckets with pieces of metal, glass, and nails. 

Patrick will be back to do some more work this coming week in the meantime, I am looking for broken glass, metals, and sharp things along with metals. A good magnet on a handle is a great helper.

The dogs check on the progress and then go lay down on the porch. It is too tiring to watch me work.

I did manage to take some 'fun' time for me. On our morning hike/walk with my 4 legged pals, I took some toys.

Hannah is still learning to not always nose over toys while I am photographing. Charlie has that down pat.

The two shots below were done with a deep foggy morning and very little sunlight. I knew the fungi wouldn't stick around once the sun came out so I grabbed my 1:87 HO Scale mountain climbers and thought...this could be fun!

It turned out to be fun. Twice I dropped the tiny guy in the blue shirt. Thankfully it wasn't in a bunch of flowers and it was in the mulch where I could find him easily.

 I believe the fungi/mushroom is called Pleated Inky Caps. I find them often in the flowerbed mulch. They are doing a job enriching the soil and breaking down the mulch so I just admire them.

On the dog hike, I brought Qilin, the Mythical Creature from Lego. I built this not because I like the kid series Monkey Boy, but because the creature is posable and delightfully colorful.

I know that Qilin and the Ninjango character I acquired years ago seemed to just go together.

I carefully carried it out to the meadow. [Carefully, I didn't want to lose any pieces of this mythical creature!]

I think Lego missed the point in putting these characters in different toy stories. Definitely this guy and the dragon match in glowing and bright wonderful colors.

no dogs knocked this down!

I left the Mythical Creature at the campsite and followed the dogs deep into the woods. I let them be my guides. I should do that more often.

I found dozens of sights in my forest with Indian Pipes aka Monotropa Uniflora. I like the names: Ghost Plants and Indian Pipes better.

What an amazing background a group of them would make alongside a deer trail for my Princess Sara and her faithful bodyguard Joan of Knight.

Yes, Princess Sara rides a horse and carries her faithful stick horse which I am assuming has magical powers. She also has the little red dragon with her. They are on a mission and a journey to defeat some evil in the world.

After an early morning of tromping through the woods and getting soaked by the dew, we returned home to continue working on the cleaning the old garage site.

By late afternoon, I decided I'd had enough back breaking bending over work and charged up the mower to trim the yard. Over the week we had another half inch of rain along with humidity and heat so the grass decided to really get with the growing program again.

Now that it is out of the way, I don't have to deal with it until next week [hopefully].

I went to bed early. The dogs were exhausted from supervising all day.

But when I woke up around midnight, I couldn't help but stay up a bit longer to admire the Milky Way from the porch.

Looks like a busy short week ahead. 

I am planning this weekend to be joyful. With a celebration of my husband's life. Of course it will be bittersweet, but I carry him in my heart always.

A bit of the week

This has been a week.

One of the scrapper dudes showed up without calling. The 'security' cameras alerted me while I was making coffee.

Generally the dogs hear anything coming or going in the driveway. They missed Jim's quiet old truck.

I went out and talked with him for a bit and asked that I get notified before anyone shows up please.

Jim is super nice and quiet mannered [not at all like his fast talking brother]. He worked in the crushed garage seen in the shot below. He neatly stacked a bunch of fencing supplies in some bins and placed them outside by the driveway while he sorted items to take.

Below... frontal shot of the crushed garage. 
Soon to be torn down finally!

He then asked if he could pick up the aluminum cans that were piled next to the little shed. 

[Note: Rich piled them there years ago with the intent that he...and only HE could take them to be recycled! 
I picked my battles with him over the years and his 'stuff' was hands off otherwise there was a war.]

Jim picked up ALL of the cans by hand. He worked quietly. I don't mind him being around really. 

Here is a screen shot of Jim leaving with his goodies. I'm quite grateful for his persistence in a really grubby job.

We had some amazing skies this past week, we've had 3 nights of frost. I had to cover my petunias on the porch and some of the young plants that had reseeded themselves. 

Hurray hurray hurray! 

The hummingbirds showed up on April 30th. That seems early to me, but I could be wrong.

The Orioles made their appearance May 8th. Which is interesting in itself. Last year, they were here on May 5th.


 

Below is a one of my all time favorite shots of Mayapples. I need to get back out and check out their flowers which should be open by now.

I did a thing yesterday!  I want to put it down in writing and remind myself of how I am slowly adjusting to be an independent old cuss.

My garden cart that I pull behind the 4 wheeler had a tire that came apart. The tube was intact but the tire was ripping apart. My neighbor fixed the flat last year.

I am a determined person. [No pictures]
I took the tire off [something I had to figure out-->it was pretty simple]. I recalled Jim putting an old tire out in front of the crushed garage. I took the wrecked tire over and ... holy cow! They were the same!

I filled the old tire with air and it held just fine. I changed the tire and figured out how to do the cotter pin thingy.

My hands were greasy and black and I sat in the dirt pleased as punch. I felt like I'd won the lottery by solving the issue myself.

I'm slowly trying to organize things that are left in the shed. I found these instructions for the ancient drill press.

I told my Lego workers to figure out how to work it. I'm sure I'll never use it.

This weekend is going to be filled with at home work. Pretty boring stuff.

Gathering rocks for a fire pit, garden work, mowing [I got the rider back!].

Work never ends around here it seems.

May the 4th Be with you...

 Some of my favorite Star Wars
May the 4th shots....

Enjoy

A bit of fun

Just goofing around.

When the temps get way below zero and the winds are blowing, I do stay inside and mess around with photography experiments and make a mess.

I check in on a photographer who does 'macro' work indoors when the weather is nasty. He has some extremely creative ideas and he explores them.

He used a piece of cotton [like thick cotton balls] glued to a popsicle frame he made. He put a small hole in the middle of it and shot his flower shots through the cotton.

I thought this was interesting so I grabbed an old picture frame and did something similar with felt and bubble wrap.

I set things up on the table and then used a colored light to bounce of my background made out of tin foil.

Of course there were quite a few shots that didn't turn out as I would have liked, but then I kept experimenting. These were tiny dried flowers for crafting.

Finally I got one I could live with. 

I didn't have to do any editing for this shot as 'shooting' through the torn cotton gave the edges a soft hazy look. I thought I'd try it again and do a Lego Minifigure portrait.

Here are two samples. In the first you can see the foil background that creates a cool pattern behind this Dnd minifig. Her name is Lady of Pain. 

This second shot is with more of the cotton in the way and the lens slight pulled back. I also stood her on a Lego brick that lights up red to highlight her from inside. This shot almost looks as if she has cold air circulating around her or a mist of some sort.

What the set up looked like. 

What my table looked like on our first subzero day:

I had three sets of scenes built. My $1 dinosaur fit into a storyline I'd was creating for a series on Flickr.

The Queen of Pain sent her Zombie Emissary to the Minibots and spoke to Iggy [the minibot with one eye]. She wished to have a custom Ferrari built for her.

Iggy can usually get anything or steal it so he agreed to get a red Ferrari for her.

They got parts but had no idea how to put things together. Todd, the maintenance guy offered to help.

Since Iggy and his Minibots were taking too much time to do this. The Lady of Pain sent her messenger to Iggy to tell him to hurry up. Pretty nasty threat, I'd say!

[Don't worry, no toys were actually harmed in this photoshoot]

I guess all they had to do was ask Todd the Zombie Maintenance guy to help out.

It seemed Todd took it upon himself to help out the Minibots. He called in a couple of Zombie friends....they worked all through the night sorting and building.

I guess if you want a job done quickly and correctly, you hire Zombies. After all, they don't sleep and apparently their work ethic is fantastic.

Hopefully the Lady of Pain will enjoy her new ride.

Yippee! It is the Polar Plunge!