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!

 

 

Interesting start to the new year

Essentials in life.
Quiet time.
Puzzles.
Reflection on self.
Movement.

Nature's healing atmosphere.

Play.

I have a lot on my plate to get done now that it is the first of the year. But a friend of mine suggested I come over to her house Friday. 
We chatted and worked on a puzzle. Well, she worked on it, I watched. 

She invited Charlie over too. He was a complete gentleman with their toy dogs and her kids. He even went downstairs to visit with Kristi's elderly mom.

I have taxes to sort you know, paperwork to file. Calls to try and straighten out an auto deposit, and things to gather for our income taxes and changes for the past year. None of that sounds even remotely fun.

But it is the first days of the new year. And it is the weekend. So I decided to work on my Speed Champions set I'd picked up for when I had company who enjoyed building Legos.

I don't normally like working on Lego vehicles. The last cool one Rich and I built together was a mess and not designed well. 

This set has a great design and is challenging. The box says it is for 10+ years old. Parts of the build really took amazing brain power.

I found it peaceful to work on in the evenings. AND I really dig the sports car. It seems my Monsters do too.

Let's go get pizza!!!!!

Kristi asked what I was doing Saturday. I said that Charlie and I were probably going to take a hike. The weather looked better for the afternoon.

She said she'd like to go too. I cocked an eye and said "It's a 5 mile hike, you in?" 

"Sure." 

Aside from friend Bill, I've not really had any of my gym or other friends actually want to go with me on long hikes. 

I am super blessed to have young and adventurous friend[s]. 

I packed my YakTraks [the trails would be icy and packed] and brought a pair for her. 

Of course, the Master Hiker led the way and kept us on track.

We stopped at 'his' stump so he could pose for us.

The weather was perfect about 18 degrees F [-7.7 C] with a whisper of a breeze. 

The conversation was all over the place and quiet while we climbed hills and navigated tree roots buried under snow and ice.

We both felt very peaceful hiking together. I don't have to worry about Kristi's keeping up. She is more than 20 yrs younger than I am and is an exceptional athlete. She is getting ready to do a competition next month and she felt that some difficult hikes with me would be good for her stamina. 

That made me chuckle. Her friendship has opened up social activities for me that are fun. We even discussed plans to go Kayaking this summer on the Kickapoo River together with her family.

Maybe the new year may not be as bad as I thought.

...and I am almost ready for Monday and all the crappy paperwork I have to do.

Meanwhile in The Christmas Village

I survived the 9 hours of Jury Selection! 100 people were summoned, 80 showed. 14 were finally picked after a long day.

I am not discussing the case as it was disturbing. 

I know there is evil in this world and one does not even have to watch the nightly news to discover it. 

Instead I am going to turn to my Christmas Village tonight....

I put up my Christmas Lego Village and came up with a fun idea. I'm trying to take a photo a day of the Mini-me and Mini-Charlie walking about the village and taking photos of things going on.

The story is that the Mayor of the Village hired Mini-me to take photos of the Village for his Tourism Brochure that he wants published next year.

Whoops! I wonder if the Mayor will be happy with this one! [UM, that IS the Mayor in the outhouse!]

And of course the Village offers a groomed cross country skiing trail complete with very friendly polar bears.

The elves let me in on their secret of how they get SO much work done in such a short time. Why not have a Merry Alien to help decorate tall trees and move large packages!

I bet you thought it was all magical!

There is a skating rink in the Village that they are thinking of expanding for next year!
Um I wonder if the snowperson was afraid Charlie would leave him with some yellow snow!

Mini-me and Charlie went to observe the local band playing and singing Christmas Carols in the town square.

[Do you see who showed up to the Caroling???]

You know. Life as a Mini-me is so much simpler and joyful. 

It's been a few days

I decided to divide my time between with some more fun with the Medieval Village.  After all, I have to do something while waiting for paint to dry.

Below. The Elfin Twins enjoy a morning chat with Charlie who happens to adore their herd of goats. Charlie wants the goats to come out to play. The Twins say, "Not today!"

Yet, this happens. Below Charlie explains to the Blacksmith that he thought he'd just take the goat herd for a walk. He assures everyone that he has everything under control.

Sometimes my brain does these things. It seems the chain of events just pops into my head and I have to set it up. 

Many Lego Photographers usually highlight just one character in a scene. I admit, that is much easier to do.

But I like to create a scene that shows more.

Lego 'portrait' scenes look like this:

I try to make the scenes epic. Well, at least so the viewer thinks it looks like something out of an epic movie.

I had a brilliant idea. Well, I thought it was brilliant. I took a Lego Building in a tote through the woods [not far from the house] to try a scene I thought of in my head.

I wanted it to look like it came out of the movie The Hobbit. I had everything set up and the sound of shots from a mile away echoed through the woods.

Charlie who was with me, jumped through the wizard's cart and knocked things around. I spent the next 20 minutes digging through leaves to recover minifigures. Charlie kept trying to get in my lap and shaking. 

So, my epic shot never happened. I packed everything up and walked back to the house. However..........

IF I go back to this spot after the hunting season is over, I will rake all the leaves away and prepare the sight for the next day that I can try this again. It will take quite a few tries to get what I imagined. I'd like to do this once more on a very foggy day and see what happens.

Note to self. Do not take Charlie.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Well, that was earlier this week and now I can make a quick comment the chair I am doing. I've gone with some blues for the main part of the chair with a 'shimmering Rose Pink' color for the very top. It looks red, but is a rose pink.

Gold and silver nobbies and hues of blues for the rest so far. I'll finish off the top and seal coat it before the weekend so the chair can be used if my youngest son and his crew come to visit.

My Lego build is going well. 

Here is a hint at what I am making:

Each day I think about getting out for a walk and just as I think I can go, I hear gun shots. Yesterday morning someone very close shot. Close enough for us to feel the concussion. The mules actually had a bit of a freak out while looking west at my neighbor's farm.

The next morning I got to see what the ruckus was all about.

My theory from the mess in the snow was that the deer that was shot at came through my winter fence and knocked down  a section by getting tangled in the hot wire. 

My mules took the opportunity to go looking for greener pastures last night.

They were fine and not too far off. They were in a section on a knoll which is not where I want them when hunters are out shooting.

They had gathered quite a bit of burdock in their tails and short manes.

They enjoyed their time out overnight and were happy to find a huge pile of hay with some grain in it when I walked them back to the winter pasture. They are good girls, I just came up and asked them to follow me back and they did.

Today is Thanksgiving Day. Normally we don't do anything after it became too difficult to haul both hubby and his mom to his daughter's house. I couldn't do it with wheel chairs, oxygen, and medications. So in the end Rich and I would have Lasagna, pie, and build Legos together.

I had an invite to go to a friend's house [actually a few friends from the gym invited me --isn't that incredible of them?--]. 

We've had a good friendship with Kristi and her family for nearly 10 years. Her husband was my husband's Hospice Nurse.

I'm pleased to decide to go. There was a point in which I thought I'd turn down invites so I could stay home and relish some time to feel sad and sorry for myself.

How nice. I'm not going to!

Tomorrow will be a busy day, IF my youngest decides to fight the snowstorm and come on Saturday, then I need to get some things on Friday. This means I will break my rule of NEVER shopping on Black Friday. 

But this year has been full of changes and adjustments for me.

Huh

Well from the lack of noise today, it seems either the deer are not moving or everyone got what they wanted yesterday.

The sounds of shots in the forest where I walk rang out early yesterday from predawn to about 8am. Then.

Silence.

I played loud music so Charlie couldn't hear the distant shooting waaay off. We can feel the concussion of shots that are within half/quarter of a mile. But that pretty much dropped off by midday.
Sunday on that land is usually pretty quiet as the hunters are mostly hung over and tired from the first day out.

I actually LOVED a day in PJ's [I wear coveralls for chores]. Charlie and I hung out together and had a lazy day of building, 

Figured it out yet?? 😋

Practicing indoor photography, 

Reading,

and listening to music. 

I got the stare from Charlie when some happy and lovely music came on when I broke into a jig and sang along. I'm sure my singing was horrid as was my jig. But I thought. Why not? 

I moved about from one thing to another doing exactly what I felt like doing at any given moment.

Oddly enough, that felt incredibly wonderful. I'd walk into the kitchen to get a drink of water and pause at the Medieval Village and think of a brilliant idea.

It seems that the Ivar and his Barbarians were simply looking for some rooms!

Sadie, who runs the Inn with her husband Mack get busy in the kitchen. Feeding Barbarians can be quite the chore.

Late in the day, just before dusk, a stranger rides into town.

[I don't know about you, but I am sensing a Clint Eastwood sort of theme going on here. 

I keep hearing the theme song to The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.

And it feels pretty fun. I love it when the toys dictate the story.