Best Morning ... Ever!

I received a text that asked if I could watch Logan for a couple of hours while mom took a nap. 

Let me explain something. Mom works from her home office teaching English to Chinese students via the internet. She works up lesson plans and works with so many students

She had an overnight presentation [I'm sure that I am not getting the details right] and was wondering if I could spend a bit of time with Logan while she took a power nap to compensate.

I jumped at the chance and texted back "YES!"

Logan is 5 and full of surprises. I had some pumpkin projects to do and said that we could paint pumpkins and decorate them.

I went downstairs and retrieved the wooden blocks I'd saved from the house remodel. I'd sanded and painted them just for the purpose of having little people come to the house and building with them. I've got very fond memories of my children playing with blocks from my mother's house that she and dad built....and memories of playing with a box of odd wooden pieces that my Grandparents put together from the building of their house.

I dug out some acrylic paints and a few tiny pumpkins.

As a second thought, I gathered all of my acquired toys in a basket and brought them downstairs too. Many of the toys were those that Logan had given me over the past two years to 'play' with and take home when I'd watched him at his house.

I was ready when I got the text: "We are on our way."

Pumpkin painting is serious stuff when your pumpkin needs to be black.

While the black pumpkin dried enough to tip over and get painted on the bottom, Logan decided to use some red paint and then red glitter glue to decorate the second pumpkin.

While the projects did some more drying we decided to explore the blocks and toys.

And I learned how to build a proper castle.

And we filled it with Dinosaurs, donkeys, skunks, My Little Ponies and trolls. However the Soldiers were the favorites.

Charlie inspects the toy basket and then sits on the couch to watch...

And a huge battle ensued.

Toys got waylaid all over the living room floor. The castle seemed to get blown up from the sound effects...

And we went back to the kitchen to check on the pumpkins while the toys recovered...

This is a proper 'scarey' pumpkin with red diamond eyes, nose and mouth.

After Logan returned home and I came back from walking with him, my husband quipped:

It is a good thing you have someone your OWN age to play with.

I grinned. I had such a good morning with Logan! Rich enjoyed watching and talking with Logan.

See?

Best

morning

Ever!

I hope we get to play again. 

Floods, Fall, Charlie

Of course it is all about the weather. This past week has been rain, rain, heavy rain, and then some more rain. If it rains an inch the creek is up. If it rains 1/2 inch, the creek rises.

While walking out to do chores yesterday morning I could hear the ground gurgling underfoot. I don't know if it will dry out enough in the next week or so for us to do a final lawn mowing. The winds and rains have clogged the porch gutters and I can't get up to clean them as the ground is so saturated that the ladder just sinks into the ground.

We went from cold temperatures to hot and humid for the past few days which brought in so much moisture and more rain. The Asian Beetles and the Box-elder bugs have swarmed the house in those brief moments that it did not rain. The weather is supposed to turn sharply colder in a few days and fall weather should return.

I have gone out for a walk with Charlie each day that we get a break from the rain. The subdued light was pretty beautiful for taking some fall photos.

Charlie was mostly interested in finding chipmunks and squirrels. He does still try to chase them. They generally fly up a tree and he loses sight of them. I call and he comes back fairly quickly.
He still wears the collar but I haven't had to 'ring' it much. I find the bell ringing distracts him enough so he comes to my call right away.

I think come winter I will be able to leave the collar off on our hikes. He is wearing his little black cord here too. He seems to understand that the cord means "stay close".

Yesterday I went solo to the creek and walked through the neighbor's land on each side of me along the creek. I got caught in a downpour and was thankful that I'd brought a cheap emergency poncho to put on over me. It protected my camera case and kept most of me dry.

It was alarming to see how swiftly the water began to run over the trails and down the ridge road.

I got home just in time too. The thunder began to roll and the lightening began to light up the afternoon sky.

Chores had to wait until there was a pause between storms. Three different wall clouds went over us in just two hours. Odd weather for mid October.

We are in a Flood Warning again for the Kickapoo River. It hasn't really gone back to normal since the rains at the beginning of September. I drove up the west side of the river the other day when I went to check on my MIL.

The power of that river water is incredible. It moved huge round bales that had been wrapped in a tube and displaced them all along the river.

I'm so over this rain! My driveway gravel and dirt is turning green in spots!

An unexpected surprise

Friday was an interesting day, the mail lady pulled up to the house with her 'newer' Jeep and delivered a package. It was a large box.

I opened it and found a letter from my cousin's wife explaining what was inside.

Slides from 1962, 1964, and a vacation that my folks and grandparents went on with my brother to Yellowstone. 

Included in the package was an 8 by 10 of a family 'portrait' of sorts. I found this quite unusual as my father was always the one behind the camera and I rarely recall him being in many photos.

Also inside the box were some items that my Grandmother Pearl had made. I found a spiral notebook that she used to collect her directions on how to make doilies. Samples were included in the book. I imagine she cut the directions our of a newspaper and glued them into the pages of the notebook. 

There are some hand written notes on many of the pages. The pencil notes are nearly faded away, but there were some in pen also.

I found the items perfect for some Still Life on a very rainy day.

The pin cushion is one she made and the pins are still in it from Grandma's sewing days.

Other treasures include some hand towels that Grandma re-purposed from old beach towels. And some of her very famous patchwork potholders. One is not quite finished but now I can see how she did them and perhaps make some of my own.

I'm looking into getting some slides copied onto a DVD. There are photos of my sister and I riding Babe which was my Uncle's horse. One funny and great shot is of my brother sitting on Dusty backwards and my cousin Aaron sitting facing forward.

I've looked at pricing a slide scanner just for that purpose, but there isn't that many in this batch. My brother I believe has a huge box of slides. I'm going to use a local scanning service first and see how that works out.

I don't have the thousands of slides like my brother does, however I am curious and a bit excited to be able to see some of those old photos ... without trying to hold it up to a light bulb!

The Life of Toys

Percy to Chance.
*Who do you suppose tossed Guardy down the hill during that last rain storm?*

*Easy, Percy...look to my left. The dolls, it is always the dolls that cause trouble. You know, if a crime is committed, look to the dolls.*

*Hmmm, I thought we got rid of that really creepy one during the last flood. It was tricky and hard to make her let go of me when I got hung up on those saplings. She was just plain mean!*

*I know Percy, when we were in the Thrift Store she kept pushing me to the bottom of the pile so no one would buy me.*

*Despicable.*

*Indeed.*

The Doll stays silent but closes one eye in a wink.

*Hey guys?* Guardy sits up slowly. *Some help here?*

Percy and Chance:
*Shhhh! We hear footsteps! It is her and that dog! She'll pick you up!*

.......


*She did indeed! That's much better! I can watch over the creek again. But keep that Doll away from me!*

*We're going to hang out in the creek for a bit and wash off some mud. You keep an eye on her.*

The Doll remains silent but keeps one eye on the Bears.

Mini dogs

I've always loved BIG dogs. Nike was a cross between a Belgian Shephard and a Golden Retriever. Missy was a Samoyed/Lab. Nice and big.

I raised a litter of orphan hound dogs in our tiny kitchen of our tiny house and they did move outside and left our place to become working dogs. This was over 20 years ago.

However I yearned for a house dog after meeting Rich.
He found a tiny terrier mix dog and we had Xena. And she was a warrior. She was a Fiest Terrier and was very aggressive.

She only lived for 4 yrs. In the end it was her aggressive hunting and attitude that did her in.
I mourned her. She had been tough as nails and had more attitude than most any dog I'd ever known.

Sometimes she'd take off and come back exhausted.


Morris.
Well no explaining there. 14 years of an incredible friendship.
And he had a great job.

He helped train any hound dog puppies that came to our farm.

Dixie who was 'trained' by Morris has helped train Charlie.

And today it was Charlie's turn to help out with a puppy!

Meet Basil.
Our neighbor's new puppy. A Bichon Frise and Shih Tzu mix!

Not such a great photo, but you can see that Basil will be taller than Charlie, however...
Charlie is a tough little guy and ...

paid Basil no mind when she tried to 'lead' him.

Mini dogs.

Are we having fun yet?

I am.

Thinking in Black and White photos

I like a challenge.

While hiking with Charlie between storms, I took this shot. It was overcast and gloomy but the yellows and greens were nearly glowing.

This is towards the back of our property almost to the fenceline. It is part of the refreshed trail that Jeff the Bulldozer man did for us.

I could have spent the day just gazing at the colors and the leaves. Charlie was following raccoon trails, and I spotted a couple of deer. Inside the forest it was nearly too dark to take a photo.

Charlie is in the lower part of the shot.

We visited the Gnarly tree with the cool roots in the dry run...

Anyway, when I got back home I opened up that first photo and decided to make it a painting.

I love the softness of the lines and bright colors. I could see this on a wall mural. I'd walk right into it...

So I decided to see what would happen to the same shot in black and white.

I posted the Before shot to my Flickr account and a pal of mine mentioned that it could be more interesting if worked with a bit.
So I looked up a tutorial for an old photoshop program and worked with it.

I think the 'masked' version has more depth.

So I went one step further and looked for tutorials for the ON1 program I use.

Black and White Tutorial

I came up with the following:

So why on earth am I taking such a colorful photo and converting it to black and white?
Well, because I want to study black and white photography.

Here is a photo from last year.

It is a nice pleasant shot of Black Hawk Park near the Mississippi River. The clouds were beautiful and the reflections quite nice.

I looked at it when I reviewed photos, but it didn't 'wow' me at all. There was nothing here to make me take a second look.

After watching the tutorial I went back and looked for photos that could be good contenders for black and white conversion. I needed good contrasts. And now I know that skies with white clouds do provide that. The color of the shore in the above photo annoyed me when I took it and cropping it out didn't really help.

So I took this shot and worked with it.

I cropped out the bottom so I wouldn't be annoyed by the shoreline. There was some mild adjustment to straighten the horizon and then I set to work.

Oh but darn those leaves look nasty in the upper left corner...

this isn't what I really wanted...

back to the drawing board...

It qualifies for the gray gradients and the lack of color actually helps accentuate the clouds in the reflections. That part of the photo worked out well.
Darn some of this black and white was harder than I thought!

Here is another example of that day of fishing that I never did anything with....
The black and white includes using some cropping and straightening ~ things I learned about while watching the judging and going to the Camera Club meeting.

Note to self, that tree across the way should be moved to the right a bit?

Like this....

Last note. This is nice, however the rules of 'judging' require that shorelines and horizons do not cut through the middle of the photo.

So I will continue my learning...

After all, Winter is coming. That is when Black and White photography is almost a no brainer. After the snows come, the world essentially is white ... and black.

Just Doodling

I started with this.
And then I started to just doodle with a pencil.

And then I started to doodle with paints.

I should have thought this out because after I got the doodling in, I realized I needed to repaint the white surface as it looked dingy with the bright new colors.

So, I went and got wood filler for the cracks and filled that in. Then painted the large area white and took a small brush to do the areas in between the doodles.

I also got the bright idea of making some trim around it, as if to frame the design in the middle.

Okay, my work flow is a bit bass-ackwards, but it is turning out nicely.

There. That is the almost finished stair landing. I won't be doing any more doodle marks, but will leave it as is. It feels just right to me...not centered, not symmetrical, and certainly it stands on its own. It doesn't match any other color in the house which is fine with me.

I need to put a couple of layers of clear coat on it to "hopefully" help it survive foot traffic when I have company. I may put a soft rug over it during that time too.

I like it.

The ol' Grumpy Guy didn't complain at all. He watched Netflix and was more worried about what I was making for supper. He didn't have an opinion on the landing at all. At least he didn't voice one.

....The upstairs awaits.

Rich did ask what I called that stuff on the landing.

I couldn't explain it...

But then I found this...

It just comes out of my subconcious.
If you asked me to draw you a doodle, I couldn't do it.
~~ Lois Frankel

That sums it up in a nutshell.