artist unknown
myArtMagazine.com – Hans Dahl.
naturesoilpaintingwallpaper
Filed under Creativity, Oil Paintings I Love
“Shades of Green” – Paul Militaru Photography
Filed under Paul Militaru Photography
I notice – a LOT lately – that I’m rich.
I’m rich in marriage, child, retirement, friends, fun things to do, and more. I’m rich in everything but money. (I’m working on winning the Publisher’s Clearinghouse Sweepstakes, the Mega Millions, Power Ball, and such, but that would be icing on the cake. :0)
Last night I finished Book # 4 in the Jack Reacher series.”Running Blind” by Lee Child. I have the next one, “Echo Burning” on top of my desk, but I’ve decided to detour into another of my favorite series.
Amazon
If you haven’t read “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” series by Ann Brashares, you’ve missed a wonderful world of true friendship, love, and laughs and tears. The official summary of the books says, “Some friends just fit together. Once there was a pair of pants. Just an ordinary pair of jeans. But these pants, the Traveling Pants, went on to do great things. This is the story of the four friends—Lena, Tibby, Bridget, and Carmen—who made it possible.”
I’ve read what I thought was the whole series, four books: “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants,” “The Second Summer of the Sisterhood,” “Girls in Pants – The Third Summer of the Sisterhood,” and “Forever in Blue – The Fourth Summer of the Sisterhood.” Today – to my delight while getting a URL and other information for you, I found there is a 5th book in the series – “Sisterhood Everlasting,” which I just ordered. :0)
I also have the DVD set to go with them, so I can re-read them, watch the DVDs (while my husband is doing something else. Just Imagine! He doesn’t really get into this series :0) ) and THEN read the new addition!
I can share their world by book and DVD, shedding years as I identify with young women in the late teenage years with their whole lives ahead of them, enjoying their wonderful friendship and experiences.
Do you see why I’m rich?
Lake Ann-Bella Vista AR – Douglas Keck – Only in AR – via Cindy Basnett Thurman
Filed under Arkansas, Awe-Inspiring Photography
by Matilda B
“Whenever you fall, pick something up.” ~Oswald Avery
“Live by this credo: have a little laugh at life and look around you for happiness instead of sadness. Laughter has always brought me out of unhappy situations.” ~ Red Skelton
Filed under Faces, Favorite Quotes
pm-clay-plus.livejournal.com
southwest laced gourd-“Midnight Retreat” – Maria’s Art Creations
ДЕРЕВЯННЫЕ УЗОРЫ ДЖОУИ РИЧАРДСОН (JOEY RICHARDSON), Великобритания.
Filed under Creativity, Gorgeous Gourd Art
Our son wrote to tell us that an “American tourist” had stolen all of the donation money from the donation box in a temple in Chiang Mai, Thailand recently. They had a picture of the man inside the temple, but hadn’t apprehended him. Our son has always tried to overcome the bad image of American tourists in whatever country he is in. He tries to learn their language and speak to them. He tries to be kind and thoughtful of the culture and the people. He is angry and embarrassed that the behavior of Americans abroad has been so rude, thoughtless, downright crude, and even – to THIS news – criminal.
This feeling of being upset at the behavior of others reflecting on him goes back to when he was a young toddler. We would take him to a restaurant and someone would come over to our table and say something like, “We are SO impressed by the behavior of your son! He’s been a real little gentleman.” We would thank them and they would leave. Our son’s face would turn red as he said, “Other kids are giving me a bad name. They make it so that all people expect ME to act bad.” We told him that we understood his feelings, but that the only thing he could control was how HE acted. It didn’t seem to help much.
He told us he made a donation to the temple that was robbed.
Filed under Attitude, Family, kindness, life lessons, making a difference
IncredibleSayings
I just took the doggies out, walking straight out to the garden to see if our plants made it through the night. It was due to get close to freezing this morning, and I debated whether to try to cover things up. I finally decided I had too many things to cover and would just hope for the best.
It wouldn’t have been the end of the world if the plants had frozen, but they were doing really well and I would have been very disappointed if Mother Nature had zapped everything.
Everything is good!
I hope that the weather is good where you are this morning. I wonder what the day will bring?
Max Eastman via sayingimages.com
“A sense of humor… is needed armor. Joy in one’s heart and some laughter on one’s lips is a sign that the person down deep has a pretty good grasp of life.” ~ Hugh Sidey
“Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand.” ~ Mark Twain
I don’t know why, but I’m thinking of my dad today.
Part of his life was hard. He fell off a horse when he was three and busted his arm in three places. Back then, the doctors did the best they could, but his left arm was much shorter than his right, curved, and his hand almost useless. He was teased about it in school. He felt bad because they wouldn’t accept him to serve in the military because of it. He learned to use humor as a way to break through people’s initial reaction to his arm. In fact, there were whole patches of time I would forget that others might consider him ‘handicapped.’ He learned to use his humor and wit to make his living- carving out a space writing radio advertising spots. He billed himself as the second worst radio voice in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He went from barely making a living to never having to look for clients again, winning Addy awards – plus a silver one for “Lifetime Achievement.”
He couldn’t control his alcohol consumption and smoked heavily, ending up an alcoholic with emphysema. He joined Alcoholics Anonymous. He learned to carry an oxygen tank.vHe still kept his sense of humor, drawing cartoon drawings of himself, making others laugh. He taught my brother and me to appreciate humor – puns, jokes of all sorts, funny stories, funny situations, sarcasm, and to practice the ability to stand back and look at things, trying to see the funny side. This has been a lifesaver for me.
When he died, he wrote on a scrap of paper, “Remember me laughing.” And I do. I remember him telling stories, laughing so helplessly he could hardly finish. He and the lucky people listening would all be exhausted when he finished – stomachs hurting from laughing, cheeks hurting from smiling so hard – at the stories, but also enjoying the joy we all experienced as he told them.
“A day without laughter is a day wasted.” ~ Charlie Chaplin
“I have always felt that laughter in the face of reality is probably the finest sound there is and will last until the day when the game is called on account of darkness. In this world, a good time to laugh is any time you can.” ~ Linda Ellerbee
Filed under Attitude, Encouragement, Family, Funny Signs - Humor, life lessons, Tribute
“Geese in the Shadow” – Paul Militaru Photography
Filed under Paul Militaru Photography
piccsy.com
Okay. We were in the middle of a drought and it even caused bad problems with our water supply, making the turnovers in the lakes cause our water to have a bad odor and taste. Wildfire danger was high. Warm, windy days were worrisome. I started doing mental and physical rain dances, trying to get our area over the problem.
Mother Nature listened. I’m not sure if she saw and heard ME, or if a whole lot of people were also doing rain dances, but she delivered. Big Time. We’ve had rain, rain showers, heavy rain, storms, sleet, and more rain. I’ve definitely STOPPED even thinking about rain dances, but now I’m thinking Mother Nature is saying, “You wanted rain. Okay. Here it is!”
Today we’re due for MORE storms, particularly between 11:00 and 3 this afternoon with possible severe weather. We did a group of errands this morning, paring our list down to one appt this afternoon, in an effort to be ONLY blown away, rather than blown away and DROWNED trying to get our stuff done.
The doggies came and demanded that I take them out a couple of minutes ago, insisting they would blow up if I didn’t take them out NOW. I complied, then came back for my camera, to record some of the beauty I found while walking around the yard. The storm today might wreak havoc with our yard, so I wanted to try to catch Mother Nature at her BEST – first.
Every day the wisteria gets more lush and more purple.
It SMELLS wonderful, too!
We have purple iris blooming in planters, in clusters around the yard, even off the edge of the civilized part of our yard, plus down our driveway.
We have buds on the three new Rio Samba rose bushes, and now some of the buds are starting to open up!
A knock out rose bush is starting to have blooms.
This is the north side of our square foot garden.
And the south side.
The winds really picked up while I took pics and walked the dogs. We’ll probably be right in the heart of the thunderstorms this afternoon, since we have to be out at 1:30. It’s a good thing we don’t melt in the rain. We’re thankful for our warm, dry home. Our doggies have already snuggled down for a nap, and even the two cats came in with us.
Have a wonderful day. Stay warm and dry!
Clipartqueen.com
“Sybilla” – deviantart.com
Filed under Creativity, drawings
Healing-Plaza.info
Since I’ve been feeling really creaky lately, I’ve been trying to do a session of “Yoga for Old Broads” each day.
(This is actually “Gentle Yoga” via Sixty & Me designed for people like me, who always wanted to try yoga but were intimidated, who have health issues, who are 60 and over, etc. This is a pair of DVDs by teacher Cat Kabira, a wonderful lady who makes you feel that whatever you can do to TRY to get into the poses is doing helpful to stretch out your muscles, make you more flexible, feel stronger, and move more easily without nearly as much discomfort.
I actually have the 2 DVD set plus a second one in the same series, with yoga practices for each day of the week.
Right now, since I’ve really been sore and almost POP when I get up or sit down, I’ve been concentrating on just doing some of the poses on my mat by myself, at a really slow speed, just trying to relax into the poses, breathing into them and feeling my muscles finally ‘give.’
If you are also feeling creaky, I encourage you to go to their website and order the set of videos. You’ll be amazed how much better you’ll feel.
Filed under Challenges, Changes, exercise, taking care of yourself
StevoMosaics
The Red and Grey – Artist Unknown
Filed under Creativity, mosaic
Karen Saviskas Gourd Art-1L- Topanga Canyon Gallery
Maple-Leaf-Gourd-with-Lid- Brian Baity
Mark Donaldson saved to Gorgeous Gourds – Sue Fuller, Westminster, California.
Filed under Creativity, Gorgeous Gourd Art
India
“When I grow up I want to be an old woman.” ~ Michelle Shocked
___________
“The older I get, the more I see there are these crevices in life where things fall in and you just can’t reach them to pull them back out. So you can sit next to them and weep or you can get up and move forward. You have to stop worrying about who’s not here and start worrying about who is.” ~ Alex Witchel
__________
“As long as I am breathing, in my eyes, I am just beginning.” ~ Criss Jami
Filed under Faces, Favorite Quotes
Amber
Our sweet ‘puppy’ Amber was a year old March 7th. She now weighs 93 pounds. We’re HOPING that she is now as large as she will get, but people in the know say she could continue to grow for another year! They also say that this lumbering bull-in-a-china-shop with very little brain will continue being a puppy for at least another year….
Amber has improved a lot since I last wrote about her. She is adapting to us and our lifestyle pretty well for a pup with little brain. She is certainly smart and canny enough to manipulate her owners. We FINALLY got her to stop yelling at us when she wants us to take her out. She had been regularly coming to sit beside me while I was working at the computer and then yelling, “WOOF!” quite loudly, scaring my hair off. If I had a cup of coffee in my hand at the time, I would spend the next 10 or 15 minutes cleaning up before I could take her out. (We have learned that, at this point, we can’t trust her outside by herself. She tends to find something wonderful to chew up in the front yard. When she destroyed TWO NEW WELCOME MATS that had been in place for about 20 minutes, that was the wake up call for us to get off our duffs and take her out, rather than letting her out.)
When we’re outside, we tend to bring Amber and Molly with us. We did this a couple of days ago, using the time between rain storms to take them out and walk around the yard. When the doggies had taken care of business, I let them in, as it had started to rain. My husband and I finished looking at something and then came in – to find that Amber had decided to completely dump her water bowl all over the floor. We had a mini-lake!
She hadn’t done this for a long time, but she of little brain remembered THAT was fun!
We spent a half hour mopping and toweling up the mess. My husband got a larger, heavier metal bowl that has no rim to put in place of the one she dumped. We put it in the corner made by the wall of the bathroom and the doggie gate to the living room. We’re hoping that this placement is secure enough she won’t decide to ‘play’ in the water anymore…
Lesson: One cannot trust a yellow Labrador Retriever ‘puppy’ outside OR inside without pretty intense supervision!
Filed under Amazing Animals, Family
The mailbox decoration comes from an image we found on the net. My husband did his magic, writing code so that the computer recognizes the drawing and can replicate it. We cut it out with the computer-guided torch on the CNC table in the shop. The above is what the decoration looks like when we separate the cut part from the sheet of metal on the table.
My husband makes apiece that will allow us to bolt the decoration onto the mailbox and welds the two together.
We then attach the piece to a ‘holder’ so that we can use a transparency of the design and sharpies to mark the metal with the inner design so that I can paint it.
This is what the decoration looks like when it’s ready for me to paint. You can see where the attachment bar is welded onto the design across the bottom. I paint the back of the piece first so that I can work out any problems. The picture above is actually the front of the design. I finished painting the back a couple of days ago. I turned it over yesterday and “color blocked” the front. (I say “color blocked” because it looks really bad when I do the first coat. I’m mainly just marking where each color goes. The paint doesn’t stick well or show up well on the bare metal. On the first decoration we did, I almost gave up at this point because it looked so awful. Thank goodness I discovered that this is the way it is when one paints on metal.
This is the back of the piece I finished yesterday. I’ll work on the second coat on the front today, and then probably finish it up tomorrow.
Filed under Lewis Art, Lewis Mailbox Decorations, Lewis projects, metal art
GardenSeedandHoneyBees via MinionsQuotes via Doreen Adamson-Liber
This post is especially for Dezzi, since we’re both bacon-o-holics….
Filed under holidays
DesiComments.com
“Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby.”
Langston Hughes
Filed under Mother Nature
Turtle Food Art by Daryn Akossar.
WeTellYouHow
Working Moms Edible Art
Filed under Creativity, playing with your food?
Marilyn Sunderland
Mike Munter featuring GourdMaster products
Filed under Creativity, Gorgeous Gourd Art
“Eggs for Easter” – Paul Militaru Photography
Filed under holidays, Paul Militaru Photography
Pixabay
“We are told to let our light shine, and if it does, we won’t need to tell anybody it does. Lighthouses don’t fire cannons to call attention to their shining – they just shine.” ~ Dwight L. Moody
“Easter is…
Joining in a birdsong,
Eying an early sunrise,
Smelling yellow daffodils,
Unbolting windows and doors,
Skipping through meadows,
Cuddling newborns,
Hoping, believing,
Reviving spent life,
Inhaling fresh air,
Sprinkling seeds along furrows,
Tracking in the mud.
Easter is the soul’s first taste of spring.” ~ Richelle E. Goodrich, Making Wishes
“Easter Mona” – Paul Militaru Photography
“Every ending will meet its own end, for every ending is destined to be swallowed up by a beginning.” ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough
HAPPY EASTER!
AND
HAPPY PASSOVER!
Filed under holidays, Paul Militaru Photography
creativeartworksblog 