Richard Saunders created The Topiary Cat in his own yard, then got the idea to place him in places all over the world via Photoshop.
How Do You Carve YOUR Pumpkin? 10-7-2021
Ghost for Halloween 2021
Book Joy
I have a wonderful library – actually books all over the house – into which I can dive and escape for awhile, books to inspire more art efforts, recipes, how-to books, and more. I am rich in books.
When I was a teacher in elementary school, teaching 1st grade through team-teaching 1-6 during the eight years I taught, I tried to teach the basics (phonics, breaking words into syllables, word meaning, etc.) but also I hope that I passed my intense love of reading into the hearts of my students. (I got in trouble by bringing my guitar to school and helping my kids learn phonics while singing and dancing to the beat. I was told, “Ms. Lewis. This is NOT a music class!”)
I can think of no skill more important than reading. There are no limits when one can read. You can learn new skills, explore things you may never see, widen your horizons, fill your soul.
When I ran my own reading clinic for three years – teaching kindergarten through adult in Tulsa, Oklahoma – I saw personalities and goals change. I loved watching the light bulb turn on when things finally made sense. We tested to find out what was needed and then supplied those needs with fun stuff, like comic books, to make the work worth the effort. It was wonderful to see kids realize that they weren’t ‘dumb,’ – they just didn’t have all the puzzle pieces!
I feel so lucky to have a stack of books on my desk here in the office, waiting for me to enjoy!
Filed under Reading is FUNdamental
Thoughts on a Wednesday 10-6-2021
I’ve started to paint our new mailbox decoration. I have to tell you, I’m intimidated by this one. There is SO much detail – all painted. I did some color blocking on him day before yesterday. I’m planning to go back out and do more today. I don’t want to disappoint my husband, but I’m not really an artist. I’ll just do the best I can and hope for the best.
I hope I’m not boring you, telling you how beautiful our weather is. We’re having lots of sunshine and blissfully cool temperatures now. The high is supposed to be 82 F today. Simply glorious.
I discovered that a piece of edging around the ceiling on the porch fell down recently. We had a wonderful man and his partners redo our ceiling last year and he did a beautiful job. I called him, ready to try to remind him who I was and he remembered me! I’m still shocked. He and his crew are working in another town right now, but we’re on his list when he can work us in to reinstall the edging piece and see if he can make it more secure. (One of the problems with an over 30-year-ol house is that sometimes there is little to nail and edging board TO.) I hope he can figure out something.
Our sweet 4-year-old yellow lab, Amber, is now bringing deer ‘parts’ into the front yard and gnawing on them. This time of year, for some reason, our dog ‘finds’ pieces of them in her travels and delights in bringing home truly awful-smelling parts. She has done this three days in a row now. We can’t find the source of the parts, but I gather them up – while holding my nose or trying desperately not to breathe – put them in trash bags and dispose of them with the next trash pick-up. UGH. Yesterday morning I found parts she had ‘given back’ in the utility room where she sleeps at night. UGH again. I truly don’t understand the attraction dogs have for smelly, awful things to roll in, plus making them sick. Amber continues to gather what parts she can find, smiling all the while.
Filed under Thoughts on a ________
Delicious Driftwood Art
Article by Laura Caseley – LittleThings.com
Filed under Driftwood Art, When Wood Comes Alive
Diet Tool
I started using cronometer.com a couple of days ago – first to get some idea of
- how many calories I should aim for each day to lose weight
- how many calories were in my normal eating day now
- how I was doing nutrition-wise
After I filled out the information, the website said that I should aim for 1200 calories per day in order to lose the lard. My normal eating plan now is right about there, even with snacks, so that’s good, but the nutrition part showed I was eating too much fat. I decided to tweak that, plus I decided to pare down a bit on what I’m eating.
Yesterday I left off the one slice of bread I’ve been splitting to make a ham sandwich for lunch. I pared down my mid-afternoon snack, cutting out the slice of ham and a slice of cheese and just eating a hard boiled egg.
When I weighed myself this morning, I was UP half a pound. ARRRGH!
I’m telling myself that this could be water retention and not to worry about it. I’m going for the WEEK’S eating – not just one day. Since I’m supposedly a ‘mature’ woman, not dependent on instant gratification, I will see where I am at the end of the week with these changes.
It WOULD be encouraging to see some progress by the end of the week…
Filed under DIET!
Ghouls for Halloween 2021
I LOVE these! I WISH I could get them for my front porch.
One year when we were living in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma in a neighborhood with a gazillion kids, my husband got into the spirit. He bought a super ugly, wonderful mask and then put a pillow on his back to create a hump-back and put an old military blanket over his head. He looked really scary. :0)
As he answered the door to the Trick-or-Treaters, there would be screams, laughs, etc. from the kids and their parents. We had more and more visitors as word spread. By the time we ran out of FIVE humongous bags of candy, my husband was exhausted, but still laughing like a loon.
Our son was about 4 at the time. My husband showed him the costume and he was NOT amused. My husband tried to calm him, but the man in the mask was NOT his daddy! Even when the mask was OFF, with my husband stomping on it on the floor, our son was still upset. We put it up in the closet, not taking it down again until our son decided there was nothing to fear.
More Kids and Animals
Kids & Animals – Hidreley – boredpanda.com
Filed under Animals and Kids, Awe-Inspiring Photography
Still Kindness in the World
Filed under kindness
The Topiary Cat
Richard Saunders lives in the U.K. He created the topiary cat on his own property. From there, he got the idea to put The Topiary Cat in places all over the world using PhotoShop and a lot of creativity and imagination. Here is some of his work.
The Topiary Cat
Celebrating Halloween 2
Creating ‘Wonder Wart-Hog’
This is Wonder Wart-Hog. We cut the design out with our CNC set-up plus computer-guided torch from fairly heavy sheet metal. My husband used angle iron to make the piece along the bottom that attaches the design to the mailbox. We hang the piece from an iron stake on an old wheel base so that we can mark it for painting.
If you’ll look carefully, you can see his ears at the top. Wonder Wart-Hog is sitting on big boulder. You can see a knee.
Using our overhead projector, I marked key areas as best I could with magic marker front and back. I will try to refine this using a color printout.
This will be a difficult piece for me to paint. There is a lot of detail, most of which is done with paint, rather than cut out on the machine. It’s one of my husband’s favorite comic book characters. He overcame some problems in trying to do the creation and welding of the attachment piece.
I’ll do the very best I can to make his character come to life.
Filed under Lewis Art, Lewis Mailbox Decorations, metal art
Incredible Embroidery
This lady takes the idea of traditional embroidery and stands it on its ear. I can’t say enough about the creativity and skill shown here. There are no ‘patterns’ available for things like this. The fact that she can make the shirt ‘denim’ and the hair highlighted and simply gorgeous blows me away.
The creativity extends to the locations of the backgrounds and the poses of the girls.
Jolly Hoops – Pumora Embroidery
Filed under Embroidery/Sewing Art
Mondays are Motivating
I used to dread Mondays. They meant back to work, loss of freedom, etc. Now I wish there were more. For some reason Mondays are motivating to me – a chance to start with a clean slate – refreshed goals, new determination.
I’m kind of frustrated right now with my efforts to lose the lard, so I am signing up with cronometer, a calorie counting website recommended by our son awhile back. I’m going to start fresh, log what I’m eating, log my exercising, etc. to give myself a fresh look. Then, based on what I’m seeing, I’ll make tweaks in what I’m doing and see if I can get back on track again and make some serious progress.
Filed under DIET!, exercise, motivators
Choices
We went to bed at around our normal time – about midnight. We were both up again, downstairs reading at about 1am.
That is the worst time for me to NOT eat. I could eat a house at that hour. I found this cartoon yesterday and thought if our fridge were like this, it would help a lot. It would remind me that I’m not REALLY hungry at that hour, just needing comfort, and maybe some water, as well as my book…
Delightful Spoon and Fork Art
Filed under metal art, spoon - cutlery - art
For the Love of a Shoebill
Filed under Amazing Animals, Awe-Inspiring Photography
Stunning Sculpture
Filed under sculpture
Thoughts on a Sunday 10-3-2021
We received some much welcome rain the past couple of days. My husband is muttering because the rain means our grass will grow and he’ll have to mow again. :0) It was nice. We opened front and back doors, enjoying a beautiful breeze and nice, fresh air throughout. I’m very happy the worst of the summer hot and humid is behind us now.
It was a fight, but we got the “Wonder Wart-Hog” mailbox decoration outline cut out on the CNC table last night. I don’t have a copy of the image we’re using, but I’ll take pics as we progress. We hadn’t done a new decoration for a long time. My husband had to figure out again how to make the program work that converts an image to G-Code, the language the computer can follow. We then had problems because the image was WAAAY too large. We came back in, changed the dimensions, and went back out to the shop, but the computer out there wasn’t seeing the changes. After several times back and forth, he figured out that while he saved the changes, he hadn’t run the “G-code” part of the program again. He did that, saved it, and we went back out. This time things looked good.
We ran the program without the torch turned on to make sure the torch wouldn’t run off the edge of the sheet metal anywhere. We had only part of one 4×8 sheet to use, so if we made a mistake, that would be the end of the project until we were able to go to Ft. Smith to buy more. Happily, it looked like we had a good amount for the image.
We changed the torch tips, then turned on the air compressor and the torch. I’m always fascinated to watch the torch move on its own, moving in a mysterious ‘dance’ over the sheet metal in a magical way, cutting a line trough the metal. We’ve had problems in the past with the torch acting up, but this time everything went well. The torch was going exactly the right speed to cut through the metal like butter.
The next step will be for my husband to make the metal attachment that we use to attach the piece to the mailbox. His hands shake now, so this may be a real challenge – one of the reasons we haven’t made many decorations lately. We are not in a hurry, so I’m encouraging him to do the welding in really short sessions, waiting for a less-shaky day or part of the day. If we can get this done, the next step will be marking the design on the cut out metal.
A young lady showed up at the door last night, asking if we had seen her dog. I’m not sure what kind of dog she had, but the picture showed a medium-to-larger sized dog with brindle coloring. She said her name is Bella. We hadn’t seen her. She left me her phone number. I will text her later to see if she has found her sweet dog.
I hope you’re having a good Sunday.
Amazing Metal Art
Filed under metal art
More Beautiful Squirrel Photos
Filed under Amazing Animals, Awe-Inspiring Photography
Mind – Life
I have felt a bit beaten down by events in the world today plus attitudes. I’m kind of a news-aholic and realized that THAT is part of what has me down. I’ve decided to read and listen in much smaller doses until further notice, just trying to keep up with the highlights, and concentrate on what is RIGHT and BEAUTIFUL in the world.
I’ve found a LOT of beauty on Pinterest. I have to admit that I’m spending a lot of time listening to “Britain’s (and other countries) Got Talent” auditions there. There is SO much talent. I’m hoping that many of these people go on to enjoy new careers because they had the courage to stand up there and give it all they have. I’ve been searching YouTube to see if I can find any of the people I particularly liked.
I’ve also found many stunning artists creating beauty in many different media. I’m trying to share them with you.
Sometimes I fantasize about ‘what I would do if I had power.” I have no illusions. The world is fractured to the point where no one could be a popular leader anymore, but I would CLEAN HOUSE and make lots of changes before I was assassinated. :0)
Since I have no power, I’m escaping a bit.
- I’m writing on my blog
- looking at Pinterest and other websites
- listening to music
- exercising
- working in the yard
- cleaning things
- getting ready to play in my art room again
- reading
- talking to friends
- hugging my husband and pets
- talking to our son online
- trying to see the humor in things
Stay safe and happy.
Filed under Attitude, Dreams, Encouragement
Ah, Glorious Rain!
I’m SO happy. I was sitting in my chair, re-reading a book and sipping coffee, front and back doors open to a nice breeze and suddenly heard the rain. Ah, glorious rain! We really need it.
We went out on the screened back porch (my dog Amber and I) so we could hear it better and smile at each other.
The forecast is for a ‘good chance’ of rain today and an even better chance tomorrow. Hooray!
Filed under Mother Nature
New Month – Different Mailbox Decoration
It was my husband’s turn to choose the mailbox decoration. He chose Fritz the Cat.
Fritz the Cat is a comic strip created by Robert Crumb. Set in a “supercity” of anthropomorphic animals, the strip focused on Fritz, a feline con artist who frequently went on wild adventures that sometimes involved sexual escapades. Crumb began drawing this character in homemade comic books when he was a child. Fritz became one of his best known characters, thanks largely to the motion picture adaptation by Ralph Bakshi. ~ Wikipedia
Since it is harder for us to get the decorations down from their hangars in the shop these days, we are changing the decorations less frequently. We are focusing on cartoon characters in the hope that they will make kids on the bus smile and maybe bring some nice memories as drivers pass our driveway.
Filed under Lewis Art, Lewis Mailbox Decorations, metal art
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