made me laugh

i parked next to this car on campus the other day, and i have to admit it made me laugh. of course, i guess you have to be the right age to have played this game. probably the same people who were on a long trip with their parents, laying in the back window waving at strangers, protected by "mom's seatbelt" while jumping on the seats, stopping at rest stops, and begging for more pit stops and more munchies!

of course, it's spring time and i feel the urge to travel coming on strong. the sense of wanderlust hits me hard in the springtime -- especially if the weather is warm and i can hear the traffic of the highway. only thing that makes that more tempting is the rumble of fat pipes chanting "blub, blub, blub, blub."

yeah, i feel that day coming on stronger and faster all the time.

in case you can't read the license plate, it says "SLGSUM1".

young up-and-coming artist

ok, now while this may not look as impressive as da vinci or raphael or rockwell -- this is the picture that raven, my 3 1/2 year old granddaughter, drew for me yesterday while staying the day with me.

wednesdays are typically my day to have the girls for the day. i was trying to check my email and do a couple of things on the computer, and raven wanted some paper. she got out a couple sheets from the printer, scootched up in my lap, and began drawing. trust me, i get very little done these days other than playing, coloring, scrapbooking w/ raven, rocking riahna, etc. it's tough work!

she quickly filled the front and back of 2 sheets, and then held this up to me and said, "look memaw. i drew this for you. this is you and this is your house." she did all of this w/o any coaching.

now i know i'm a grandparent and sometimes we're just sickening in how special we think our grandchildren are -- but i have to admit that i think this is just pretty darned good for a 3-year-old.

granted, memaw only has 1 arm and no torso -- but it's definitely an identifiable stick figure. of course, if i just had a head, 1 arm, and 2 legs -- that would certainly help me on when i step on the bathroom scales!

the house is a little cockeyed -- but again, it's a recognizable house structure. who knows, maybe raven just thinks things are a little cockeyed at my house anyway!

after all, it's always better to follow the rules at memaw's house than at home! maybe that's because it's so much easier since there are fewer of them? or maybe it's just because memaw thinks the kids are perfect on their own?

cat - 1, girls - 0

yeah, that's right. that was the score from last night, but we're up for a rematch on thursday night!

that's how our evening turned out last night. summer and i were going to give the cat her twice-yearly haircut (otherwise known as "shaving the cat"). it's usually quite an ordeal and if you've never experienced it -- you have NO idea of what it's like! if you've ever read the joke email about "how to give a cat a pill" -- you could multiply that by 10 and you've have an idea of what it's like to give a cat a hair cut.

so this was what we had planned for our evening last night. grandpa was going to watch the girls while summer and i shaved the cat. we started the movie for the grandpa and the girls, and then started prepping the area for the cat make-over. summer measured out the cat drugs (a little calmer-downer to keep her from killing us in the process) and then caught the cat. amazingly, summer managed to give the cat the medicine all by herself -- and that in itself is quite amazing (reference back to the email on "how to give the cat a pill"!).

the instructions on the cat "calmer-downer" says to give her 10 drops and wait 15-20 minutes and give her another 5 drops. so, summer shut the cat in my bathroom while we waited for the 15 minutes to pass, knowing that it would take time to measure out the next drop of medicine and also time to catch the cat -- even in a closed-in and fairly small area (10 x 14).

when we went back in there and opened the door -- the cat was gone! now, we know that she can open the door, but the door was shut when we got there and we know she isn't smart enough to open the door, walk out, and then close the door behind her. we were beginning to wonder, though, because we could not find her anywhere. there are just not a lot of places to hide in the bathroom, other than the covered litter box and she's much too stuck up to hide in there!

we looked and we looked, and then we started looking other places in my bedroom like in the closet, under the bed, behind the laundry hamper, and more. we double checked the bathroom, double checked the closets, and still couldn't find the cat.

that only left one place for her to be -- under the jacuzzi! after summer had shut her in the bathroom, the cat had opened one of the service doors to get under the jacuzzi and crawled under. the doors fall shut behind her unless opened all the way -- so we had no idea to look under there. after getting under there, she had crawled back to the furthest spot on the other side -- just out of reach of a broom handle or anything else!

all we could do was shine the flashlight under there as see her watching us -- and growling every time she thought we were going to try and touch her! summer tried calling her out, enticing her w/ food, going off and leaving the doors opened (like we weren't interested in what she was doing!), calling her some more . . . . but nothing worked.

jasmine stayed hidden under the jacuzzi until summer had left and the drugs had worn off. then she came out and plopped down in the middle of my bed just like she was the queen of the nile. she had won the battle and she was feeling rather smug about it. what she's doesn't know is that she hasn't won the war! she'll be getting a haircut on thursday and we now have child-proof latches on our grocery list to prevent the cat from getting under and/or hiding under the jacuzzi this time!

here is a picture of what jasmine looks like. this picture was taken in december, 1997, so summer has changed quite a bit and jasmine hasn't changed much in looks but her attitude has taken a fairly constant downhill turn since then. at that time, she thought she might be a princess. now she's fairly sure she's the queen and willing to teach anybody a lesson who might think otherwise! unfortunately, she is fully clawed and has a full mouth full of teeth -- so be forewarned!


i post this now so you can see how much difference there is when we get her shaved. she goes from looking like an elegant princess to more of a drowned rat. it's kind of like cat-grunge! amazingly, though, her attitude and personality are much more pleasant when she looks like a drowned rat! must support my theory that some people are nice because they have to be as they can't count on their looks to get them through life.

after we get the cat-grooming done -- i'll post another picture for all to see the difference. if there are any injuries to any of the workers, i'll post pictures of those, too. just so you know what a dangerous job this is!

paper anniversary

that's it -- we just had our "paper" anniversary. that means we've made it through 1 year and the traditional gift for that is paper. now, what can you give someone that's paper? that takes some thought. especially if i didn't want it to be "something scrapbook" because that has a very negative connotation to jerry.

so, h-m-m-m. something paper. i knew of something paper i wanted, but i wasn't sure that jerry wanted that. of course, i could always just get it "for us" because that was what i wanted.

with my back injury and his shoulder injury/surgery, we haven't been very good about getting each other presents. we didn't get each other birthday gifts, christmas gifts, valentine's day gifts, and now anniversary gifts. what next? we'll be buying our own gifts and just saying it's from the other person?

well, jerry knew the really neat thing i wanted that was paper, and after we got home from dinner on wednesday night (valentines day) we decided to go with it. of course, my piece of paper will have a matching piece of paper for him -- so that way we each fulfilled the requirement of getting the other one something paper.

what is it, you ask? if you know me well -- you'll already know. if you don't -- then you'll just have to wait and find out when it happens!

after all, there are some people who read this blog just to find out what we are doing in our lives instead of being a part of our lives. there's no need for them to know our business until after it's over. . . when it's too late for them to try and mess anything up or interfere in any way!

it's official!

it's official and here's the new logo! we've been talking over the last year of setting up a business to do picture restorations and more. on the back of the card, i've listed the services available and can easily discuss with people what options and price ranges are most beneficial for their individual situations.

Services offered include –
· Scan pictures, slides, journals, or documents to digital files
· Store file back up for emergencies
· Restore damaged or aged photos
· Provide photo cleanup on current photos
· Create slideshow presentations on CD or DVD
· Original farm photography
· Silhouette photography, painting, or drawing

Prices vary depending upon assignment. Contact me for an estimate on your job!

this all started since our experience w/ jerry's mother's 80th birthday party last year. at that time, what we found was a huge box of photos that she had taken (torn) out of her photo albums and was dropping into brown paper baggies that were labeled w/ her kids' names. this was over a hundred years of family history!

i was horrified when i saw that because i knew that once those pictures were handed out to the different siblings, no one would ever know who had what pictures. important pictures to someone might not be the important pictures to someone else. or, if there is more than one child in a picture, how do you decide which bag to drop that picture in? what if all the children want that picture?

I've scanned in his mother's complete collection of pictures. i've labeled and dated them, identified the people in each picture, repaired damaged pictures, and cut out people who weren't wanted in the pictures. this way, they can ALL have a copy of ALL the pictures. no one ever has to worry about a special picture not being available!

once people started seeing the changes i could make in a picture, they started requesting that i fix a picture that was important in their collection. we knew that there had to be a market for this type of service, but so far we just hadn't had the time to take care of getting it off the ground.

well, it's off the ground now. the logo is designed and copyrighted, my business cards are printed and getting out, postcards are printed to mail out to special people, and i donated 3 certificates to the KKOW radio auction for promotional purposes and advertising is set up for the next 60 days.

more and more people are hearing about the business and what i can do for their picture collection -- which means that more and more people are checking into their personal collections to see what they need to have done. more questions/inquiries means more answers and more curiousity means more business. it's SO exciting!!!

i'll be doing some major networking in the near future and attending a couple/few very large trade shows and business expos -- so that should also help the business get started. now we'll see what works out!

we all had input on the logo and the business card, but lucas is the one who did the actual hands-on creation of the logo and card. looks great, lucas!

stan herd -- the landscape artist -- emailed me!

i have attached a picture of the global flyer landscape art that stan herd, the landscape artist, did for display when the global flyer took off and landed from the world record flight in salina, ks.

this is a picture from the drawings of leonardo da vinci, who actually drew plans for a flying machine in the 1500s, to celebrate the long-desired need or urge for flight.

i had written about stan herd and his art way back on my personal blog at world record flight and kansas art . he recently saw that posting, and he sent me a personal email with this picture attached to it.

i was quite impressed that he took the time to thank me for writing about him and his art on my blog. since then, i've checked out his personal web site again, just to see what all he's doing and i've posted the notice to all my art groups to check him out, too.

hopefully, he'll be doing art for a long time to come and will continue to create many famous pieces that will make an impact on people worldwide. i'm so much more impressed with him after the email that he sent, just to see that he's still approachable and caring as a human being while still being a famous artist! impressive!!

time to start blogging again

that's right. you read it correctly. it's time to start blogging again. the reasons i had for NOT blogging no longer exist, so it's time to start posting. several things have been going on, although not ALL of them will be discussed here. those of you who KNOW me, really know what all those things are anyway.

the new year is off to a bang and we've got SO many things going on here. i've created a list of things to start working on for myself -- a list of goals that you'll soon be hearing about b/c you'll know whether i'm making any progress on any of them or not. hopefully, if i keep motivated, some of these things will start happening and start to fall in place very soon.

happy new year to everyone and i wish you all the prosperity, success, love, and happiness that you deserve. for those who are living "the good life" now, i hope you live it up and enjoy what you have. for those who are struggling and things are not looking so bright, remind yourself that "this, too, shall pass."

2007 is going to be a great year. check back to see how wonderful it is here and for all of us in the family. there are great things ahead for us and we intend to live them to the fullest!

"revised" jimmy on the pumpkin patch train

okay guys -- after several great suggestions and ideas on what to do to make jimmy's picture better, here's what i have to show for it. i darkened in the background and created it over completely behind jimmy's face. that seemed to make a huge impact on seeing exactly where his nose and chin ended. overall, i'm MUCH happier w/ this picture now that the change is made.



summer took this picture on the way to the pumpkin patch, but i've alwasy been drawn to it as if there were some ethereal feeling to it. trust me, though, there was nothing any more angelic about this little demon today than there was any other day -- making him fit right in with the other little demons present!

jimmy on the pumpkin patch train

i drew and colored this picture of jimmy, riding on the train to the pumpkin patch w/ us. the picture is actually darker in person, but colored pencil seems to lighten up during the scanning process.

anyway, the pictures was taken of jimmy as he watched out the window on the train, so just the side of his face (hardly even any silhouette of his facial features) is visible. i had a hard time doing his skin, as he is so pale-complected that i didn't have pencils that light to work with!

i was happier w/ some sections of the picture more than i was the overall picture -- but it was definitely a learning process.

this drawing was done in a 9 x 12 sketchbook w/ 70# white paper and prang colored pencils, sprayed w/ matte finish sealant to keep it from smearing.

our front porch looking out

here's what today brought us -- the after-effects of 1" of ice covered w/ 10" (and drifts) of snow and a night of fog that froze in the tree limbs. just beautiful this morning!

this is from the kitchen steps looking out on the front yard. the sun was up, but not past the clouds so it still looked fairly dark outside.

these are the trees down the east side of the yard . . . .


jerry took this picture, and i'm so proud of his creative photography! he's really branching out in his interests! this is our front porch looking straight north into the trees across the road. this was a little later, so the sun was up and it was brighter out.


same tree out the kitchen door, but it looks more fabulous with more light shining on it. as i was cropping pictures and stuff, i asked jerry what was that blob on the picture. i figured there was a dot of moisture on the lens or something, but when i zoomed in we saw that it's a beautiful redbird flying over the tree. i feel like i should "touch that out" for the picture to be more pleasing to the eye, but then i think "if that redbird was out flying today, he deserves to be in the picture!"


the last couple of days have been marvelous, starting w/ ice coming late on wednesday and into thursday morning. then late thursday afternoon, the snow started falling, but once it started -- it flat-out got with it! we had 10" of snow by friday morning, w/ drifts up to 2 ft deep. all that on top of about 1" of ice, so travel was practically at a standstill here. the main roads got cleared off quickly and town was clear -- but that's nowhere near where we are.

we were just trapped at home for the last 3 days, and it was wonderful. jerry and i stayed home from work and scott stayed home from school. we could've gotten out in case of emergency, but sometimes it's just nice and peaceful to just "be home". i absolutely love being trapped at home in situations like this. i love to cook. we spend lots of family time watching movies and playing games. it's better than vacation, b/c at least we're not all exhausted when it's over!

jerry had to make a grocery store/pharmacy run today, though, and found out that once he hit the main roads everything was just fine. it's still a little slick here and there, but nothing like it is still at our house!