Happy Birthday, Larry! (2011)

Happy Birthday, Larry!

It is that time of year again!  We are celebrating Larry's birthday.  Can't believe the caboose is sooooo old.  We went to dinner on Saturday in Austin.  He ate milenesa, as is tradition for his birthday!

You can check out the last two photo spots for his birthday.  The big 2010 and the not so big 2009.

Larry in New Mexico way back in 2004.

I will add a new photo from yesterday, later, thanks to Jennie.  As is usual for me, I forgot to take photos!

Texas and HEB

Oh my, Superbowl time.  Here is our Texas grocery store commercial or the whole song.  I doubt they will have the whole song in the commercial.  Bastrop is mentioned.  :)

Art Notes - Inspiring Artists

For all you watercolor enthusiasts around.  My Scavenger Hunt buddy, Joan Tavolott, has a great watercolor - ink sketch with "how to" on her blog.  She does excellent work in New York.  She gets out in the cold weather, in her car, and sketches.  Brave woman!  She has a soft touch with the watercolor which I enjoy so much.  She loves the ocean and paints many seascapes and beach scenes.   She inspires me to try watercolor more often.  Check back to see.  Ha.

Also wanted to mention that Susan Carlin and Kelly Borsheim have paintings selected for the Salon International in San Antonio.  It is a very prestigious show and competition.  You can check out the entries here and read about Susan's here.  We have all been watching Susan paint this on her ustream page.  You can watch the videos as well.

Susan and Kelly have been art friends since we moved to Bastrop.  I met Susan at the Austin Pastel Society meetings and Kelly here in Bastrop.  Joan is a friend via the Scavenger Hunts.  Hopefully I will meet her one day, too.

Stay warm these winter days.  See you all soon at the gallery or ????

Big Snow of 2011 Photos

It is 23 F degrees outside, 27.1 on the porch and just barely 65 at my desk.  Yikes!  Not our usual Central Texas weather.  It snowed early this morning, a rare event, so here are some photos.  Guess it won't be melting until about noon, so most folks aren't running around.  There is not much help in the road clearing, salting, sanding either.  Never need it.

From the deck upstairs.

Gene marked the date.

Lower deck from upper deck.

View to the west.

View to the east.

The newspaper delivery track.

Ah, the sun is out for a bit.

No more snow so Gene put the flags up. 

A little more sun.

The snow fell evenly, eh?

A little sun in the back, the birdbath is full of snow.

It is not looking good for the First Friday in Bastrop.  It will be below freezing and probably slick after some melting mid-day.

Golf, etc...

I haven't posted about golf much.  We haven't played much because of the cold and the gallery.  But here is something worthwhile to watch and possibly help with:

Funnyman Feherty's "F Troop" No Joke

There are more videos there to see how Chevron and golf people are working to help soldiers returning from war.  Pretty interesting and touching.

Downed Tree and Kristopher Battles Link

I have been behind on my blog reading and wandered by Kristopher Battles' blog today.  He is a Marine Corps artist.  Besides his great work, he has given us a link to a wonderful book with sketches from WWI that is free to download.  Check his blog of January 21, 2011.  I'm not putting a direct link to the book so you will check out Kristopher's work, too.  Amazing.  The book reminds me of what my Aunts used to do.  They would write notes or copy poems and sketches, too.   They wrote down words of the popular songs of the time.  Sketched women in the typical clothing, etc.  They sketched soldiers, I imagine from photos in the paper. They sketched posters as well as stamp booklets.   Mother had some of their sketchbooks, but my sister must have them now.  Hmmmm.

The cold front arrived about 4 a.m.  It came howling with the strongest winds we can remember here.  We heard a crash but couldn't see what happened.  This morning you can see one of the big oak trees is down. I guess it was already pretty dead as it appears to be hollow.  We have our house cleaned by Danny and Reuben, HoneyBeeMaids.com.  (This is a second site with more information.) Reuben's other work is a tree service.  They cancelled today with us so they could help clients with emergency tree removal!  So we are not alone with downed trees.  We have not lost power.  Thank goodness.  I think there are power outages and the weather is, of course, much worse to the north.  Hope you all stay safe and warm.

I'll be at my gallery/studio today working on a painting.  If you are out in this freezing weather, come by.  I just noticed that the Weather Bug on my computer went from 31 to 28 while I have been posting.  Yikes!  Out on the porch, it went from 39.6 to 37.  Not good.

Downed tree from the lower deck.

A little closer.  Those are big trees.

Tree from the upper deck.

You can see the hollow trunk.