How to paint with cats

Painting at our house entails a few challenges. First there is the large amount of animal hair that floats around. (After all, we have 4 cats and a Newfie, all of which have decided that it's time to shed.) So to paint, in our house, you have to become very adept at removing hair from the wet paint. And this includes watercolor, or painting the walls for that matter. So Clyde is now getting very adept at removing the hair. But there are other problems to consider also.



For instance, paw prints do add texture to the wet paint, whether you want it or not.
See the above picture of the paw prints in the wet paint. In addition, if the paint is wet enough, the cats can paint pawprints all over your paper. Luckily that didn't happen here.



Of course, leaving the painting to dry in the sunshine on the table offers it's own challenges. The cats take up residence on the paper in order to nap in the sunshine. Don't they look comfortable?



Then there is always the choice of seating. Middle of the painting is the place of choice for Calico.

So this is the painting of a sunflower that Clyde is working on, with the help of the cats!

More Mary, Mary.......

More flowers, seems like all I'm getting pictures of. We had planned on joining the zoo today, and taking the kids, but there's something about getting up to fog and 40 degrees that just takes the fun out of it! So everyone else slept in.



I did get up before sunrise the other day, and went out to take pictures of the sunrise. The sunflowers in the garden didn't come out so well, but the singles out by the fence did. Course I had to lay on the ground to get the right take on them, but I'm thinking these would make a great painting!



Clyde is really getting into the watercolor, and now he's absconding with my camera to take pictures of what he wants to paint. So, the above is a sunflower with a bee!
We are certainly going to get different pictures now.



And here's one of our sunflowers. They are really starting to bloom, so we're going to have lots of them. We did buy some bricks so I could work on the deck, and we found some really pretty black eyed susans that we now have planted under the sunflowers.

Happy gardening!

Mary, Mary, quite contrary....

How does your garden grow?

Well, I'm not Mary, and I usually don't get much to grow. But this summer has been so WET, I swear I've been transported to Seattle. Yes, humid, wet, and cool for most of the summer. But here are some of my lovelies for your enjoyment:




The daisies, which I hope are going to survive the winter. I'm mulching with the horse manure to keep everything from hopefully freezing. I want more of these, they are one of my favorite flowers!



Here is an acorn squash. These grew magically when Clyde dropped some seeds from a squash we had, while he was putting stuff in the composter. He just pushed the seeds into the ground, and look what came up! I'm not sure, but it may be too late in the growing season here for these to do well, but I'll keep you posted.



And here is one of the first sunflowers. They are mostly over my head, and more are starting to bloom. While I may say that daisies are my favorite flower, I always plant lots of these. I think you could say that sunflowers are really my favorite.



And this sunflower is the prettiest I have ever seen. It's got such a lovely color, and so distinct.

We went to a horse show yesterday, now Clyde can hardly walk, Kory tried to buck him off (she hates latigo trails arena), and now he thinks his tailbone may be broken.
Oh, the moaning that is going on here!

I'll have pictures of that later.

Our watercolor class was cancelled, but Tom, the instructor, was nice enough to let us into the over filled Saturday morning class. So now we have a class on Saturday morning.

And now it's raining, again!!

A Little Cuteness

Here's a little cuteness to brighten your day.



We have a sunflower that is blooming, and some more with heads that haven't opened yet. I'll post a picture when they're all open so you can see the sunshine. Truthfully, we're lucky they're blooming at all. Monday we had rain, a deluge, hail, more rain, more deluge, and more hail. When Clyde got up at 1:30 a.m. to take the dog out, it was still raining. And Tuesday dawned cold, cloudy, and foggy.

It cleared for a short time, and by Tuesday afternoon we were being rained and hailed upon AGAIN!!

Today, we had a nice summery day (but only in the 70s). FINALLY!!!!

But my poor petunias look very bedraggled.

Hope you all are having a nice summer. We've practically gone from winter straight to fall.

A Very Miss M Birthday

On Saturday, after going to Wally's World to get the ingredients, we went to pick up the grandkids. We were going to have a little celebration because Miss M just turned four on the 13th.

Grandpa and Miss M made cupcakes, the white kind with lots of color dots. Very colorful. Then they frosted the cupcakes with pink frosting. Because we all know that Miss M's favorite color is pink. (Or is that her mother's favorite color?)



And of course, we had to sample the frosting.



Then we had to write on the cupcakes with glitter gel, in red, blue and green. What fun!



And sample the gel after each letter!


Then we were ready for the party to start! See, there is a letter on each cupcake, along with sprinkles (we didn't leave anything out!). And the letters spell Happy Birthday MissM.



We lit the candles, which were white with colored dots on them, so that MissM could blow them out. See, there are four candles. MissM decided where to put them all by herself. She huffed and puffed and blew them all out!


Then everyone had to have a cupcake. G starts by licking off the frosting, but then he eats the cupcake too.


You can see that they were REALLY good!


Everyone ate the cupcakes (except for MissM who thinks eating cupcakes means licking off the frosting!).



Mr. CJ really liked the cupcakes. He just smashed the cupcake paper against his face and proceeded to eat.



You can see that MissM like hers!



Then Grandpa picked up the leftover cupcakes to put them away. The look on CJ's face was priceless. I have never seen such a mad face, and especially on him. He's normally very easygoing and cheerful. Not even temper tantrums. And for a two year old, that is amazing!
But here he is after the mad look. Doesn't he just look so forlorn?!




Everything worked out just fine. After all three had their turn in the bathtub, Miss M decided that she was hungry, so we had ICE CREAM! And went to bed......

As seen in a drive by....and more experimenting

On the way home from town today, I saw this in our lower pasture.



There are two of these fawns, along with their mother, who have been living down here. I haven't seen them for several days. Today we saw just the one. Unfortunately, I only had the little camera, not the new one, or the old one with the telephoto on it. So we had to make do.



I only got these two pictures that turned out. I now have to figure out how to make the pictures larger on Blogger, since I tried using bigger pictures, and they turned out the same size. But I do know now to make the size before I save for the web and not change the size from 100% to something smaller.

Oh well, live and learn. Looking forward to seeing the 3 grandkids this weekend. They should be back from Grandma Carol's, and we need to celebrate M's birthday.

Plus M and G both start school next Tuesday. Fall is coming.

How I spent my summer vacation

The other day, Clyde rode Kory on cows. He was helping Rob, the trainer, get ready for a show. The cows were all bunched up at the end of the arena for cutting practice. The trainer's daughter was drafted to keep the cows in a bunch. So here she sits, while the guys play with the cows. What better way to spend your summer vacation? On the back of a horse, or catching tadpoles in the ponds we have from all the rain, or riding your horses. Outside all day long without a care in the world.



Except, this day, she kept wanting to go get a drink, like, "Dad I want a drink (it's getting a little boring here ya know!)" Dad's response? "Not now!"
He has his priorities!

Here's Clyde chasing a cow. Kory hasn't forgotten how to cut cows, and she really likes it! (Kory is the horse).



And another shot of Clyde. Rob is on Reno, Wayne's appaloosa mare. She's a cool horse, and pretty too.



And what was I doing? Using my new camera and getting used to it. On another note, I'm not sure how these pictures are going to look. Clyde showed me another way to get these ready for the Web in CS4, and I'm sure I have some experimenting to do.

Today I found some free fill dirt on craigslist, Clyde called the guy and now we're waiting for him to call back when he'll be there and we can pick up dirt!

A little of this, a little of that.

It's been a while since I've posted out here. No real reason, just lazy I guess. But we have accomplished a lot. We went to C's birthday party. He's 2 now!

We have been collecting seeds from all the wildflowers (weeds) along the road. Which was a good thing, because the county came thru today and mowed all the flowers down. We are going to try to grow them next year. Our garden is full of flowers, did you know that the farmer's market is a great place to get plants? Well it is. We have a poor basil plant, it's not going to survive. The poor thing was too skinny and we've been pulling off the leaves to spice up the mozarella and tomatoes that we've been eating.

Plus we've been taking lots of pictures with the new camera, only a few of which I've included here.

Here's G at the lake where we went fishing. It was a novelty for him, because he and Grandpa went and caught grasshoppers for bait. Who knew that you could use grasshoppers to fish. Of course, we had to go get him a rod and reel too, and some hooks and sinkers.



Here's princess M fishing. She and C have rods and reels that already have the fish attached. (not going to be catching anything, and M's is a pretty pink fish).




And here's a picture of princess M casting. She really has some form/technique here. And the fish went pretty far out into the lake!




Next we went and sat at a picnic table and had a picnic. These kids sure do like to eat outside. Doesn't matter what you feed them, they'll eat it outside. We usually take PB & honey sandwiches and have crystal lite drinks. They sure do like to eat that!

We were sitting at the end of the lake near the train tracks, and along came a train. It was noisy!



Mr. C had to climb up on the table to cover his ears.



The new patio is coming along. We have the railroad ties in place, and are now looking for dirt to fill it. Then sand and bricks and it'll be done. I'm sure hoping it'll be done by labor day, but Clyde hasn't found any dirt yet. And he's so lucky, I have three railroad ties left over that I can use at the bottom of the front yard to delineate the path and keep all the dirt from flowing downhill. (He's thrilled that I've thought of that! LOL!)

I have lots of flowers outside, and some of the sunflowers are taller than Clyde, but none of them have bloomed yet. I'll have to post pictures of the garden soon.

We watched Wayne's horses and Rob's horses over the weekend while they went to an Appy show. Wayne has two of the cutest little foals I have ever seen. One colt and one filly. The colt is the little brown and white one. He's friendly, and curious, and a little pushy. But we had fun with him. This is the colt.



The little filly is also an Appy, but she is solid colored. Her dam is a leopard spotted Appaloosa, quite pretty and very nice. What I liked about this filly, besides her friendliness, was how she moved. We played with her, and she has the moves of a cowhorse. She is so quick and lively. I also liked her dark coloring and the little crescent moon she has on her forehead. You can see it in this picture.



Well, now I have to go put some more blog entries together. Mustn't let so much time go by again. School starts for us next Monday, and Clyde will have some watercolors to show off!