Dotty

Robin Fledgling in all his speckled glory.

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This is my drawing for Mr. Toast's Creative

Tuesday challenge. The theme is 'dotty'.

The hardest part was thinking ahead to what

I wanted to remain white and not color those

little spots in! That, and wanting his feathers

to look soft and light. It seemed to work best

once I figured out which directions to

make my pencil marks. And I think layering

the colors helped give it some depth.

There certainly are a lot of baby birds in my yard

this spring! And they were the inspiration for my

drawing...them and this little ceramic baby. He

sits in my plant on my desk and keeps me company.

Visit all my friends and their Dotty Doodles

by clicking HERE!

What I've Been Doing Lately

I've been bonding with my bedroom walls.

Literally...as I steam off wallpaper and

get sticky with the old glue! I was talking with

Jill the other day, and we were saying how some

wallpaper comes off easy, in nice big pieces.

Some wallpaper comes off in tiny, tedious bits.

This was the tedious kind! The type of wall prep

has yet to be determined before I start to paint.

Probably a lot of patching, sanding, and primer!

Meanwhile, I'm just pretending that I have that

Shabby Chic Style going on! Of course, there's been a mess to clean up each afternoon as I try to finish up before the boys get home from school! Soon it will be a beautiful dark gray, just like the bathroom and closet area! Nugget was the supervisor, as he is in all of my projects. He would reach up and pull wet strips off of my bare feet as I stood on the stool! Really quite funny and cute! Then he'd lay on the floor register to feel the air conditioning. And like any addicted blogger, I had the laptop back on the bed with me. I mean, you never want to miss what's happening As the Blog World Turns! :)

Theme Thursday = Wrinkle

Ingram's Milk Weed Cream, 1950's

• Why is it that wrinkles are considered
• Regal and distinguished when a man
• Is aging?
• Not so with us poor girls!
• Krinkle in your forehead?
• Lines around your eyes?
• Each one
• Says "Old"!

Although, if I must have wrinkles,

I'd much rather have laugh lines than scowl lines!

And before anyone says anything.....

Yes, I spelled crinkle with a 'K'.

I was eating a Krispie Kreme while typing and thought

It was completely appropriate! LOL!

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Visit my friends at Theme Thursday for more

wrinkly posts by clicking HERE!

Home Is...Art on the Walls

My friend Sandy from Reluctant Entertainer is hosting

her weekly Wednesday "Home Is..." and asking us

to feature art or pictures on our walls.

I thought I'd share my set of

Alfred Meakin plates featuring Audubon's

Birds of America. These hang on my

dining room wall. My antique-collecting

friend gave them to me when I helped her

decorate her newly built home. I love

antiques and I love birds...perfect! :)

Please visit all my friends sharing their

art and pictures on

their walls by clicking HERE!

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Scissor Tailed Flycatcher featured there in case you care!

Some Decorating Help

Spencer has taken the liberty to redecorate in the

living room. Apparently he likes his train books all

open to a favorite page lined up on the mantel.

I suppose I can tolerate the books for a day or two.

But not the clock teetering on top of the pine cone!

Lucky Carrots

Are double carrots lucky like four leaf clovers are lucky?

*****

“That would be cool if you could eat a good food with a bad food and the good food would cover for the bad food when it got to your stomach. Like you could eat a carrot with an onion ring and they would travel down to your stomach, then they would get there, and the carrot would say, It's cool, he's with me.”

Mitch Hedberg (American Comedian, 1968-2005)

Sprouts

Some of these classic Mother's Day gifts I will

never tire of. Little cups with seeds

ready to plant. We put them in the soil and

added water on Mother's Day afternoon.

Maybe by summer we'll have some tomatoes!

Thank you, Alex!

Oronyms and Homophones

prince and prints

Oronyms (or homophones) are words which sound the same. Generally the word homophone is used to describe a pair of words that have the same sound (like prince and prints; allowed and aloud), while oronyms are normally phrases such as iced ink and I stink.

When speaking, it is impossible to tell where one word ends and the next begins. The seamlessness of speech is... apparent in "oronyms," strings of sound that can be made into words in two different ways:

~~The good can decay many ways.The good candy came anyways.

~~The stuffy nose can lead to problems.The stuff he knows can lead to problems.

~~Some others I've seen.Some mothers I've seen.

Some have been discovered inadvertently by teachers reading their students' term papers and homework assignments:

~~Jose can you see by the donzerly light?[Oh say can you see by the dawn's early light?]

~~It's a doggy-dog world.[It's a dog-eat-dog world.]

~~Eugene O'Neill won a Pullet Surprise.[Eugene O'Neill won a Pulitzer Prize.]

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Here are some more phrases that sound the same:

~~A politician's fate often hangs in a [delicate / delegate] balance.

~~Any [grey day / grade A] would be bad news for one professor I know.

~~I don't know how [mature / much your] people enjoy such a show.

~~I have [known oceans / no notions] that you yourself couldn't imagine.

~~If you listen you can hear the [night rain / night train].

~~I'm taking [a nice / an ice] cold shower.

~~Reading in the library is sometimes [allowed / aloud].

~~That's the [biggest hurdle / biggest turtle] I've ever seen!

~~[White shoes: / Why choose] the trademark of Pat Boone?

~~You'd be surprised to see a [mint spy / mince pie] in your bank.

Here is a well-known poem that written almost entirely with homophones~

Eye Halve A Spelling Chequer

(I Have a Spelling Checker)

Eye halve a spelling chequer

It came with my pea sea

It plainly marques four my revue

Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word

And weight four it two say

Weather eye am wrong oar write

It shows me strait a weigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid

It nose bee fore two long

And eye can put the error rite

Its rarely ever wrong.

Eye have run this poem threw it

I am shore your pleased two no

Its letter perfect in it's weigh

My chequer tolled me sew.

(Sauce unknown)

*****

There have been a few times I wish spell-check

could catch those kind of errors! LOL!

If you want to have more fun with words, click

on my "word games" label at the end of this post!

Pictures from google, info from funwithwords.com

Theme Thursday = Pets

Have you ever noticed that some people look

like their dog? Did you know that studies show that

it actually happens more with people who buy

purebreds? That is because people making a

serious, expensive purchase like that take

time to shop and research the dog and most

times without realizing it, they are drawn to

dogs that resemble themselves!

Muts on the other hand, are usually bought

spur of the moment...it's love at first sight

and brought home from a kennel or pound

without as much thought as to the type.

OK...so it's time to 'fess up! If you own

a pure bred dog, do you resemble it?

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visit my friends at Theme Thursday by

clicking HERE! It's all about pets today!

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info and pictures from googleimages.com

I'm off to work another auction tomorrow! One of my

girlfriends is married to an auctioneer and I clerk at the

auctions occassionally. It makes for quite an interesting

day. It's fun to see all the items for bid...antiques,

cars, guns and furniture. People watching is fun. :)

And it's always interesting to see how high

the bidding goes! My responsibilities are to

register the bidders by scanning their drivers license

into the computer, giving them a bidder's paddle and

number, and then checking them out....taking their

money, running credit cards, stamping checks

and counting cash....lots of cash!

It will be a nice change from the wallpaper

stripping I've been doing the last few days!

Wind

click to enlarge

The current theme at Creative Tuesdays is 'wind'.

And here is my drawing ...a breezy birch tree

with a windchime tune floating through the air.

If you like to sketch or doodle come join us!

This theme is due by Monday night.

Click HERE to check it out!

“I still get wildly enthusiastic

about little things...

I play with leaves.

I skip down the street

and run against the wind.”

Leo F. Buscaglia

Sepia Saturday = Guy L. Hanna

The Indiana State Normal School

Men's Physical Education, 1910

click to enlarge

*****

This post features my great great uncle,

Guy L. Hanna

(April 9, 1885 ~ March 16, 1913)

Guy attended The Indiana State Normal School for one year

in 1910. (The school was renamed Indiana State Univ. in

1965.) He's pictured in the sepia picture, above with the

men's physical education class in 1910. He's in the center row,

3rd in from the right. I see some fencing, weight lifting,

basketball...and what are those pins? Could that be juggling

or bowling? I love the suspender's on the man's socks

in the front row! The man in the center must have given

up on keeping his socks up and just rolled them down

to his ankles! Guy only attended the university that one

year and unfortunately was diagnosed with TB. His parents

moved the family to the hot dry climate of Albuquerque, NM,

in 1911, in hopes to improve his health.

When his TB was determined fatal, they returned with him

to Kokomo, Howard Co, IN in 1913 where he died at age 27.

I thought his obituary was interesting. It reads ~

Kokomo Daily Tribune, 17 March 1913,

Fights Losing Fight Against the Dread Disease.

Guy Hanna Gives Up After Long Illness.

Funeral Held This Afternoon.

After a long battle against tuberculosis, Guy Hanna, aged 27 years, gave up the battle shortly after 9 o'clock Sunday morning. Death was not unexpected by either the family or the large circle of friends who survive. He was single and was the son of Palestine and Mrs. Hanna, with whom he lived at 1029 South Armstrong Avenue. The funeral was held at 12:20 o'clock this afternoon and interment was had in the South Union Cemetery this afternoon.

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You may remember his dad Palestine and brother Glenn (my gg grandpa and g grandpa) in the 4 generations photo I posted HERE.

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Visit all of my sepia saturday friends!

Humidity

I could buy those cute little sugar cubes for

my coffee...but why should I?

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hu·mid·i·ty (hy -m d -t ). n.

1. Dampness, especially of the air.

2. Relative humidity. A measure of the amount of moisture in the air

Theme Thursday = Mystery

"The final mystery is oneself!

Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot.

In your soul are infinitely precious things

that cannot be taken from you.”

Oscar Wilde

Irish Poet, Novelist, Dramatist and Critic, 1854-1900

*****

Rememeber when you were a teenager and how you envisioned your adult life would be? I had a fresh, naive, idealism in my mind. I couldn't imagine anything difficult, character stretching, or soul crushing at that young age. And yet, the peaks and valleys we live through create who we are to become...layers and layers of triumph and tragedy as the years go by. A lot of the outcome has to do with how we choose to live through the circumstances.

A friend of mine recently said that I choose to ride on the top of the waves instead of drowning beneath them. I like that! And although I have spent my share of days and weeks barely treading water, I much prefer riding on top with the wind in my hair! Interesting thing is, I think my life is becoming more complicated the further into it I live! LOL! I look at the first half of my life, even with it's complications...good, bad and even thrilling. The question is, "Do I like the book that the pages of my life are writing?"....and the answer is most certainly, "Yes!" ...even those complicated mysteries and fascinating surprises. I wonder what the next half will bring?

And yes, before you ask, I do plan to live to be 100 years old, so still am only half way...almost! LOL!

*****

"If you want a happy ending, that depends,

of course, on where you stop your story."

Orson Welles

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“I can't go back to yesterday,

because I was a different person then”

Lewis Carroll

*****

Visit my friends at Theme Thursday!

• Mystery is life
• Years down to
• Seconds
• Triumphs and tragedies
• Each one
• Revealing the real
• You

My Little Ducks

Spring, 2000

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I came across this photo today. It's been a

decade already since I bought four little raincoats!

I thought the triplets looked like little ducks!

I still call them my little ducks, even though they

are as tall as me and weigh 185 lbs! LOL!

googleimages.com

"Even the sparrow has found a home,

and the swallow a nest for herself,

where she may have her young"

Psalm 84:3

My little nest is in serious need

of spring cleaning! Getting ready

for a garage sale is the perfect

incentive to remove junk! :)

Looks like Mrs. Bird here has

five men herself! LOL!

It's Monday!

Monday is my favorite day! I know...you

think I'm crazy. :) But if you had my five

men all weekend, you'd be happy to send

them out the door on Monday morning, too!

With kisses and wishes for a good day, of course!

And thank you all so much for your kind

Mother's Day wishes to me. Your

encouragement means so much!

Mother's Day

the family, 1993

♥♥♥♥

Two pregnancies = 4 boys + a mother

with more blessings than

she can possibly count!

♥♥♥♥

Happy Mother's Day!

Sepia Saturday = The Charleton Mill Bridge

There are 5 lovely old covered bridges close to my

home. Two others were removed for display in

local museums in recent decades, but the ones

that are left are still in working order.

The Charleton Mill Bridge, which spans Massie's

Creek in Greene County, Ohio was built in

1883 by Henry E. Hebble.

The builder used the Howe Truss, which

is the criss-cross support design shown above.

The overall length is 128 feet with a clear span

of 120 feet. Major repairs were required in

1969 when a truck loaded with gravel attempted

to cross the bridge and caused the floor to give

away. There are now steel I-beams under the

floor. So, if you're ever in Greene County,

Ohio come pay me a visit! And maybe we'll

go see some old bridges! :)

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The Old Covered Bridge

by Carl E. Smith

So it stands, in its beauty, bridging over the creek, Like a thing that is doomed, waiting, patient and meek, For the day of destruction of body and frame, Like the passing of woodlands, from which it once came: Quaint relic of yesterday, ~ lest we forget Is the old covered bridge, as it stands with us, yet.

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Visit my friends at sepia saturday by clicking here!

Kisses in the Sky

I woke up this morning to a beautiful

sunrise and a big X in the sky above my house

...what wonderful signs that it's

gonna be a great day! :)

Theme Thursday = Pink

“Wish on everything. Pink cars are good, especially old ones. And stars of course, first stars and shooting stars. Planes will do if they are the first light in the sky and look like stars. Wish in tunnels, holding your breath and lifting your feet off the ground. Birthday candles. Baby teeth.” ~~Francesca Lia Block

photos from googleimages.com

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To visit my friends at Theme Thursday, click HERE!