MIddle of the Week.....

The decoration on this box is so great to see.  It reminds me of summer with the daisies and sunflowers. I probably have shared this box before but it is a new photo.

A leftover shot of yesterday's work in the student coffee shop. The concession stand is still stocked for selling for games but I think all the sports are now over for the year.  I guess they will box it all up and take it to the baseball diamond.

A blurry shot of a cup of coffee that I had last evening.  I like the impressionistic painting printed on the mug. We have two of these and the one with the sailboats is mine. Low light and instant cameras will never take a focused shot but the impressionistic painting seems out of focus when you see it in high light anyway.

The neighbor up the street had a Christmas tree that was white and then she covered it with all crystal ornaments.  White lights with crystal ornaments on a tree makes the tree look like a snowflake or shining light.  Audrey loved her tree and she admitted that she would put it up and not like its look and take everything off and do it again. She had the perfect tree. We were friends with her for a while and during that time she would give my wife crystal ornaments. The little birdbath is one of them.  It never makes it on our tree but sits in a glass cabinet with other small delicate things.

When she sold the house, she then went to the retirement home. The house, big four square styled house, hasn't kept a solid long time owner ever since.  It keeps getting bought and then foreclosed.  Audrey is gone now and she left the house back in 2002.

I don't know how they made the little birds but they do have beady little black eyeballs. I just now noticed that the silver ribbon would be used to hang it.

We are warmer and will see some or most of our snow go away for a while.  We have the rest of March to get through and we usually get hit hard with snow at least once in March.  I am an at-risk teacher today helping students with their homework.  It is a nice change from my last two days of work.  Thank you for stopping by today.

Tuesday......

I am subbing today and my main part of the day will be working the student coffee shop.  The shop is being worked by students who need to learn the marketing skills and working with the public. I think I will be pretty much tired of this after about 6 periods.

I have shared a similar photo of this before in a past blog.  The graphic makes you want to have a great cup of french vanilla in a red cup but all you get is a styrofoam cup with a design of a steaming coffee cup on the side. French vanilla, mocha and hot chocolate runs the range of flavors for the student so have.  I really don't know if there is a form of coffee in the mocha one or just less sugar or chocolate.
I may try a mocha later on and put some of my instant coffee in it that I carry in my pack of teaching things.

I am sharing one of my favorite mugs again today.  Charley Brown has his kite string wound around the top of the mug and you can see that he is not happy about it.

Snoopy is of course the observer with his expression of  "ok,  now what".  The message inside says "take a little time and unwind."

We are having mixed weather conditions all over the state today.  Eventually we will all be melting together.  Rain was the main weather for us but then it got cold and we had ice.  Our school had one bus going into the ditch this morning and fortunately no one was hurt.  Heavy wet snow was also falling in different parts of Iowa.  When they showed the radar it show a design as if someone had poured into a pile lots of colors and then it was being stirred into many patterns of color.

We ate out last night at Cheesecake Factory for Valentine's day, one day late. The kids from Maine gave us the gift card to pay the bill from some other time of the year and we just enjoyed ourselves.  I had tacos with fried steak in them and sides of rice and black beans.  It was a great meal and I was glad.  The last time we were there I had bad cold food.  This time the rice had a lime juice as part of the ingredient and I really liked that.  I am not a lime fan normally but they combined flavors that made the rice so good. No one can ruin black beans and they were good too.  We went early and by the time we left the place it was packed with people waiting to get in and sit down.  I guess there were a lot of people who waited to do the Valentine thing late.

Melting snow will be great and a relief from having storms also will be great.  I did hear the lady weather girl say that we are not done with winter so not to get your hopes up just yet.

Thank you for stopping by today. 

Ceramic Sharing.......

An artist grandpa with his kids and a dog.  I guess it looks like they are two girls and he must be painiting on a snowman.

My wife received a gift of a small tea pot with various insects applied to it.

I really like the dragonfly on this side of it.

Butterflies and bugs basically fill out the collection on the tea pot.

A cupboard full of various things that are all keepsakes of some kind.  This photo happens to show ceramic figures and plates. I have photographed individual items from the cupboard before but that has been a few years back. The little girl that has a cat on her shoulder while holding the cat's tail is a good one to share later.

I am in the middle school today working with physical education students.  They are playing volleyball and a large group of them don't have any skills developed in the game so far.  I guess 6th graders don't play it so much as high school students play it a lot. We are suppose to warm up a little today.  We are going out for a Valentine's dinner tonight as we didn't wan to fight the crowds.  Thanks for stopping by today. 

A Dozen........of Reds.

It is Valentine's day and I think these guys fit the bill for the day.  I have a red velvet cake that my wife made for us to eat.  The cake will keep on giving and I hope the roses last just as long.

Anyone who follows me for very long knows that I can't resist taking photos of donuts and cupcakes.  I think I did take a shot of sometimes a bunch of bananas.  This little cupcakes are headed to my wife's Sunday school class.  All the little girls will be so happy. 

The yucca plant always puts out a sculptural design in the winter.  It reminds me of those spider like creatures that you see in the space movies.   More snow is coming for sure.  It just has not been specified exactly when to expect it.  Maybe by afternoon we will see it falling from the sky.

I hope all will have a good day.  Please stay safe.  Thanks for showing up to read my post today. 

I am having problems with my comments that I make to others.  I have been writing lots of comments the past two days and I get mail from whomever saying that it didn't deliver my note.  I will be working on that.  Maybe the comment is getting posted but the email connection is not.  It means I have to go digging through the preferences. I really don't like it.  Maybe I will ask blogger some questions.

Cold and Sunny Skies..........

Looking across the street I caught a shot of the sun shining through the old silver maple. I did say it was cold and it looks like it might warm up to less cold.  Snow is coming back again on Sunday.

When it was a little warmer the house roof melted off the snow causing the icyclcs.  It also put weight on the middle of the eave trough showing that I need to install another brace to support it.  My neighbor commented on the net that he liked my icycles but I don't enjoy them so much when it is doing this to the house.  Fortunately this old house has big overhangs so there isn't any melt back up into the shingles.

Has anyone every asked how we got that spelling of icycles?  The computer thinks it is misspelled but yahoo says that it is the correct spelling.

We ventured out in the miserable wind chill conditions.  We needed food but it was not a fun thing to do. I bought a finch sock and more suet for the birds.  I hope to get finches and probably juncos on the sock.  We had titmouse on the sock last year for a few short number of days.

I never really know what to buy when it comes to suet.  There are different kinds that really cater to the buy and most of the ingredients are the same.  Some have more seeds in them and I really don't think there is much or any peanut butter in them.

I was out in the snow a couple of days ago and I sort of caught snow in the photo.  This photo reminds me of the show on tv where the hardware guy would holler over to his neighbor and talk to him without us ever seeing his face.  Later years in the show the guy actually was seen once in a while.

The photo suggests mystery as you see my birdhouse and the tree on the property line.  The pine tree is the neighbors that you see lots of times when I shoot from the dinning room window.  The triangular piece of wood use to help support a bird feeder.  The squirrels didn't like it and their jumping off of it continually onto the tree destroyed it.

I will finish today with a photo of a painting in progress by my wife.  It will be finished soon but she is on hiatus from painting right now.

I hope everyone is surviving the weather conditions in your state or country.  Thanks for stopping by today.  Every one be carful out there.


I see that Google is going to stress me out.  Picasa, my storage system for all my photos, is going to be moved into Google photos.  I have been there before but I didn't feel very comfortable with their set up.  I will have to go into it and start learning as I see we are given notice to vacate in a timely manner. Ugh!!!!!!!!!

Finishing off the Week......

While I am outside taking a few photos I don't see much with any color.  The artificial plastic wreath with red berries seems quite striking to see and to photograph.  I will probably leave the small wreath out there on the old snow sled for the rest of winter.

The things that are not artifical is this fall leaf and the piece of Japanese yew shrub bunched together.   The strong winds of the past days  have put the two together.  Our gently fluffy snow covers the two  in their arrangement.

The redtwig dogwood is not putting out a lot of red color on its branches this winter..  It probably is sad as the city plans to cut it down because of its leaves will be falling into the ditch of mistakes. I will try to get out there when the ground thaws and dig up parts of it and move as much as I am able to do. I think I can get a few plantings from it along the outside edge of it before the bull dozing chain saws start to rear their heads.

Having had the birch tree over 30 years or more I can identify this twig instantly.  The tree lost a lot of twigs during a couple of our snow storms.  They would hit the wall or windows of the house as they were broken off from the tree. The branching of a birch is uniquely different than other kinds of trees.

Our sky looks sunny this morning in contrast to the gray day that I took this photo.  It is predicted to be a very windy day to help blow all that loose snow around.  It will be typical winter weather driving conditions for us today.

I didn't have to work today so it will be a good day to rest.  Sore throat is now gone and my energy level is almost normal.  Being stuck inside is boring but I will adjust.  Our Saturday and Sunday weather will be a little more threatening in severity.  We will wait and watch to see it all.  Thank you for checking in on this post today.  Take care everyone.

One More Day.........

My true green forest for the winter is this jade plant.  It is my source of green when I get tired of seeing white. I have a broken stem of this in a jar of water now and it has all these little plant starts at every leaf junction.

While looking out you can see the snow is still there.  The pile of snow created by the city from clearing the alley is right behind the bicycle.  There is a walk in there between the two.

While playing with my new photo lamps I tried taking a photo of this shelf with glass things. It isn't a well planned shot but the light does let me take the photo as the shelf hangs in a corner in low light. I still have not put the glass plane out with this group.  It sits with the toys in the cupboard.

The glass candy container in the shape of a plane is shown here.  I can see it is beat up from having a couple of my brothers probably playing with it when they were young.  I don't know what the nose of the plane looked like but the tail  probably had three projections and not just the one.

While digging through the archives to fine the glass plane I ran across this photo of my blue boy sculpture.  The street workers broke off his head and he is probably not repairable.  I still have him and might try to glue him back together.  He is frozen in the ground outside with out his head and I can not bring him in until it thaws.

The green leaves and the tulip does make me wish that spring would hurry up and arrive.  It won't be for some time now but we do have a promise of 40's 8 or more days away from today.  I will believe it when I see it.  Thanks for stopping by today.