Parts of a time gone by.........

Seth Thomas wall clock

This is a beginning of a project in which I have no game plan.  It was found in an old Victorian house by my father.  It was then stored in a burlap bag for another 35 years in the attic of a garage. Dirt, dust, mice droppings, spider webs, wasps' mud dauber homes, and a very dusty, smelly burlap bag is what separates a true antique fanatic from someone who would have thrown it away.  I may just be crazy but many a times the filthy stuff really ended up being a gold mine or least a valuable, useful thing.

Check out more about this by clicking here.

A Changing Birch Spectactular........

Four photos today on a one photo blog, go figure........it is the same tree.

Barney the dog.....

Barnabas Burgus

 

Wonderdog and fellow companion to his family.

More about Barney here.

Abstract day......

Another snowy day with an abstract design of last summer's garden.

Monday's frosty morning.......

Hoar Frost

We had this on Sunday morning also but today the sun was shining which gave me more beautiful shots. This is a shot of my birch tree.  Without the frost it is just a bunch of bare branches.

Looking down Cedar Street.  The neighborhood looks wonderful and yet it is hard to get a good shot of nature without seeing the cars, houses, garbage cans and street poles. They don't look bad, they just don't help it to be a pure nature shot.

Backyard retreat..........

It is winter in Iowa and the thought of green grass and flowers is a distant memory.  Cold and white with dark shapes against the snow is the new landscape of the season.

The gazing ball still reflects the light of the day and the rose bush behind it is begging to be trimmed back. Ah yes, winter is here and the tracks in the snow tell stories of dogs and cats.  Birds and rabbit tracks circle around the feeder and the squirrel tracks are there too.

Christmas day......2010

The camera will travel outside to catch the snow of the season today.  The ornaments are all hung and the lights are all lit.  Packages will be opened and we will share time with my brother in law and his wife over a noon meal.  The rest  and peace that follows is welcomed.
Our Christmas Eve service was beyond spectacular. A very large choir which sang to a crowd of a few thousand in the congregation.  It was spiritual, not for entertainment sake but for glorifying the word of God. It was far more than we expected. Everyone lighted candles and we sang Joy to the World. We were blessed and the drive home in the light snow was beautiful too.

Christmas eve..........

and the angels do sing, Glory to the new born King.

Rock on........

As I worked on my parents home the bedroom door would swing shut on me due to gravity.  I don't know why it wouldn't stay open but I propped it open with this little figurine.  It is probably a Hallmark product and I am sure one of my nieces sent it to my parents.  It is small and I was going to toss it but look what came home with me a few weeks ago.

A Christmas Train........

My Uncle Cecil was my dad's oldest brother.  He was a fireman on the train most of his life.  He was the one who tended the fire to the steam engines by adding the coal to the burner.   After the steam locomotives were not used, he remained the fireman, which meant he was second in command to the main engineer. 
He was deaf in his latter years from riding on those trains all of his life.  I can still hear his with Bertha saying not to speak to him because he just can't hear a thing you'd be wasting your time.  She loved to talk so she would smile when she said that, so she could do all the talking.

A horse of a different color.......no not really a horse

This is my new purchase of a mule for our nativity scene. He is such a handsome fellow.  You can see a sheep grazing casually in the back ground

Patterned Beauty.........

Bright and shiny...........

A replica indent ornament of the ones that were sold in the hardware stores back in the 60's.

Do you have a teddy bear on your back?

This was a Hallmark ornament that we picked up a few years ago.  When my wife's father lived with us he would keep bringing up the topic that he had a riding horse like this up in his attic at home.  After much plundering of the place by thieves I wonder if it is still up there.  The thing he always added to the story was that he had cut it's tail off one day when he was young. He told me I could have it since I liked old things. 

Sled and boy....

When I set up this particular blog,  I wanted to do so to show photographic skill or photos that would lean to the artistic side.  My skills and understanding of my camera have increased to the better.  I really do want to post just photos that have a fine art quality on this site.  So when I take dozens of shots of the tree and most everything is blurry I do get discouraged, maybe ever disgusted. I know that good lighting and a macro work together and I just didn't have enough light.  A tripod would of worked with macro but that really wasn't my desire.  I just wanted to point and shoot.

  Trying to give you something different than the usual ornament I am going to share this one successful shot of a wooden ornament.

Peace on earth........good will toward men.......

I have my eye on you.......

My ever helper who keeps watch over our every move.  He is actually saying, I do need a haircut, but don't tell my parents.

Soldier boy......or a man I guess

He does have a mustache and he is a soldier.  Kmart carries a line of about ten ornaments that were made by Radko.  It is the bottom of the line for Radko I am sure but I have bought a couple on half price.  I actually don't like most of the shapes that they made.  I have a wreath also.  The colors are so rich along with all the gold.  Please forgive he subtle blur but shining things don't always work well with macro shots.

Glitzy Gold.......

I like to look up the old Christmas ornaments in antique catalogs or in books about the history of ornaments.  It is fun to see what  shapes existed at first when they started to make the glass blown ones.  Some of the shapes included mushroom shapes, acorns, house shapes and this particular shape.

I bought this in the 70's so it is over 30 years old.  It came in a box of eight different shapes and at the time I thought they were just nice to look at, but now I know that the whole batch were based on traditional designs. One can age some of the ornaments by the hanger as they were made cheaply at first with thin metal.

Cows can be tricky.......

I received this as gift many years ago.  I don't know if the giver thought it was a gag gift, but I really like it.  She does play tricks on people though.  If you pick her up to check her out, she starts playing loudly a Christmas tune.  It is like a gag ornament as people should not be going around a house picking up people's decorations but if they do, they will get noticed.

Angels we have heard on high.........

My wife's angel tree was put up a couple of days ago.  I find it a fascinating challenge to try to capture special effects from the different shinning ornaments on the tree.

Friday's glow

We put up tree number two this evening.  It will give me a lot of chances to find interesting photos.

It is a dilemma, you decide.......

Is it a partridge in a pear tree or is it one of the turtle doves???????

Sunny day........

A few weeks ago I was snapping shots out of the car while driving down the road.  It was a time to capture cloud pictures for the contest that I enter each month.  The further north I came,  I found myself in a small rain storm.  Then there was a break in the clouds.

By the time I arrived home, I was able to capture this for the contest.  I see now that it was in November when I took the shots.  Click here to see all the entries in the contest.

Blessing or curse......

This looks like a great way to keep your tools in a box.  The problem is if you open it from the wrong side, everything falls out.  This was my late brother's tool box and as I opened it a few months ago, I lost it all.  The left side is metric and the right side is standard sizes.  So today I opened it up and I began to put it back into place.

It took almost two hours of time.  I had to remove my glasses so I could read the side of each one of the sockets, turning them carefully to get to the side that identifies the size.  The sizes are then marked in the plastic holder which also required me to look very closely to read the numbers.

I was going to take it to the basement, then I changed my mind.  If it goes down there I will never use them.  The case with tools is headed for the back of my car so I always will have the tool I need to fix anything.

Archived oldie.........

The weather is so windy and cold.  I had to buy a new battery for my car today as the age of it and the cold do not work well together.  The dogs are so cuddly these days as they get cold and want to come and sit down close by or on our laps to get warmed up.  This is the time of the year when you wonder if you are going to survive one more winter in Iowa.  I like snow falls that are gentle and quiet and they can be so beautiful but all that comes with it is so uncomfortable to deal with for three straight months.  Stay in and stay warm everybody.

An archived photo today........

Archived, outdated and out of season but it still is a good one.

I spent some time on our old iMac to retrieve photos in order to move them onto my macbook. I found this spring photo taken in 2005 of this wonderful iris.  The bush behind it grew so large that it hasn't bloomed for three years.  I moved it out last fall away from it and it still didn't bloom.  I have large amounts of foliage now so maybe next spring.  If it doesn't bloom this spring, it gets moved out into full sun.

He's back......

This is actually last year's photo of my neighbors Burl Ives snowman.  We don't have this snow yet but maybe by the morning.  Our little poodle is so concerned about this guy when he sways in the breeze.  Button will just bark so angrily at the bearded guy, telling him to stay on  his side of the street.

Rescued Nemo.........

I was out with the dogs last week in the backyard checking on things.  I looked down in my fish pond to see if it had iced over and it had.  As I looked down, I could see a couple of goldfish swimming around under about three inches of ice.
I immediately retrieved my stock tank heater from inside and placed it on the ice.  It took it a couple of hours to thaw it out but then it took me a few days in a row to capture out the remaining fish.  I thought I had caught them all.

It is a two photo day today as here is the same guy as above only in side view.  He watches me created my blogs now and is living in tropical paradise in my small aquarium.

Violet power......

The grow light for my plants causes my camera to pick up a red or pink.  It makes for an interesting visual.

As a footnote,  I was so excited to make it on the lists of Blogs of Note on the dashboard of Blogspot that I forgot to go ahead and publish this.  I never expected to see my one or any of my blogs ever to be in that list.

What's in your pocket???????

A still life of my pocket contents. I arrived  home from doing outside work at the house and I just emptied my pocket on the counter.  I saw it today still laying out on the counter and I thought, there is a nice still life.
I don't  have a carpenter's belt but wear big baggy pants with large pockets, so they work pretty well when you need to keep a handful of nails ready to go. I do wear a belt just in case you were going to comment about the oversized jeans.