The recent blog posts seem to be updates on the Winnsboro Art Walks so I guess I'll keep it going.  This month the theme was Mardi Gras.  We weren't going to participate this time but several of the regulars were going to be out of town so we decided to help fill the void and Glynda started sewing and we did some cheap shopping o the internet.  My crown costs $3.50 and Glynda's shoes were $6.99 - always of course plus shipping - but even that wasn't too bad.  As I explained on the FB post about this pic, it was done with a green background and a green screen program. The computer does a "find and replace" and in this case it's a "find green and replace it with red" so where you see the reddish tones in the costumes you need to use your minds eye to replace that with a bright, shiny green. Fun evening!!

Here's the 4 minute video - starting the the Art Center reception.

January Steampunk Art Walk video

Here we are dressing up for fun again.  There were a lot of folks on this one including several out-of-towners and the fourteen minute video attached shows you all about it. 

Lois Jeanette Wiffin

I have no idea who this is - but the picture was among the many in Aunt Maudes' photo albums that fit that category.  This one, like many, had the name on the back and it's evidently from 1933.  Every now and then I pull out one of these out and see if I can find a descendent.  I was successful on this one.  I sent a digital copy to a grandson after making the contact and the family was very happy.  They had not seen the picture before.  Yesterday the original went in the mail to them in Lincoln, Nebraska.   

Winnsboro in Texas Highways, January 2013 Edition

 And here we are in it!  Glynda and me on the left, then Marilyn and Jim from Art & Espresso, then Doc and Denise from Silhouettes Custom Apparel!  A little tea dueling at A&E - the official sport of Steampunking.  This duel was officially sanctioned by the American Tea Dueling Association!  Both splotched so there was no winner.

Pictures and article are by Randy Mallory

 There was an eight page write-up on Winnsboro and four of the eight are shown above.  This is great publicity for our little town.  There have been several write-ups recently in Sulphur Springs (Liefies Le Vin restaurant) and in Tyler (Silhouettes) and in Piney Woods Live magazine (Silhouettes).  Denise and Doc at Silhouettes make custom apparel and many of their customers are looking for period correct clothing - some of it seen in our picture (but G also did some of it).  The dress-up events take place on Third Friday Art Walks which begin at Key Ring Gallery and participants then walk from business to business sharing the nonsense.  But next Friday it will be Victorian attire and Christmas carolers - should be a lot of fun.  Then treats at A&E.  (Doc and I will get to slightly modify our Steampunk clothing and then will fit right in.)  BUT - next year I'm going to get a real top hat - the one I'm wearing in the pic is just a cheapy costume.

Wildernest - Featured in the (February 29th, 2012) Mineola Monitor Spring Lawn & Garden Section!

"Master Gardener Wields Light Touch on Natural Masterpiece" - What's not to like about that headline!  This lady knows a lot of adjectives!  After reading the article I had to go walk the trail again to see what she saw!  I'm really happy with the write up - it touches on most all of our favorite outdoor things about our home. Five nice color pictures too.  (If you double click the pictures you can read it.)

Just finished "Cross Fire"

Just finished reading "Cross Fire" the last in the Alex Cross series of books by James Patterson. I believe that there were 17 of them. All were good reads and fast reads and entertaining reads. My only complaint is that he found it necessary to have the murders in each novel committed in a more grisly manner than the previous. In the one before this one he had to resort to a method made famous in the movie "Fargo". It can't get any worse so he had to stop I suppose. This last book was a wrap-up that finally did away with the menace that tracked him through many of the books.

I'll probably go now to another series of books that Patterson has written, The Women's Murder Club. There are ten in this series with the eleventh due out in next May.

You know you're old and in a small town when

you say "Look, Jeff moved his car".

The pub, which is part of but behind Brewbaker's restaurant, opens onto Market Street.  The restaurant opens onto Main Street.  Jeff is the owner of both. We were going to lunch down Market Street and saw Jeff's car parked outside the pub - it's a yellow BMW convertible so at least it's a special car.  A hour and a half later on our way home from the library we were driving back down Main Street and noticed his car in front of the restaurant.  So I said "Look, Jeff moved his car". I guess small things get noticed when there aren't that many big things happening.

La Madeleine - then and now

I had a La Madeleine breakfast for lunch today - was in Dallas for a Dr. appt. and was in the area.  The next step of degradation was there and I'm beginning to wonder how low they can go.

If you go back to the founder who's name was Patrick Esquerré, was French, who supported the local community, and wanted to create a French dining experience you'd find it quite different than it is now.  The "American Breakfast" is what we ate there every Friday morning.  The meal included a big, flaky croissant, two big and tasty sausages, and scrambled eggs.  The table had a little vase with a fresh flower.  Jam was served in a little white china dish.  The paper napkins were big and fluffy and were printed with a nice logo picture.  Coffee was made by the pot and was fresh and hot.  the food was brought to your table by a friendly wait person and for many years, where we went, it was a guy named Gerber that became a friend.  The manager and other staff became friends too.  It cost $4.99.

Then the business was sold and became a business - the kind where profit was the driver.  You could tell from the beginning that middle managers were looking for little ways to pull a few more pennies into the profit column by cutting down on what was being provided.  The cut flowers were the first to go.  Then the napkins became tiny little things that made you pick up 3-4 to take the place of the one (false economy there). And they  were plain - no more pictures on them.  We noticed each of these as they came along and joked/cryed about them to the manager.  Prices started going up too.  Then the little china dishes of jam went away in favor of a little plastic container with its snap-on top and they were half full. Again we found it necessary to take 2-3 to make up for the one that was taken away.  The sausages became smaller and then smaller again.  Now they're crusty little half-dollar size things. Then, after a bit, they started using the blinking-vibrating things that told you when you were suppose to pickup your own food. No more Gerber bringing it to your table he buses tables.  Today I experienced two more cost cutting devices.  The croissants that were once so excellent are now little more then crescent shaped bread - not worth the name croissant!  And the final (the restaurant we visited was one of the last to make this change) the coffee is now served in a very large thermos - and was barely warm!  The eggs?  They are about the only thing that I haven't noticed changing for the worse.  I paid  $6.39  for my breakfast today.

Of course we're retired and living in the country now and only make the breakfast trip a few times a year.  But there's really no longer any reason to go back.  Nothing special there any more. We've got a couple friends that we have lunch with every Wednesday at a local east Texas coffee shop.  We discovered a short while back that during the time we were having our Friday breakfasts at La Madeleine, they were having Saturday breakfasts there.  As we compared notes we found that we were all noticing the same changes as they took place.  So it comes under the category of nostalgia now.  But it was once very nice!

Alex at "Blues Monday" at ZAZUZ Pizza

Come on in!

Our new Monday dinner.  A good pizza at ZAZUZ's in Winnsboro and music.  Our A&E buds Gene and Suzanne make this a regular stop too!  Alex pretty well led this session!

Finished except for the shade cloth - and a few replacement boards

At this point, the pergola is a $300 project and I'm happy with what we have for that.  It is a bit like another room. We're at the stage where the little ideas for further improvement start popping up - a rug? - no two matching rugs, replace the existing one? - change out the furniture? - some of it has lumber from the way it was - replace some of that!! etc., etc.  I've got shade cloth on order now (part of the $300) but I found a big piece (but not big enough) in the garden shed, leftover from the greenhouse, and tacked it up to see what the change would be - nice! So, a little more wood tomorrow for replacements. 

Will finish the pergola tomorrow

But today it's just too hot to work out there in the afternoon!!  I have to rest and rehydrate every half hour or so - but that gives me more time to think about what I'm going to do next and the best way to do it.  It's turning out OK!  Here are some progress shots.  We've noticed already that it makes the deck gazebo more comfortable, particularly in the mornings and early afternoons.

Happy Father's Day!

It's nice when you go into a store and ask how much is on your gift card and what's the price of the item in your hand - and the answer to both questions is the same!  That was the case for the mister system putting out the spray in the pictures above. And it really improves the environment - even in the deck gazebo.

A few weeks ago we were eating under the covered walkway at Brewbaker's Restaurant in Winnsboro and enjoying the atmosphere.  A wish changed into a plan within a few days when we decided to build a small pergola for ourselves.  We've wanted a better way to use the deck space beside the covered area where we have the table and we want a "living room" sorta space.  So I was making plans when the Fathers Day gift cards came in.  I've given myself a little challenge to use any gift cards I get for improvements that the family can also enjoy when they are here and this fits that plan.

The pictures are at an early stage of construction which will take a few more days to complete, mainly because of the heat (although the mister will help there too).  Then we'll move the lounge and love seat into the area, add a ceiling fan, and train the trumpet vine to cover it and make it shady and cooler.  We're also going to reduce the height of the railing on that part of the deck so we can see out without railing in the way (like the lower deck). Looks like a good plan!  

Thanks for those Father's Day gift cards!!

2011 East Texas Pond Tour

Glynda and I spent Saturday morning touring garden ponds in the Tyler/Lindale area.  It was one of those self-guided tours and we just drove from site to site selecting the ones we wanted to see.  There were some wonderful back yards and it was an enjoyable time.  We got to visit with a number of the owners and hear about their experiences with ponds and saw more than one pond where we'd like to go back and spend some time just enjoying it.  Got this Monet-like picture of Glynda at one of them.

Glynda's First Gig

She's third from the left

This is at the First Baptist Church in Quitman last Sunday.  It's a group that Glynda has been practicing with for quite some time now and they meet every Tuesday at the church.  There were eight dulcimers (I cut one off in the picture), a guitar, and a stand-up bass.  She got a DVD of the performance and this is a picture of the TV screen as we were watching it. 

Another A&E person

 When you read a novel you expect to come across some explicit language and you accept it when you do.  But it sorta takes on another dimension when you realize that it was written by that nice older lady you were talking to at the adjoining table at Art & Espresso.   Of course she writes other stuff too:

 (A diverse writer of columns, feature stories, short fiction, novels, screenplays and stage plays, Maryann Miller has won numerous awards including being a semi-finalist at the Sundance Institute for her screenplay, A Question Of Honor. Her work has appeared in regional and national publications, and the Rosen Publishing Group in New York has published her non-fiction books for teens, including the award-winning Coping with Weapons and Violence In School and On Your Streets. A romantic suspense One Small Victory is a June 08 release in hardback from Five Star Publishing, and Play It Again, Sam is a July 08 release from Uncial Press as an e-book.)

A Sunday lunch at the Treehouse

Marilyn and Jim from A&E came over for a Treehouse lunch.  Great weather and great company!  But I can't use a people picture here because one of the people in the picture had a less then perfect image.  A little trail walk after lunch and then coffee and desert on the deck at the house.

Winnsboro Farmers Market

Actually more than "farmers" here but everything must be locally grown or made.

Hanging baskets of flowers

Homemade jams and jellies - and (like we've done before) if the jelly doesn't set - call it syrup.

My favorite picture of the bunch - the booth next to mine today.

brown and white and brown and white and . . .

There are about sixteen people in this picture and I know half of them from other places.

And this is my set-up from last week - I've sold a total of five now and my marketing demographics tell me that I need to produce more of the sellers.  I'm left with mostly cedar now and haven't sold one of them yet!

The market is every Saturday from 8:00 until 12:00, April through October.  This morning it was just too darn cold, too windy, not enough customers braving the weather (in spite of a gun show next door) and I had a bad headache - so I came home about 10:00.  No sales today and something else on the agenda next Saturday - Springfest!!!

This was in my blog comments for moderation today

 Actually it had been flagged as spam.  It was one of the posts about the zip line.  So I Googled the translation (Chinese to English) and it says "Really good. I might download. Thank you".  So I allowed the comment to post.  And since I was posting this I decided to add the below stats.  These are blog views for this month only.  The multiple counts are probably the same person returning I would think - particularly the Germany and Russia views. .

Interesting!

I was playing around in Picasa the other day and did this collage - it's a photo of the medallion artwork stacked on the photo that they did the artwork from.

OK people!

I recently added a counter to my blog and now I know that I'm getting about 100 hits a week.  The problem is that it's mostly one way.  I hardly ever hear from anyone.  I used to have the comments as open as possible but I started getting junk in there.  Well - it's open again now.  Let me hear from you!!  If nothing else, just check one of the boxes!