Scattered Thoughts . . .

L ast weekend, Lukey and Kenzie were staying with us so we had a small fire in the backyard to make some hot dogs, corn on the cob and S'mores.  The weather was beautiful, for a change, we had music playing, and we had all sorts of activities and games to keep everyone busy.   It was a nice afternoon and evening but, once it started getting dark, Lukey and I were able to have our first nighttime garden railroad operating session...  which was a lot of fun!   I plan to eventually add more lighting to this little garden railroad along with more people figures, another bridge and a few other interesting features.  The current lack of lighting became very obvious when the sky was completely darkened so I'm thinking I could use a few more features that are illuminated.      This first nighttime session was fun though!  Here is a short video of some of the action...

T oday, Kenzie and I had a really nice "art day" and we produced some nice pieces of art.  I need to purchase a few more frames and mat board because I realized today that I don't have any on hand anymore for framing small pieces of artwork.  Actually, I found that we are short on a few art supplies so I'll need to remedy that also before I forget. After spending far too much time searching for and digging out our art supplies, we sorted out what we would need for today and then came up with a plan.  We chose a couple of ideas and decided upon some nice compositions for two pieces of artwork each.   We sketched a few ideas and then did a little practice on some scrap paper before we touched the watercolor paper.  Then we talked about shapes, colors, values, light and shadows for our compositions.  Below are a couple of our initial sketches to help iron out sizes of the basic shapes... The first watercolor piece of art was sort of a memento of our Christmas week in Man