Wednesday, December 7, 2016

Wordless Wednesday: Greater Roadrunner

Travis County, TX
May 2016









For more Wordless Wednesday offerings,
please visit the website here.



Monday, December 5, 2016

Blue Monday: Here Comes December!


Wow, it's been a couple of months since I posted anything here at joysweb! And now it's already December!!! How did that happen?

We've been busy, but probably not a lot busier than normal. Just haven't been able to find time to concentrate on blogging, although I have been reading other people's blogs. Also had a few minor medical issues that have sort of detoured me. Nothing dire — just niggling things that keep drawing my attention away from the stuff I'd rather be doing.

So, anyway...here we are with the first Blue Monday of the month. And since we've been having really awful weather here lately (cold, rainy, gray), I thought I'd post a photo from a couple of weeks back when we were still enjoying our long, lovely, summer-y autumn.


Sorry it's a little grainy. Think I need a cell phone upgrade. Gosh, I really miss that blue sky!

We've got most of the holiday decorating done, although we seem to add a bit to it everyday. I'm sure I'll be posting more photos of the decorations, but for now I'll just include a shot of our most recent addition. For some reason, the hubby decided it might be nice to add Doctor Who to our seasonal trappings. So we've added the Doctor and his (blue) Tardis to the fireplace display, up there on the mantel with a mini nutcracker — who sort of looks like he might be a Dalek in disguise!


So, have a great week! More to come....





Blue Monday was originally hosted by Smiling Sally.
Now that Sally has left us,
Jeanne at Backyard Neighbor is doing the honors.
To see more offerings, or to participate yourself,
please head on over to her blog.


Monday, October 3, 2016

Blue Monday: At the Aquarium


Last month, M and I celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary with a trip to Hawaii. We had a wonderful time, and we're already trying to find a reason to go back! It won't be anytime soon (it's a VERY long trip from Texas), but definitely someday....

In the meantime, it's probably going to take me many more weeks just to finish organizing all the photos we took. I'm posting some of them, a few at a time, on the blog here -- today, it's photos from the aquarium in Honolulu. One morning, we tore ourselves away from the beach and the amazing swimming pool at our hotel, and spent some time touring the aquarium.


It's not a huge operation, but it has some gorgeous displays, with hundreds (thousands?) of different examples of sea life.



I took lots of photos, and I'm sure I'll be posting more of them in the future. But for now, I'll just show a couple more shots. These are some of my favorite little creatures -- the seahorses:








Blue Monday was originally hosted by Smiling Sally.
Now that Sally has left us,
Jeanne at Backyard Neighbor is doing the honors.
To see more offerings, or to participate yourself,
please head on over to her blog.


Friday, September 23, 2016

SkyWatch Friday: Hawaiian Sunset


Waikiki
September 2016

In the pool, edge of the Pacific, catching the last rays. Photo isn't as sharp as it might be. Probably had something to do with the piƱa colada.



For more sky shots, click on the button above.


Sunday, September 18, 2016

Monday Mellow Yellows: Yellow Hibiscus

Last month, M and I celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary. (Yes, it was a teenage wedding — at least for me.) And since it was such a momentous occasion, we decided we needed to do something to make it really memorable. That took some deep thinking — we're generally pretty boring and unimaginative, at least when it comes to travel. Tend to do the same things and go the same places every year. But after mulling it over for a while, we decided to book a trip to Hawaii, a place neither of us had ever been but always wanted to go. And I have to say, it was worth the wait. Hawaii is absolutely beautiful, the Hawaiians were friendly and welcoming, and the trip was relaxing and exciting at the same time, and most definitely memorable.

And ... now I have hundreds of photos to sort through! Many of which, I'm sure, will be appearing on this blog in the coming weeks. (So stay tuned!)

Here's one.


The yellow hibiscus was everywhere in Honolulu. There were even vast walls of the flowers along the highway. Gorgeous. I've since found out it's the state flower of Hawaii, a lovely choice. (Almost as lovely as the Texas bluebonnet!)




Monday Mellow Yellows is hosted by Gemma Wiseman.
For more Mellow Yellows, just click on the button:




Wednesday, August 24, 2016

ABC Wednesday: Round 19 - G

Well, in this go-round, G is for ....

GOLDFINCH


Generally, the ones we get around our place here in the hill country are Lesser Goldfinches, a little different from the slightly larger American Goldfinch — these have more black coloring on their heads and backs. 

They are very tiny birds, a bit over four inches long — and very, very bright when the sun hits their feathers. Which I suppose is why they don't hang around in one spot very long. Ever since we moved in four years ago, I've been trying to get some photos of the teensy fliers when they visit our birdbath or feeder. But they come and go so quickly, I've never been able to get a decent shot. This is the best I've done so far — a single pic of a male bird splashing around in the water. He looked like he was having a lot of fun, but also keeping a wary eye on the photographer!



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visit the website, here:



Monday, August 22, 2016

Monday Mellow Yellows: Memory of Spring



This is my first time participating in Monday Mellow Yellows — a lovely meme hosted by Gemma Wiseman. Yellow is one of my favorite colors. I even have a Pinterest board devoted it

This shot was taken in our front yard back in the spring. April, I think. We had a spectacular crop of wildflowers this year. Not many flowers out there right now, though. The rains have washed most of the blooms away. But at least we haven't had the kind of floods they've been experiencing in Louisiana the last few weeks — so far.

In the last couple of weeks, we've had almost ten inches of rain here at our place, and there's more rain predicted for today, I believe. I actually don't mind having a little rain now and then, but I hate it when the clouds set in and we don't see the sun for days at a time. Makes me crazy and not fun to live with — just ask the hubby.

But all this yellow definitely makes me feel a lot better.


Monday Mellow Yellows is hosted by Gemma Wiseman.
For more Mellow Yellows, just click on the button:




Thursday, August 18, 2016

A Break In The Clouds


We've had some pretty dramatic skies lately, here in central Texas. Seems like it's been raining for weeks and I'm getting really bored with the clouds and fog and mist and humidity. But today we had just a teensy bit of sun for a while in the afternoon, and the sunset was impressive though it didn't last long.

I'm afraid the forecast is for more drenching rainfall over the weekend. Then, they say, by the middle of next week we might expect to start drying out a little. And I am definitely ready for THAT!


For more sky shots, click on the button above.


Wednesday, May 25, 2016

ABC Wednesday: Round 18 - T

And T is for...
Tea!

And also for Tea Chest.

M and I drink a lot of tea. We drink a lot of coffee too, but somehow we don't seem to have so much trouble storing coffee beans. But tea -- both in bags and the loose kind -- always poses something of a problem when it comes to storage. When we moved into the new house a few years ago, I simply shoved all the tea stuff onto a shelf in the pantry and left it there. Over time, more and more boxes and containers accumulated until it had turned into a terrible tea-thing jumble.


Every time I wanted a cup of tea, I ended up with boxes falling all over the place. It was maddening.

Then one day, a lightbulb went off in my brain and I thought "TEA CHEST"!!!  Why hadn't I thought of that in the first place? Why hadn't my thoroughly organized and ingenious hubby offered the suggestion? Maybe we really are getting too old to be left on our own.

Well, anyway. I zipped on over to Amazon looking for tea chests and, after a morning spent browsing and comparing and making up my mind, I found one I liked, clicked the "One Click" button and now that corner of my pantry looks like this:


So organized! Everything easy to find and no tumbling teabag avalanche every time I want a cuppa.



Total tea time triumph!



To add your own ABC Wednesday link, 
visit the website, here:



Wednesday, May 4, 2016

Wordless Wednesday: Here Comes Cinco de Mayo!

Cheers!


For more Wordless Wednesday offerings,
please visit the website here.



Tuesday, April 26, 2016

ABC Wednesday: Round 18 - P

And P is for...
Postcards!

I love to send/receive/collect postcards. Always have. I love old ones and new ones. I have boxes full of them, and several albums devoted to various subjects -- cities, artwork, holidays.

Older cards from all over
I think my favorites are the cards people used to have made from family photos:

In "Olden Times" families would send postcards with photos of the kids
Do these folks look happy about the picture-taking?

So, as a postcard fanatic, I was thrilled to find out about the Postcrossing website which makes it possible to, as they say:
send a postcard and receive a postcard back from a random person in the world!
And it works! Here are a few of the cards I've received from all over:

Happy family group from Finland
Catching snowflakes somewhere in the UK
Adorable kitten with amazing eyes
A handmade, personalized card from the USA

Once I signed up (for free), I received a random address from the website. Then I sent a postcard to that address, and waited (just a very short time) to receive a postcard from another random party somewhere in the world. OK, that's a very simplified explanation -- if you're interested, you can read all about the process in more depth on the Postcrossing home page.

If you're not going to be sending postcards for a while, you can let your account go "inactive" and then activate it when you're ready to participate again. I'm inactive at the moment, but I'm thinking of getting back into the game pretty soon.

(Note: I don't receive any compensation from Postcrossing for promoting their website. I just think it's lots of fun.)


To add your own ABC Wednesday link, 
visit the website, here:



Friday, April 8, 2016

Flashback Friday: Time For Bandstand

The best-laid plans of mice and men (and women) ... well, you know how it goes.

For a while I was exploring the possibility of taking part in the A to Z Blogging in April challenge thingie that's going on right now, around the internet. Finally came to the realization that I would never be able to keep up the pace of posting everyday. But I wrote a few posts and had them in place, and really hated to let them go to waste. And for quite a while now I've thought about doing some sort of flashback, nostalgia post on Fridays. So I'm using what would have been my first A-Z post as my first flashback. And we'll just see how long I can keep this going.

And the first flashback is...

American Bandstand


The popular teenage dance show was one of my earliest obsessions, back in the '50s, before I was actually a teenager myself. As soon as I got home from school every day, I'd turn the show on and let myself be totally mesmerized by the music and dancing. I knew the names of most of the kids, who was dancing with who, even who was dating who. I watched for new dance crazes and practiced all the steps. I copied the fashions, as nearly as I could, although that didn't always gel -- well, the Bandstand kids were older, and Texas winters were a lot warmer than Philadelphia winters. When the girls started showing up with their cardigan sweaters turned 'round, with the buttons running down the back, I was enthralled -- I wanted my sweaters backwards too, even though my mother railed about how stupid it looked. (I think she just didn't like having to do up my buttons every morning.)

My mom watched the show with me. I thought that was a little weird at the time -- after all, she was an old person. (She must have been all of -- what? -- maybe 35 or 36, at the time.) We both had our favorite dancers. She liked Justine and Bob (Justine Corelli and Bob Clayton) -- the show's blonde dream couple.


I liked them too, but didn't think they were the best dancers. And it was the dancing, not the soap opera, I was interested in.


I stopped watching the show after I started junior high (middle school to you whipper-snappers), and developed other interests. But before my passion waned, I sent off for the Bandstand yearbook (from, I believe, 1958), which is where all these photos come from. Here's a shot of the cover:


And a shot of the back cover:


Bandstand stayed on the air, in various versions and on several different networks, until 1989 -- long after I stopped watching and moved on to other obsessions. Apparently Dick Clark stuck with the show until very near the end. Well, he was, after all, America's oldest teenager.


If you're interested in trying out the A to Z Blogging Challenge for this month, just click on the link. I'm not sure there's still time to join up, since April is pretty far along.

And if you've got your own "Flashback Friday" memory, tell me all about it in the comments here, or leave a link to your blog post and I'll come take a look. Not that we want to dwell in the past, of course. (Do we?)

Wednesday, April 6, 2016

Wordless Wednesday: Robber Fly and Lunch


Robber Fly and moth
Travis County TX
April 2016


For more Wordless Wednesday offerings,
please visit the website here.

Monday, April 4, 2016

Blue Monday: Spiderman Blues

You just never know who (or what) you're going to run into at the supermarket these days.


On a recent trip, I noticed they had a life-size blow-up Spiderman perched over one of the aisles. I'm not really sure why he was guarding the produce and cold stuff. Maybe there was a dastardly grocery villain lurking around, that I just didn't see. But Spidey looked very nice in his lovely red and blue outfit.



Blue Monday was originally hosted by Smiling Sally.
Now that Sally has left us,
Jeanne at Backyard Neighbor is doing the honors.
To see more offerings, or to participate yourself,
please head on over to her blog.


Thursday, March 31, 2016

ABC Wednesday: Round 18 - L

Texas Mountain Laurel

Our Laurels were gorgeous this year. They're past their peak now, but some of the blooms are still lovely and hanging on.

Around here, of course, "L" is also for LATE, since I'm getting this up on Thursday. (Oops!)


To add your own link, 
visit the ABC Wednesday website, here: