More images from Oak Alley Plantation

I remember walking around the Oak Alley Plantation house as we waited for our tour and feeling like a little kid as so many details caught my eyes. I wanted to capture as much of it as I could, so I took oodles of photos to sketch and paint from later on. Having a son studying architecture heightened my interest in a lot of the details, and my own love of the outdoors and gardening attracted me to the garden with all of the manicured hedges. Throughout our tour, and walking around the grounds, I kept wondering what it must have been like to have lived in this beautiful home and peaceful setting.....

More Memories of NOLA Live 2011

The signs of Fall are starting to show, and it reminds me of last fall when I traveled to New Orleans by myself to meet up with Laure Ferlita and others for NOLA Live! What a wonderful time I had!!! My journal still has many blank and half-filled pages, but I really want to fill them all up as I have so many fabulous memories from our experience together - and I don't want to forget any of them. I'll continue to post 2-page spreads from my book. I'm a little obsessive about posting them in order from beginning to the end of the book...

Just looking at these pages in my journal rekindles my memories of visiting these three notable places - sort of like wetting or reconstituting watercolor - it all comes back to life!

Monday night we had dinner in Mother's Restaurant, a casual restaurant very popular with the locals. After dinner we enjoyed coffee and Beignets at the famed Cafe du Monde. The next day we drove out of town a bit to visit the Oak Alley Plantation. What a wonderful place to visit! This is just my first image for Oak Alley .... more to follow.  

P.S. Check out the links above that I've included for these 3 places that we visited.

A beautiful day on the bay.....

I recently enjoyed a lovely day with my husband and son Sean in San Francisco overlooking the bay and sailboats that were participating in preliminary America's Cup races. It really was a gorgeous day - clear as could be. The big event is next year, but we enjoyed watching some of the preliminary races leading up to the main event. It was a great excuse for us to take a break for the day and check out the excitement. This image is painted from a photo that I snapped at the observation area at the south end of the Golden Gate Bridge. 

P.S. When I decided to paint a new image for my blog tonight - I was stumped .... what should I paint? My blog has been pretty quiet these past months and I'm  having trouble getting my momentum going again. However, I have been working on some interesting images of San Francisco as I'm just finishing up an Imaginary Trip to San Francisco trip/class with Laure Ferlita. So... a recent 'real day' in San Francisco came to mind and I looked through my photos from my special day. Having recently painted an image of the well-known bridge in Laure's class, I felt a bit of courage to tackle my own photo tonight.  

Strawberry fascination

One of my many pleasures of the summer season is seeing our garden grow and enjoying the harvest. 

My son surprises me from time to time with a collection of freshly picked strawberries from the garden, which includes several types of strawberries. The strawberries that he collected most recently are of the "Loran" variety and I found them quite fascinating. I don't know if this is unique to this variety, or it was the first time I was really paying attention...... but when I saw the strawberries on the table I immediately chuckled. They looked like they were each wearing a "Granny Cap"  (like an old-fashioned night cap) with a little white ruffle at the bottom of the cap that looked like it was gathered with elastic. Looking closer I realized that this was the blossom still intact between the greenery and the stem, and the strawberry fruit. The combination of the strawberries along with their 'Granny caps' were so cute it was hard to eat them and have them disappear.

P.S. Yes.... it has been a quiet summer here on my blog, but I want to get back to posting more frequently. I miss all of my blog friends!! I hope you all had a wonderful summer.

Summer harvest: Nectarine - Lime Jam

You might wonder what I've been up to .... lots of excitement with a son's college graduation, two sons home for the summer, visiting the other son, and FRUIT in our backyard. We've enjoyed lots of fresh fruit, but we had more than we could consume. So, not wanting to let it go to waste.... husband and I have kept very busy.... He has been canning lots of fruit as his mother did, and I've been making jam. This year I've made Nectarine - Lime Jam from a recipe that was printed in our local paper, and I think that the lime keeps the jam from being "too sweet". 


How is your summer going???

The view from my Son's window...

My oldest son has been sharing some photos of his time in Japan. I was quite taken with this photo as it shows part of his plane (P3) contrasted with a beautiful sunset or sunrise (I can't tell which one). I felt as if the photo was calling me to paint it - and I considered it a challenge. Thinking about my son last night, as he nears the end of this deployment in Japan, got me inspired to take on the challenge and paint this image. As I was painting I was thinking of how this has been a fun way for me to keep in touch with my son despite the many, many miles between us. I can't wait to see him again!!!

P.S. I've included his original photo in case your're interested in the view that inspired this.  

Martial Cottle Park

I'm very excited that a new Park, the Martial Cottle Park, is coming to an area near my home. It will focus on preserving a bit of history of the Santa Clara Valley. The valley was once promoted as the  "Valley of the Hearts Delight", after two centuries of an agricultural economy started by the Spanish missionaries. Over time the focus in the valley shifted from agriculture, including many orchards, to technology. We are very fortunate that Mr. Walter Cottle Lester generously gifted some of this special property to the County of Santa Clara in combination with the State of California for the purpose of a community park. The park is named after Mr. Lester's grandfather.