April Blog All About It - Art

Blog All About It is a challenge being hosted by Anna@Herding Cats and Burning Soup.  Each month we are given a prompt and have free reign regarding what we chose to blog about pertaining to that prompt. Aprils prompt is........................

ART

Anna must have read my mind when she picked this month's prompt because it ties in perfectly with my focus on Prince this month.  He was a wonderful musician and his music definitely is a work of art.  I almost featured some of my favorite album covers but instead decided to share some of the wonderful murals people have painted in his honor.

This one is currently in bloom.  The painting was done by Christine Stein on a rock formation and over the past two years, the blooms behind it have grown to this.  It's located in California.

This one is located in Minnesota and was painted by artist Joe Pagac a month after Prince passed.  I think it's probably my favorite because it's his iconic Purple Rain look.  

This one is in his hometown.

This one was painted by famous muralist, Rick Martinez and was shown in the Weisman Art Museum.

This is a street mural in New York.

I hope you enjoyed seeing some of my favorites and I want to thank the many talented people who have taken the time to honor Prince in their own ways.  

February Blog All About It - Red

Blog All About It is a challenge being hosted by Anna@Herding Cats and Burning Soup.  Each month we are given a prompt and have free reign regarding what we chose to blog about pertaining to that prompt. February's prompt is........................

So for most of my life, the color red has played a prominent role. Now this was never really planned and I have to admit, red isn't even my favorite color but for some reason, it's always been around.

For 12 years, my school mascot was a red devil.  Now I always thought it was kind of redundant to be called the RED Devils because aren't devils supposed to be red.  However, a neighboring town was called the Blue Devils so I guess clarification was needed.  

Growing up I was always obsessed with painting my nails.  And I remember for some reason my Dad HATED red nail polish.  He said it "sent the wrong message." So yep, you guessed it, every chance I got I was buying various red nail polishes.

Then when I got older and met the man of my dreams - aka Mr. Barb, we decided to have a small wedding yet still needed some kind of color scheme.  I was never into pastels and what I then called "girly-colors" so we ended up with a red, black and white theme - for no real reason at all.  An no, this isn't my ring, but I do love it and would love to have one some day.

After getting married, we soon needed some newer transportation and our first new car together, which was used, was a little red Sundance.  I LOVED that car.

And then a several years later, our first NEW car together was a red Sunfire.  I loved that car even more but sadly we had to get rid of it after 13 glorious years.  It was replaced by a "dog friendly" Kia Sportage which believe it or not, IS NOT red.

And those who are aware of my current neighbor situation, knows that the past few weeks, I've been "seeing red" quite a bit.  

So there you have it, the history of my unintentional love affair with the color red!

January Blog All About It - WINTER

Blog All About It is a challenge being hosted by Anna@Herding Cats and Burning Soup.  Each month we are given a prompt and have free reign regarding what we chose to blog about pertaining to that prompt.  January's prompt is very fitting for my neck of the woods and is "WINTER."

Winter.  When we are kids, we seem to love it but I will be the first to admit that as an adult, winter is not as much fun.  Bosses do not understand why you don't want to risk your life and come to work and I swear, as an adult, the cold temps are much harder on the body than when I was a child.  When you are young, if your pipes freeze and burst, no big deal - hopefully the parents dealt with it.  And you didn't have to worry about venturing out to get necessities such as dog food and toilet paper.  However, I'd like to focus on another aspect of my childhood winters - snow days!

When I was in school, snow days just weren't as trendy as they seem to be now.  And 2-hour delays - non-existent!  Facebook had yet to be invented and twitter was something a bird did.  When we had snow days, there was real snow (and while I am tempted to insert the old "I walked 2 miles uphill in snow 3 feet deep once to get to school - I won't because technically I didn't - and I doubt you did either).

When I think of snow days, I do have some fond memories though.  My birthday is in January and 3 out of my 4 high school years I was out on a snow day.  Also, I had an inside advantage.  Both my Mom and Dad worked for the local Board of Education.  In fact, my Dad was head of transportation and he was in charge of determining if the roads were too risky.  Now I know he hated dragging himself out to check some of them, but I found it pretty awesome that I knew school was canceled sometimes 8 hours before my classmates work up to find out the old fashioned way - radio and TV.  Now there was also a disadvantage to that.  Once word got out, our phone would ring off the hook with classmates and sometimes even their parents wanting to get an early jump on the news.  I was Miss Popular on those days and I found these calls SUPER annoying.

But snow days were fun.  No, I didn't go out an play, sled, etc. but Mom and Dad usually still had to go to work which meant I had the whole house to myself all day long.  I could play music as loud as I wanted and binge on french fries for breakfast if I chose.  Sometimes I got to miss important tests and had extra study time and sometimes I got to sneak around and find my birthday presents so I could open them before the folks returned home.  After all, it was MY  snow day and MY rules. 

So as an adult, snow days are definitely different.  But a small part of me still finds them new and magical...until I have to walk the dogs, let the water drip so the pipes will still work or even go to work.