New Painting: The Temple

A couple months back I was chatting with my Sister-in-law Debbie about my paintings. And she asked if I wouldn't mind painting the temple were she and my brother got married. It's one of my favorite temples, located in Portland, OR. I had never attempted painting a temple before so it was fun to try. She wanted it on 11x14 flat canvas, so it would be easy to frame.

Every week I would send an update on the progress. My little nephews loved seeing what I had done. So I thought I'd share the photos of my work in progress:

The rough sketch of where I wanted things

Week 1 - I painted the sky and got an idea of where I wanted the trees

Week 2 - I did a rough paint of the temple and walkways

Week 3 - Cleaned up the temple, added where I wanted the tree trunks and blocked out the reflecting pool

Week 4 - Gave some definition to the trees and walkways

Week 5 - Added shading to bushes and trees. And did a few minor touch ups to the Temple

And after six weeks of painting and waiting for the paint to dry, oils can take so long to dry, I finally finished adding some flowers to the bushes around the reflecting pool. Here is the completed work of art:

I'm pretty happy with it but the most important thing is Debbie loves it. So now to let it dry and I'll be able to send it out to them.

Dad's Birthday

Yesterday was my dad's birthday. We started the celebrations on Sunday with Grandma over for dinner. Mom and I baked Dad a chunky apple caramel cake from scratch. Not your normal birthday cake but it was very yummy.

We stuck candles in one piece and sang to my dad. He wanted his picture taken by a nice backdrop so here he is standing in front of the fire place.

Very excited dad

 

Then on Monday for his actual birthday we discovered a new restaurant to try out. It's called Hush Puppy, all southern cuisine.

Dad served a church mission in the deep south back in the 70's. So it was a real treat to go and eat southern food for his birthday. And we found out what a hush puppy was.

They are little balls of cornbread deep fried. And the reason they are called hush puppies is if your dog is barking begging for food, you throw one of these corn balls at them and they will "hush". They were very good.

A very happy birthday boy

I ordered the Big Bayou Platter. It had battered catfish, broiled shrimp, fried oysters (these were kind of weird, they looked like little brains), and some yummy Alligator tails fried. The alligator tasted like...um...not really chicken...so I guess it tasted like alligator.

All of the food was very good. I think we will be going back again. We took most of our food home.

Smiles all around

 


















I think Dad had a good birthday. After dinner we ended the night watching Young Sherlock Holmes and Face-timing with my other brother's family. Dad was happy. Here's to many more birthdays.

Always Remembering - Sept. 11, 2001

Today is always a melancholy day for me. Sometimes I try to move on but today I can't help but remember that day 13 years ago. I find myself drawn to Youtube and re-watching the videos of 9/11. Last year I wrote about where I was that day. So this year I'll just be brief and share a couple videos I found.

This one I like because it shows how the whole world was in just as much shock as we were that day.

And this tribute just sums it all up just beautifully:

I hope we never forget that day...

Labor Day 2014 Adventures

This year for Labor Day I had nothing planned. I actually let myself sleep in. Then I got a text from my parents saying they wanted to check out the "Valley of Fire" that we always saw signs for driving up to Utah. So I headed over to their house and we headed out on an adventure to find this fire valley.

We drove out of the city and up into the desert, turning off the freeway onto a two lane road and into the wilderness. We were happy to see a constant stream of cars coming towards us. Letting us know the road we were on did go somewhere. After driving over a mountain and into valleys we came across the first sights of the valley of fire:

After paying an entrance fee we journeyed into the red rocks:

Dad and I enjoying a photo op

This rock formation was called a beehive

Driving further on we found this giant rock with stairs going up the side of it. Our curiousity got the better of us so we stopped and climbed the stairs and were surprised to find some cool rock carvings:

Halfway up the stairs I realized that I'm not good with hights

Signs from the ancients

Then we saw a sign for a "Arch Rock" so we followed the road and almost drove passed it. It was a cute tiny little rock arch:

You almost can't see it in this photo

There it is :) Cute

We followed the valley, saw some nice camp grounds and some fun hikes that would be nice to go on in cooler weather. It was like Red Rock Canyon on steroids.

Mom and Dad

 

Rainbow valley

A rock that mom thought looked like a turtle

After we got tired of looking at cool rocks we came across the visitor center/museum. Outside the center were these really spiky cacti called Hedgehog Cactus:

We spent some time looking at the things in the visitor center. And cooling off inside the Air Conditioned building.

Afterwards we decided we had seen enough for one day and continued on through the valley and out the backside. And we came across the Lake Mead National Recreation Area:

No lake in sight though....

We had to drive another 10 miles or so before we even saw the lake and even then it looked miles away:

There is Lake Mead

Driving along in the desert we saw an interesting sign:

And sure enough we came across a natural spring, a real live desert oasis. It was pretty cool to find water bubbling up out of the desert rocks:

Looking back at the Valley of Fire

WATER!!

Then just a little bit further down the road we saw a bigger oasis. It had a pond and a waterfall. We were amazed.

The water seemed to be coming out of the rocks

The palm trees were very big and happy to be getting so much water.

Then after driving another hour or so in the desert we made it back to Vegas. Along the way we had passed a mountain that had a section on its side eroded away to reveal a pile of round red rocks. Mom said it looked like we were seeing the guts of the mountain. There were a lot of very interesting rock formations.

It was a fun way to spend the day. Seeing new sights and learning to see some beauty in the vast desert that surrounds our city. It was a good day.