A Lovely Day

Hello there,
A bit of a mixed bag for this post, but I've had my head down and brushes up for a while now.
Time to post something and to pay a few visits.

The other day started off with some painting... by the time MD had coffee ready, I'd roughed out a little acrylic.  Have a new fad to paint at the moment - vases of flowers.  The one in the photo below is of some pink nameless kind of flowers but I'm going to intermingle branches of the lovely silver grey eucalyptus leaves.  You can see I've got one of my photos showing on my laptop and I'm using that as a reference.  I'll post a photo when its finished.

We decided on a walk after brekky, so down we went to the lake.  Saw this lone Australian White Ibis (I think that's the right name) having a feed way off in the distance.  It was beaut because we don't often see them here.
(Sorry to not have joined in with Stewart's Wild Bird Wednesday but I can't seem to be organised properly these days ... blame the painting and swimming!!)

I'd wanted to do some sketching after we'd walked.  Got it into my head that I could do some boats and so we set the chairs up and I had a go.  Lol, I think that'll be as far as I go with trying to draw boats somehow... lost patience pretty quick - back to flowers and other such things!!

It was a lovely spot though:

After a little while, we noticed this fellow paddling along towards us.

"Hello" he seemed to say !!!!  "Got anything to eat?"

He soon got bored waiting for us to break out the snacks, so a bit of preening took place:

.... then a stretch.  Oh, what a beautiful sight, just a couple of feet away from us:

Wings down and feathers settled:

obviously time for a walk.  Up he came, right up close to MD.  Totally friendly, but really, really hungry apparently !!

Nothing doing, no food from us (we didn't come prepared), so he ambled on down alongside the road.

I'd been meaning to take some closeups of the swans' feathers when I next had an opportunity and this was as good as any.  Aren't they gorgeous!

Back home I played around with the photo editor, applied a filter and enhanced the colour... I didn't change the colour to mauve purposely, it happened as I applied more contrast and saturation. (I'm not technically minded but I love experimenting... can always hit the 'Undo' button!).

Last of all, here's one of my paintings that I've recently finished.  It's an acrylic that had been sitting on the easel (or near it) for the past 6 months.  Finally, I got stuck in and completed it.  "Kelp Forest Fantasy"... I enjoy painting the fishies.  There's a little mermaid in there as well.

That's about it for this post.  Thanks for taking the time to visit.
I hope life is treating all of you really well.
Cheerio and I'll see you over at yours :D)

A mixed bag today !

Hello everyone,

Well, the movie "Love Actually" was on telly last night so Christmas is definitely near!  It's one of my 3 favourites that I can watch again and again.   The others are "My Blue Heaven" and, I can just hear my darling groan  (in a painful way) when he reads this... "Out of Africa"  lol ;D)

My selection of photos come from another one of our recent walks and we were greeted firstly with the happy squeals of a toddler learning to fly his kite.  A happy little scene:

A flying fish no less !
A bit different to our paper and string kites of eons ago :D)

Gall-ing
We were walking around the bush to the left of the kite flying family and I decided to take a photo of these things that were on certain trees we pass when we walk in this area:

I wondered if they were some kind of bush fruit perhaps, so decided to take some photos and investigate.
Silly me, turns out they are galls caused by a special kind of wasp.  The tree is a coastal wattle Acacia longifolia.

Just happened to see this little fellow on one of the leaves near the galls. All in all, by the state of the Acacia,  I guess it's not feeling the brightest !

Rubbish... grrrrr
Further on, we were walking right by the water and I saw this:

... and this:

the movement in the water kind of distorts what it is but, yeah, more rubbish into the beautiful lakes system.  Takes all kinds doesn't it!


More Sweet Swans
Anyway, moving on, we turned the corner and saw a sight that put a big smile back on our faces:

Mum and Dad Swan and their little one

I could almost imagine the cygnet was playing a game of peek-a-boo:

So sweet.

My Artwork and Photos
At the suggestion of my good friend Vicki of Eucalypt Habitat I've been creating a portfolio of my artwork and photographs on one of the online sites she suggested.  I decided to give it a go and so chose Redbubble.  I remember Deb of Ramblings of a Square Peg in a Round Hole suggesting the same spot a few years' ago but I never followed her up.  Well, now I have paintings as well as pics, so why not!!

It's been a learning curve... so much to learn but lots of easy tutorials are there to help.  Lots of helpful technical advice for taking photos for specific purposes and products too.
They seem a very professional site with a good reputation and copyright matters are a high priority. While it's the first time I've ever done anything like this, I'm happy that I've started:

If you'd like to pop over sometime you'd be most welcome, here's the link to my portfolio which I add to every few days: susansometimes on redbubble

Well, that's about all for this post.  I shall pull Froggie out of the archives so that he can spread some Christmas Cheer on the header.  See you over at yours ...  :D)

Hello again

Just sliding back into my little place in the blogosphere and picking up where I left off.

I had a quick look through the blogs in my sidebar and it's beaut to see all the familiar names there.
I can see there's been a lot of travelling, birdwatching, cooking, gardening, sewing, painting and all things in between that have been going on, so it will be nice to catch up with each of you once more.

I've been painting a lot over the past few months, and we've been walking nearly every day.  Life's been quiet and peaceful and that's the way we like it.

Here's a few pics of what's been happening in our part of the world:

Our Magpie family thought it about time we became acquainted with their new addition,
so they brought baby to our yard for a feed.

It's a greedy young thing ... noisy too !

This is some of the beautiful scenery we see during our walks. 

... lots of funny little worm tubes

This year's hatch of cygnets with their protective parents

Adorable cuties aren't they !

My latest additions to my windowsill collection of plants...  truly amazing how much one
windowsill can hold !!

A page from my sketch book... such a peaceful thing to do with a pen and a few splatters of colour.
I've popped a couple of my other paintings up in my header. 

Here's my next challenge... painting the glass jar.
Fortunately, there are lots of helpful Youtube videos out there
by very generous artists.  I'll learn from them.

I'm never short of inspiration for paintings - how magnificent is this simple geranium
(pelargonium)

Well, that's me for now.  Thank you for your visits while I was absent.  I'm going to take pleasure in returning the courtesy and will see you over at yours :D)

Bob and Maria - some more mates of Prawn Man

This is the 3rd and final post about Prawn Man's mates. He was so proud to introduce them to us.

Lol, yes, I'm still banging on about that ... yes, still down by the lake, serving up more of these pictures to you!!

Previously I posted about George of Mykanos who was one lucky Pelican.
We've also established that Prawn Man is a big softie :D)

However, George the Pelican has a Big Mouth (in more ways than one), and just couldn't help bragging to Maria the Swan about his freebie meal courtesy of the Prawn Man.

Maria, left off eating the bland old sea grass and excitedly paddled off to find her partner Bob.

Now Bob's a laid back kind of fellow.  He likes a quiet life poking around the jetty wall feeding on bits and pieces...

however, Bob is a particular favourite mate of the Prawn Man and Maria needs Bob to get on over there and let Prawn Man know that they're up for a free meal too!

Bob's not too keen on leaving those tasty little morsels he's found clinging to the rock wall and needs a little bit of encouragement from Maria

Oh no, George the Pelican has come back and is going to get the lot!

All is not lost though.  Hero Bob sails in and saves the day.  Yummo, thanks Prawn Man - he knows that prawns are Bob's fave snack!

Both Bob and Maria happily tuck into their special treats, and George knows there's always tomorrow.

This little fellow watched with quiet amusement as all that drama played out - he waits and gets to clean up the scraps from everyone.  All he has to do is just float around and bide his time, no need to move a muscle really! Cool, Carl the Crab Cool,  (I named that one) ;D)

Thanks for bearing with my rather lengthy stories about one particular walk!  There's always a bit of action going on down by the lake.

Cheers now!

Our Swan Family moves on but we meet up with Faithful Duck

We've been back to Lakes Entrance a couple of times since my last update, but haven't seen any more of our Swan Family.  We're thinking this is probably the final chapter to our Mumma Swan and Faithful Duck story.

Last week, The Nest looked ... empty ... vacant...

This week, looks like some prospective tenants ... perhaps?

We were delighted to come upon Faithful Duck once more.  He had a friend by his side too.

A very pretty friend....

We had a little chuckle at how gooey Faithful Duck had become.

... showing off, strutting his stuff - in a ducky kind of way...

... testing the water - so to speak...

... "come on in" he seems to say, with a little glint in his eye

How could a girl resist?

Turns out - she couldn't!

Oh, Faithful Duck, you've got it bad...

... a bad dose of  Spring Fever

♥♥