Murals

 Last week when Tom and I went for a drive and discovered the little shotgun houses we discovered several more things:

Like some fun murals. I have no idea what this one is all about, maybe I will try and find out..

This one on the next block seemed to be advertising an event place.

While this one, also close by was painted on the front of a Doggie Day Care business. It still amazes me the people pay to send their dogs to a daycare so they don’t get bored,

 

but I guess we all desire company!

 

Click on photo to enlarge

There were also several food trucks in the area. This one caught my eye.

Under the window it says: The burger that bites back.

Maybe not for me!

Who knew that we would have such a good time getting out of our own neighborhood!

Deja Vu

 Sometimes youtube videos mysteriously appear on my Facebook feed. I usually enjoy watching the ones about rescuing animals, which is probably why they keep showing up.

Yesterday  there was one about a kind motorcycle rider who stopped  to pick up a woman whose saddled horse had gotten away from her. 

So now the chase was on and all recorded  by the GoPro camera attached to the motorcycle riders helmet. All of a sudden this deja vu  moment washed over me…and I rewound!! Actually several times..I know this street!

There! I just knew it!! You see many years ago My husband and I lived in The Netherlands for a couple of years. You guessed it I had just recognized the street they were running down! It was the very street we lived on and the house on the left is where we lived! What are the chances of that!

Here is a very bad picture of our house,which was located on Groot Haesebroekseweg in Wassenaar, The Netherlands. Let me tell you it took a while for me to learn to spell the name of that street!

Oh and yes they finally captured the horse!

I am not very techie or I would link the video

House Bound

 We have been having very cold weather here in north Texas. Cold weather does not keep us inside,

but ice does! We have had an ice storm lasting for well over 24 hrs. Hopefully the temperature will truly reach 36 degrees today today! Right now it is still in the twenties. So among other things I have been playing on the computer.

I have been looking for a tree….yes a tree in my little hometown in north Texas, and here it is (thanks google). When I was ten years old I spent a lot of time in this very tree. It use to have some lower branches. Or maybe it didn’t. Maybe it has just grown and the branches are higher up now.  I had a climbing partner, a boy named Mike. My sister and I were living that school year with our grandparents. Our mother was ill and our grandmother thought it would help if the two of us came to live with them. This by the way was not their house (I wish).

This was their house directly across the street. 

My sister and I shared a room that had a door that opened on onto that side porch. We really loved living with our grandparents that year.

My best friend Mary lived in this house nearby. It had an unusual floor plan and was actually featured in Better Homes and Gardens Magazine when it was new in the late 1940’s. Mary’s parents both worked so she had a nanny. I will never forget Vela. She sure kept the two of us in line.

Mary and I spent a lot of time together. On Saturdays we would always go to a movie downtown. With three movie houses in town there was always something we wanted to see. My grandmother would drop us off and we would walk to the funeral home owned by Mary’s Dad afterwards. Her teen aged brother who was working there would drive us home.

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Another Fun Birthday

 Wow! Some of these birthday celebrations are getting very elaborate! Remember I posted about a cute lady who sent out her birthday card posing with a college mascot….. a horse? If you don't remember you can go HERE

Becky and her sister

Well an old high school friend had a special birthday (and NO it wasn’t her 90th)! It so happened it was Tuesday on 2/22/22 so her daughters printed special t-shirts and arranged a very elegant  tea party where they all wore 2 2’s.... Make that Tutus!!

 

They even hired a chef who prepared food fit for royalty. 

He too of course wore a tutu

I didn’t  just drop the word royalty. This guy is the real thing. Seems he was was a chef to the Royal family in England.

You can read all about him  HERE.

 

I had to laugh, another friend said " well I only have sons. They offered to take me out for pizza and beer on my birthday"!

Into The Wind !

 

We checked the weather and decided since we have not been walking lately we would go to Trinity Park and walk on the trail along the river.

@

Taking a quick look at the forecast we didn’t notice that it was going to be WINDY. The wind was coming out of the south which meant we were walking directly in to it!

We weren’t the only ones out there. Although, this Mother and child were going with the wind in the opposite direction. So why didn’t we turn around? Well the restaurant where we wanted to eat lunch was in the direction we were walking.

The little park train wasn’t having any trouble going in our direction. Wish we could have hopped on!

We passed a group of people taking a Spin Class,

and a basketball game going on under the bridge. Tom loves basketball so I had a hard time coaxing him to continue walking.

We noticed a new Kayak launch area…although no one was using it,

and several colorful murals.

We made it to the restaurant. Had a light lunch and the walk back to the car was much more enjoyable since the wind was at out backs. We logged 4.5 miles in all and were proud of ourselves for going, but will look at the entire weather forecast next time!

Look A Shotgun!

 No this is not a post about guns. It’s about a tiny house before tiny houses were popular. Late in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Shotgun Houses were being built all across the southern U.S.

Especially in New Orleans where this little Victorian doll has been renovated.

...and no, I am not in New Orleans. It was such a pretty day that Tom and I got out of the neighborhood and drove into town. Sounds like a long way, but we are only talking about three miles. We were driving around in an area that they call the Near Southside, a somewhat industrial area with old warehouses and crumbling homes. Like many cities though, that is changing. New businesses, condos and restaurants are sprouting up everywhere. That's when I spotted them... two Shotgun Houses. Looks like their days are numbered and it’s a shame. More and more of these little pieces of history are being wiped off of the map. 

Here is a floor plan of a shotgun house. They are only about 12 ft. wide since lots were small back then. There was usually a small porch, a living room or parlor with a bedroom behind (maybe two) and a kitchen. Rooms were in a direct line even the doorways. There was no hallway. You simply walked through each room to get to the next.This plan shows a bathroom but the original shotguns didn’t have one..

 The doorways being lined up helped push the breeze all the way through the house.

I might add that they also had tall ceilings (most 12ft.). 

I did find an advertisement here in Ft. Worth were you can stay in one of these houses.  

It’s called a twin because they also own the one next door and will soon be renovating it. 

 

 

I wonder if it too will be blue?

Oh and why are they called  Shotgun Houses? 

Well, if you opened the front door and shot a shotgun, the bullets would simply go straight out the backdoor without hitting anything...hopefully!

This and That

 Hello…is there anyone still there? One way to lose followers is not to post on a regular schedule. 

The dark days of winter are here and not always easy to find something to blog about. I have been busy but doing what I am not sure?

I did try my hand my hand at baking a cake. Made a three layer carrot cake from scratch…We Americans  are usually prone to using a cake mix…but this is the real thing with creme cheese icing. Now I just need to learn how to decorate. I didn’t exactly put much thought into how to space my letters, and I got the decorating (orange ) icing too thin to properly make the ruffled trim.I will try again soon if someone will have a birthday. We certainly don’t want a cake this big around here to temp us!

My daughter and granddaughter sent this picture of them  posing at an event inside a Van Gogh painting.

I recognized it right away,

since Tom and I were in Arles, France at the very spot  where they are standing a few years ago.Van Gogh painted this coffee shop The Terrace Cafe in 1888 while living in Arles.That was the same year he sliced off his ear…

I am still taking courses at TCU. I wasn’t too keen on taking this course, Happiness, because a lot of these self help books seem like psycho babble sometimes, but I really like the instructor.

Right off the bat there is this chart. She says 50% of  your happiness  you inherit (set point). So if I have good circumstances (10%) in my life and I intentionally try my hand at happiness but let’s say I am a descendant of Scrooge…my chances of being happy are still only50 50.

Looks like I not only need a course in cake decorating…but I need to read this book and figure this out!…stay tuned..

Time to Rodeo

 In 2019 a new $450 million dollar multi purpose  arena opened in Fort Worth.

Admittedly it wasn’t good timing for the 14,000 seat capacity Dickie's Arena to open. Although with more than one deep pocket billionaire in town…it is surviving.

Set up here for the rodeo which is part of the annual Fort Worth Fat Stock Show and Rodeo

We were invited this week to attend the rodeo by a friend we met in Colorado who has box seats at the arena..The guys were there too..but a bit camera shy. If you have western clothes, this is an event where you want to wear them. I don’t, but I do own a turquoise belt!

The evening starts with young ladies parading the American and Texas flags around the arena on horseback.

Then everyone stands for the national anthem. Notice how the lighting makes the dirt look red?

After that there is one event after another.. I didn’t take a picture of all of them, but this the bucking horse event. Of course the winner is the cowboy who stays on the horse the longest.

Steer roping

 

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 where they rope the steer then jump off the horse throwing the steer to the ground and tie up its legs….Not my favorite event.

I enjoy the  Chuckwagon Races more,

 

 

and I had no ideas these guys were going to be there!

 

 

Budwiser's Clydesdales were there and made three laps around the arena. Gosh those horses  are beautiful! Have you ever seen them?

The rodeo starts annually in Ft. Worth in mid January and has since 1918.