Bye Bye 2010

The weather was awful for New Years (sub-zero temps, snow and strong wind), but we made the best of it! Rachel, Chris, Matt and I made a late dinner of king crab legs, steak, cheddar cheese biscuits and garlic potatoes and stayed in with our champagne. It was a fun New Years Eve!

Blizzard

The snow is finally here! If only it had come in time to get a day off of work. :-) Matt and I braved the elements to go out for dinner, but as you can see from this shot of a street light and the lit up snow beneath it, the flakes were really flying.

Rox

Roxanne was awesome and let Rachel and I dress her up and take some pictures. It was really fun and I got a ton of good shots. I will do a Flickr album later with the best photos, but I picked this to put on the blog. It was a tough choice though! The whole idea was to get Rox (the most happy and optimistic person I know) to look a little scary and dark.  Originally, I planned to turn this into a black and white, but I really liked her green eyes played off the green background.

Bug

Stash gets very excited when she sees a bug on the wall, as she did in this case. I know I take a lot of pics of her, but when its as cold, dark and ugly outside as its been lately, there aren't too many things to take pictures of.

Lizards

Matt bought these two decorative wooden lizards when we were on vacation in Zion last year. I can't wait until the days get longer! I like tking outside pictures and have a hard time finding subjects.

Geese

The weather has been amazingly warm. We were even able to go for a walk in the park without coats. It almost felt like Spring! I had fun taking photos of all the ducks and geese skidding across the ice covering the pond, but my favorite photo was the geese coming in for a landing.

Christmas Day

I had a wonderful Christmas and I hope you all did too! I spent a fun couple days with my family. We opened gifts, ate breakfast, opened more gifts, ate dinner and caught up on Christmas Day. We had a big dinner of prime rib and smoked pheasant, with a pumpkin cheesecake for dessert. Oh, and I got an awesome "guerilla-pod" from Matt, which is basically a bendable tripod that can be used to hold a camera steady in unusual places without a flat surface. I used it to take this picture of all of us around the dinner table.

Christmas Eve

The weather is actually warm and clear on Christmas Eve! That is certainly unusual, considering the rest of the country is under snow. I took advantage of the nice weather and went out and saw my dad do his lessons with Daisy. For an 8-month old lab, she did great. He threw dummies and had her sit until he told her to go get them. It was very fun to watch!

Winter

It doesn't look like it is going to be a very white Christmas. It is 50 degrees and clear and the forecast isn't going to change. At least our family will have no problem getting here! Here are the trees that I took a picture of earlier, but without the yellow leaves.

Bread Rat

Becky got this little rat for me in Germany (I have quite a few rat/mouse figurines). It is made out of bread that was somehow hardened and laquered to preserve it. I have always thought it was cool.

Shutter

I did this photo by slowing down my shutterspeed to 15 seconds and spinning it in little circles while taking a photos of my little Christmas tree. I want to do some more cool light drawing photos in the future. I am glad I figured our how to do it.

Festive

Festive Kitty is festive! Against her will, I might add.

Baking

I spent all day cooking and baking Christmas goodies! I ended up with cookies, peppermint bark, truffles and peanut brittle. That brittle is hard to make...it took three tries before I made a good batch. Here is the pretty peppermint bark after I put on the dark chocolate.

Nutcrackers

On Saturday, Rachel and I went down to Denver, saw the Nutcracker ballet, walked around the 16th Street Mall, and had a nice dinner in a cool restaurant. Everything was so pretty and covered in Christmas lights. Unfortunately, I left my camera in the car and we were parked far away. So here is a picture of a squirrel I saw that morning. :-)

P.S. I have to give Matt credit on this one. He saw the squirrel right outside and called me to bring my camera.

Kitty

Matt and Stash like each other now. I promise.

Rainbow Rider

It is finished! This summer, my dad told me he thought I should paint a cowboy riding a bucking fish. I thought he was joking and that it was a ridiculous idea. However, he brought it up again. Someone else then told me about a cowboy named Casey Tibbs who was called the "Rainbow Rider" because he always wore bright colors, particularly purple shirts. With that tie-in, I actually started sketching it out. And now I give you, "Rainbow Rider," the most ridiculous painting I have ever done.

Flowers II

More pretty flowers!

Lithos

I got some old lithographs at an antique show a few months ago. They looked like they came from an old biology textbook. I know they are very old, but thats about it. I got 4 moth/butterfly lithos and 4 fish ones. I framed them and have them in my living room and love how they look. Despite being possibly a hundred years old or more, the colors are as vivid as ever. I need to do some research about where they came from.

Fish Drawing

 I entered 6 drawings into the Western Spirit Art Show this year (I got two paintings in last year) and only had one get accepted. Still, competition for that show is very high, so I was thrilled to get a piece in. The drawback...the drawing was one I currently have in the Fort Collins gallery and someone had come in earlier in the week saying they wanted to buy it. So, I either take it out of the gallery and possibly miss the sale, or leave it in the gallery and miss out on the show (and possibly never have the guy come back to get it). I ended up driving down to FoCo to get it and left the guy who was interested another fish painting and my card. Lots of drama for one drawing, which I didn't even think was half as good as my other entries. Oh, well. Here is "Circling Cutthroats" after I brought it home. You can see my reflection in the glass...

Flower

Pretty flower!

Sunrise

I had to be up at sunrise on a Saturday to feed the dogs and horses. Ugh. But it was really pretty outside and I snapped a photo of these birds flying away from me in the rising pink sunlight.

Willow

I house-sat for my parents on Friday night. It is a little creepy out there in the country at night by yourself, but I had lots of dogs to keep me company. Between elderly Izzy and crazy Daisy, Willow is actually the best behaved dog. She has always been my buddy, but I was especially happy to have her company. She even came out to the barn with me and slept on my bed. she was hoping I would drop some popcorn when I took this.

Mirror

I had fun taking pictures of Rachel, and Matt didn't want his picture taken, so I was the only other option. I took a photo of myself in the mirror attached to the top of my antique dresser.  I have lots of things on top of that dresser.

Rachel Part Deux

I was having a hard time figuring out what to take a picture of last night. Fortunately for me, Rachel was around! She has some cool creative ideas, so she grabbed a scarf and I took her photo. I got a whole bunch of them with different light, some serious, some not. Even though there were a bunch of good ones, I liked this smiley babushka one.

Wax

Last year for Christmas I bought some wax-dipped pinecones for Christmas decorations. When you warm them up, they smell really good. The problem is that I got three different colors, so they are three different smells as well.  Which means I can't warm them all up at the same time or my room sounds like sandalwoodlavendervanilla. Not good. They are pretty though!

Wooden Man

I call this, "Wooden Man Worrying About all the Clutter in the Back Bedroom." I keep knocking things over when I'm in there and the clutter is driving me crazy! Wooden Man agrees with me.

Mean Streets

I went over to Laramie with my folks to have lunch with Roxanne. We had a nice lunch at Tommy Jacks. Now that Matt lives in Cheyenne, I never go over the summit. I do miss the cute downtown and all the little shops. Even though the streets are fairly empty on a Sunday afternoon.

Tree

Happy Birthday, Roxanne! Now that it is Rox's birthday (we never used to put up the tree until after her birthday so that it wouldn't get overshadowed by the holidays), I put up my little Christmas tree. My mom got it for me last year, and it it just the right size for an apartment. I have a variety of ornaments I either mooched from my parents or received as a gift from my grandparents, but I still have pretty sparse decorations. Stash is very interested in the tree and spends a lot of time sitting and looking at it.

First Friday

On the first Friday of every month, all the galleries in Fort Collins do a gallery walk. This means that all the art galleries stay open late, have food and invite the artists. Matt and I went down after work to my new gallery. It was really fun, but kind of awkward. I saw lots of people go over and look at my work, but once I got enough nerve to go up to a guy looking at it and ask if he liked them, he ran away like I was on fire. Ruby and her friends came by though, so that made me feel better. All in all, I had a great time and all the artists in my gallery were very nice and helpful. We went and got a late dinner afterwards and I ate some of the best prime rib I've ever had. Good times!! This is a photo of the interior of the gallery.

Statue

I always see this bronze sculpture of two boys playing baseball while I am on my way home from work. I snapped a photo of it out of the window of my car while waiting at the stoplight. It looks cool lit up in the dusk.

Puzzle!

I will give one 8" x 10" print of any of my pictures (that includes any on my blog, website or Flickr www.flickr.com/photos/mollybx) to the person who can tell me what this is (or the best guess if no one gets it).

Gallery

I am in an art gallery! I am the new "Emerging Artist" with the Art on Mountain Gallery in Fort Collins. http://www.artonmountain.com/ I will be showing with them for the next 3 months, and might become a permanent member after that. It is pretty exciting. I went down for their monthly meeting, and hung my work in the front alcove by the windows. I left right after work and got home after 10pm. Long day but totally worth it! The other artists helped me hang my pieces and write out my price tags. I snuck a picture of one when they weren't looking. Yay!

Cooking

Matt and I have been doing lots of cooking lately. We had sandwiches with wheat hoagies, Italian sausage, marinara sauce, mozzarella, sauteed peppers and onion. Here is Matt flipping the peppers and onions in his fancy way.

Ink

It has been very cold and windy here lately, and gets dark early before I get off work. Which means I have been spending time inside working on my hobbies. I just finished up a commissioned drawing for a friend to give her sister for Christmas. It is the sister's black Lab. I like doing commissions, even though they feel like actual work as opposed to just drawing for fun. Here is my ink bottle next to the drawing. It was dark in the room with just my Ott light on.

Sushi

Matt and I went down to Fort Collins on Saturday to bring some of my work to a gallery I might be able to start exhibiting in. We went to Suehiro for a delicious sushi lunch. I was trying to take the photo quickly and I don't think I got the best one I could have, but at least I am starting to get brave enough to pull out my camera in public. Just on a side note, that night we all had a fantastic Italian dinner at my folks house with recipes from the Carmine's restaurant cookbook. I had a great time seeing Becky and Aaron and look forward to visiting them in a month!

Swings

There is a playground very close to my grandparents' house. When we were little kids, we would go down there to run off all the food we just ate while the grown-ups talked. Even though we are now grown up, it is still fun to go down to the playground. Right before we left on Friday, we took the dogs and went to the playground. I took some photos of Roxanne and Aaron jumping off of the swings. I might have to post some of the others too, I got some great ones.

Thanksgiving

I got a lot of wonderful pictures from Thanksgiving! Shane playing with Barley, Jack and Grandma, everyone drinking and eating and catching up. This year was the biggest, loudest and most full Thanksgiving I can remember, and it was great. I will put the rest of my photos on Flickr, but for Thanksgiving, I want to post my photo of the thing I am most grateful for. My big family! (Oh, and I took this with a timer on my camera. Its why I am always standing on the right side of all our family photos...so I can set up the camera and run back.)

Barley

Becky and Aaron are here! That means they brought their new little doggy, Barley. She was a rescue dog that has spent the better part of her life in shelters and foster homes, even though she is a very nice dog. She was having a blast playing with Daisy and meeting all the new people. And she liked my camera.

Cat

I had to do a cool picture of Stash because I have only done pictures of her sneezing or with things on top of her. She is a pretty cute little thing.

Tuna

My boyfriend is the best cook in the world! I bought some tuna chops and couldn't decide how to cook them. I usually just season and sear them, but he doesn't like large amounts of plain raw fish the same way I do. He coated them in cajun seasoning, seared them and put them on a bed of scallions, red pepper and mandarin oranges. The spicy and sweet went together so well, and I still got my large amount of raw fish. Yum!

Fog

It's Sunday but I can't take any pictures outside! We have had this weird, cold dense fog hanging over town for two days. This photo is outside my apartment. You can hardly see the gym or the apartment across the street.

Cabelas

I went to Cabela's on Saturday with Matt and his parents. It was a very nice trip, even though the weather was cold and foggy. I love all the great outdoorsy stuff they have there, and all the food and cooking accessories. The most impressive thing, however, are all the stuffed game animals all over the store. They have everything from elk and antelope to an African elephant. They have a huge display with all sorts of North American animals on a mountain. I got photo of all the animals, frozen in time.

Landscape

I tried to take a bunch of pictures to make a panoramic photo. Unfortunately, it was really cold and my camera didn't want to focus. So I ended up just getting a couple of pics of Cheyenne from a hill overlooking the north side of town, but not enough in a row to make a panorama. I will get that soon though! But for now, here is Cheyenne in the evening.

New York

Ok, here is an interesting one. This is basically a few photos from our trip to New York transposed over each other. And I didn't do it in Photoshop. It took me awhile to get the adjustments right, but I set up my camera on an tripod in front of my computer. I put it in the manual setting and slowed down the shutter speed as much as I could, and closed the aperture to as small as possible. Then, I went to facebook and pulled up Rox's photo album from our trip. I clicked the camera and scrolled through the photos while letting the camera take the picture with a 15 second shutterspeed. So, it is basically a photo of photos on a computer monitor. It is harder than it looks. The result was these crazy ghosted images of Rox and Times Square. Cool, huh? I got this idea from a photo blog I was reading and wanted to try it. What do you think?

Daisy

I know I have lots of animal and pet pictures, but they practically beg me to take pictures of them. Daisy, in particular. She has such a goofy, expressive face. When I went out to my parents' house for dinner last night, Daisy was so excited she could hardly contain herself. She even whacked me in the face with one of her giant, clumsy paws. That wore off pretty soon though, and then she was doing all she could to stay awake.

Lights

I got some cool lights from Matt's mom for Christmas last year and have them hanging in my room. It gives it a nice soft ambiance. I took a picture of them tonight. I think the lights look cool in a dark room.

Beets

I am sad I have never eaten beets before in my life. They are good for you and very tasty. I got a few from my boss' garden this year and have been buying them at the Farmer's Market ever since. My favorite way to cook them is to wrap them in foil and bake them like a potato, with a little butter and salt. Matt and I made a dinner of deer tenderloin, garlic red potatoes and beets.

Dove

I went out to my parents' house today to feed the critters while they were at the Bronco game. I walked around with the dogs even though it was pretty chilly and snowy outside. I saw this dove (not sure what kind, mourning? collared?) out braving the elements as well. It didn't seem to like the cold breeze too much either.

Winter Market

Rachel and I went to a Winter Farmer's Market in Fort Collins on Saturday. It was great... there was still some produce, but a lot more locally made specialties. I ended up with some cheese, smoked salmon dip, beets and a baguette. Rachel bought, among other things, some of this locally made cider. I love farmer's markets! It was packed, with lots of free samples.

Chimney

I had to stay home for a couple hours on Friday while someone came to clean our chimney. It was weird...they brought in a huge hose and sucked everything out of the stove and chimney. I don't have anything else too interesting to include in my description. :-)