Beer and Sunset

Late yesterday afternoons "deckvision" getting close to sunset ( 5pm to be exact) .... it looked amazingly like fall .... the sun made the trees really warm tones and the sky very cool so I think it made for an interesting shot for this time of year. You wouldn't guess that it was 34 degrees out.



Yesterday was a beer bottling day and Lea is bottling this batch in brown plastic 16 ounce bottles to see how well they work out (they're less expensive, less cost to ship and weigh less) compared to her glass bottles. "They" say they're excellent for short term consumption but glass is better for the kind of beer you want to age a long time. So it's an experiment and we'll let you know how it turns out.

Here's a bunch of plastic bottles in the bathtub with sanitizer stuff in them, a 24 hour soak ...


And then onto this "tree" thing to dry. Lea seen here preparing to start bottling by getting all the tubes and stuff sanitized ..


Other than some bucket leakage issues, all went well getting this batch bottled. It may be ready in about 2 weeks. I guess one cool thing about plastic is that when you can't squeeze the bottle ... the beer's fully carbonated and ready. I hope it's a good as the last batch .... yum! This weekend Lea has a different brew that will be ready to bottle ..... that batch will go into glass and I'll try to do a video.

Still getting into the low 20's at night but for the next few days it's supposed to get into the mid 50's during the day so I'm dusting off my shorts and preparing to spend a lot of time outdoors! Snow next week.

West Plains Missouri

The roads were still a bit icy here and there but not so bad that we couldn't .... finally .... get to West Plains in search of "Ozark Mountains Brew Supply" and "Fishland". Here's a condensed version, by means of an 11 minute video of our day. We love our days :)

Yesterday and Today

This mornings "Deckovision" ....


Yesterday ....


And Today ....

A Short Walk

The "deckvision" this morning at 8am


At around 11am


And then around 3pm


We decided to take a walk around 1pm. Since the snowplows were getting the roads plowed it seemed like a good time for a walk ..... a short walk as it turned out .... but I did strap on my little fisheye waterproof video camera that I use in the river .... I love the 8mm home movie quality even if I do look pretty dorky .... ok ... dorkier .... wearing it.


Our river tubes are coming out tomorrow :) We love sledding!

Kindling

So we did stay home today .... stocked up on food .... bought a new coffee pot .... gathered kindling ... and cut up some small rounds of wood before the snow storm. You can't hear it in the video but I could here the sounds of chain saws from across the river .... I love that sound .... and you probably would have heard it in the video too if I would have used a true video camera .... but .... as usual .... the iPhone was in my pocket :)





Love y'all! :)

Snow Coming

Yesterday mornings "deckvision" ....



Lea and I were going to go to West Plains Missouri today .... about an hours drive ... but the news this morning is calling for a pretty big snowstorm to start tonight and go through the day tomorrow with a break on Friday and then several more snow days. So as much as we wanted to go to West Plains .... there's a beer brew supply store, tons of antique stores and "Fishland" (aquarium fish store) ... we have decided to do the right thing and stick around. Our coffee maker just died and we need more small wood to go with the large pieces of oak .... so today we'll get a new coffee maker, drag as much wood as we can up to the house and cut it up .... we also need to grocery shop in case we're snowed in for a while and I'm for sure not getting snowed in without a coffee maker. But when we do go to West Plains I'll be sure to do a video. This spring we're going to spend a day in the "Mark Twain National Forest" which is just east of West Plains which is loaded with spring mills. Very interesting area that I hear is really beautiful. Here's a link to West Plains really enjoyable website .... Click Here

One last thing before you head off to the West Plains website ... You may recall that Lea and I have a Woodpecker on our license plate and now here's Lynda's new Hummingbird Arkansas plate ....

I love it!

Keeping Warm

We've been keeping warm but using a lot of wood .... still cheaper than propane. We've had to learn a new term for the quantity of firewood ..... "rick". In buying wood when we lived in Northern Calif., we always bought wood by the "cord". Nobody does that in these parts :) .... it's by the truckload or "rick". Here's what a delivered $45 "rick" of "seasoned" oak will get you ....


Added to what we already have we should be ok till spring. We have a "stash" in the backyard almost equal to what you see here ...


So Lea is making labels for her beer since she has 1 batch bottled and 2 batches in the fermentation process, it won't be long before she has 3 different brews ... all in brown bottles .... so labels became a necessity. She's sitting here in our "entry way" (the front door hallway that is used for wood storage and an inversion table) putting labels on her "Brown Ale". The paper is made for inkjet printers and has a lightly gummed surface on the back so that they will come off easily (hopefully).


The labels are a nice touch but the beer is the real star! It is soooooooo good! We've been splitting a bottle to drink with our sandwiches at lunch and I can honestly say that this batch of beer is the best I've ever had and I've downed a few "exotic" beers in my life. Oh .... here's a shot of this batches label ...


I watch Millie and Ozzie almost every night cuddle up on the couch together and share a blanket .... I watch as Ozzie goes through this "thing" he does with the blanket in his mouth and I watch as Millie allows her share of the blanket to get pulled away ... I watch this almost every night and last night decided to point my iPhone at them and capture this loving cuteness ....

Icebound Days & Sydny

This mornings "deckvision"


The deer must be holed up someplace because we usually have a herd (is a group of deer a herd?) come through everyday to keep everything grazed down for us but they have been absent since the snow. Except for one single antlered buck that I happened to spot off the deck yesterday.

I was using a "point and shoot" camera so I was able to zoom in and see he was lacking an antler


Schools have been closed all week as have some city offices .... even the distribution center for Blockbuster (Lea rents her video games from them) for this region had to close down today because of the threat of frostbite .... no video game in the mail for her today :(. It was 8 degrees when I got up this morning but I can't imagine what it was with the windchill factor, although at 10am the local radio station said it was minus 4 with the windchill. Everything outside is frozen solid.

A lot of the snow managed to melt yesterday before it got even colder. I ventured out and noticed that my halloween pumpkins that I carefully laid to rest in the forest had re-emerged from beneath the snow ...


A few more photos I shot this afternoon including one of Lea and Millie ... we actually took the dogs for a walk ... it was beautiful so we really didn't mind the cold ....




It's always amusing to watch Sydny eat .... she's very .... hmmmm ..... enthusiastic about it I guess. She's now almost 5 months old and weighing in at 1.5 ounces! Wow! She's happy, healthy and sweet (unless you're a worm). Anyway ... I shot this little video of her this morning doing her usual "hunt" for breakfast routine .... enjoy :)

Clear Skies and Alex

The "deckvision" this morning ....


The skies were parting and letting the sunshine through but it was windy and at 19 degrees on the thermometer this morning, I imagine the windchill took it down to like zero ... cause it was really windy and blowing snow off the trees and roof. I tried to get a shot of the blowing snow cause it was so awesome but I was unsuccessful :( .... so I took a photo of the front yard instead ....

This afternoon I did the tennis shoe slide across the bottom of the driveway while stupidly trying to get from one side to the other ... but I did stay on my feet :) .... way too cold to play in the snow today so Lea made another batch of beer .... I was hoping she'd entertain me while playing with the dogs in the backyard again.

So I got 3 emails in the past week asking about Alex, our bird. Seems he's never in the videos ... which is true because everytime you point a camera at him .... he screams .... although I can relate it's still obnoxious .... but just to prove we didn't send him off to play with the eagles .... Lea shot this short video of him today ...


Sydny is next :)

First Snow of 2011

The "deckvision" this morning ....


And here's one out the bedroom window .... that's our Magnolia tree on the left looking very winter-like pretty .... dogwood is on the right and the street in the background


But the real stars this morning was Millie and Lea. Sometimes you just happen to be at the right place at the right time and filming. I started laughing so hard while I was filming this that I had to replace the audio.

I alway thought there was something dangerous about those long scarfs :)

Viva Rock Vegas

A while back I had posted a video which included a glimpse of a shell trailer. Bobbie commented this .... "Maybe we will get to look at the neat trailer on the way out. Please, please, please." So I did.




These are movie props from the live actors Flintstone's movie .... "Viva Rock Vegas"

So there ya go .... ask and you shall receive :)

First Brew First Beer New Old Albums

A day early but she couldn't wait ....


After consuming the glass of beer .... she was still smiling :)

And I'm smiling because I'm starting to get some of the albums in the mail that I got on eBay .... here's one of my favorites that can only be appreciated on vinyl ....


Just in case you can't read the album ... it's "Dancing In The Dragon's Jaw" by Bruce Cockburn.

Even the fish in my aquarium enjoy the sounds ....

They all ran away as soon as I pointed the camera at them but take my word for it .... they love the vinyl music better than digital too :)

Beer Making & My Passion For Retro Anything

For almost as long as I can remember (no wise cracks please), Lea has wanted to make beer. Several years ago she bought some good books to learn the art but we really didn't have the space for that particular "hobby" so she waited until recently when she was finally able to buy the equipment and get started.

Here's Lea siphoning out her first batch from one container to another after a long fermentation process (well it really wasn't long for me but for Lea it was) ....


Then she bottled .....


She bottled them at the dishwasher just after being sterilized .... or is it sanitized? All I know is the whole process has to be really really clean. So the bottling was the day after Christmas and she gets to pop one open this coming Sunday. Will let you know how it turned out. Good or bad she needs to start another batch.

So I have another 2 favorite stores in my life. One is called "Flashback" and it's in Mountain Home. A pretty big place that's like everything 60's and 70's .... from clothes to records to household stuff to smoking apparatus to posters to bumper stickers to everything you can remember of the 60's and 70's. Next time I go I'll shoot more photos but here's one .... that's Lea checking out the record albums ....


So .... the first time we went there it reminded me of how much I missed the sound of vinyl .... so I bought a Crosley Mini Suitcase record player .... remember those? .... well Crosley makes the old players ... but new. Now Jean Twidwell would drop on the floor and froth at the mouth at the thought of putting good vinyl on one of these but I really love it and Jean ... I promise not to put good vinyl on it :) I'm buying back all my Moody Blues, Blood Sweat & Tears, Crosby Stills & Nash, Led Zeppelin, Stones, Beatles .... etc. the list is really long. So the really amazing thing is .... plugged into my rather expensive powered desktop computer speakers the sound is really really really good .... far better then what comes out of my iTunes library. There's just a totally different warmth and sound quality from vinyl that digital just can't do. So here's a photo of my little mini record player .....

Currently playing Leo Kottke but that was Blood Sweat & Tears playing when the photo was taken.

Ok ... so my other new favorite place is "For Mother Earth" and it's in Norfork ... only a little over an hours drive as is Mountain Home but you can get from Norfork to Mountain home (or visa versa) in about 15 minutes so the whole process is an awesome loop. I don't have any photos of the inside of the store but next time I go I'll shoot some for you. It's a lot like "Flashback" but it's smaller, more personal and more into musical instruments, books, wiccan stuff and drums ... drums! We had met the owner of For Mother Earth at Flashback who sells some of her stuff at that store ... I love that the 2 stores work together instead of trying to compete with each other. Anyway ... here's the outside of the store in beautiful downtown Norfork (which is a beautiful mountain town) ....

It's the one with all the wood and I love it!

So would someone poke Bobbie because I'd love to post the rest of the "Viva Rock Vegas" post but I was really kinda doing it for her and I hate to finish the post without giving her the chance to try and figure out what it's about and I know she would have commented if she saw it .... Thanks!

Surprise ... I'm Back :)

I had really thought about not doing the blog anymore but I've gotten so many emails and phone calls that I've decided to keep it up. Not very many people are signed up to "follow" and even fewer leave comments so it's hard for me to know how many are reading the blog .... at least until I stop :)

Ok ... we've been really busy enjoy the busy-ness along with the fun-ness too. The holidays were awesome! We both waited a long time to have a home again and really enjoy the holidays. I did a lot of baking and we both gained about 3 pounds but that's already coming off.

So I'll just run a few photos through today and post more in the coming days to catch up.

It snowed on Christmas morning and I only snapped off this one photo through the window .... you can see the lights on our deck and in the reflection you can see the lights of our Christmas tree, the lights on the fireplace mantle and the fire burning but you can't really see the snow. There were snow flurries off and on all day but not enough to stick and get a sled out and play ....


The next morning looked like this ...


We finally took on the task of painting the living room .....



We still need to do something about those empty walls ....


Lea's "getaway" room down in the basement has been a work in progress .... here's Millie enjoying one corner of the room ... she loves pillows.

The rest of the room is about finished and I'll get some photos up of that soon. Our elliptical trainer takes up an entire corner but Lea has done well working around it and with her drums.

I'm going to end this today with a little teaser for Bobbie ...

If anyone can guess what will follow regarding this in the next post .... feel free to post a guess in the comments section.

"I'll be back" ..... soon :)