Santa Barbara Castle.

Short trip to Spain, with a family stop in Alicante.

Honor Thy Music. Nashville.TN

Short trip to the Country Music City.

Dentist Office.

Visit to the dentist, this time of companion. Despite carrying a book, ends up killing this time with :

Hermann Park. Houston.TX

Sunny morning at Hermann Park.

Japanese Garden

Memorial Hermann Medical Plaza

A little trip to the cool, colorful mountains of western North Carolina....

 I had a little time on our trip to do a little sketching.  If you've never had a chance to visit the mountainous area of the southern Appalachians in western North Carolina you are missing some incredible scenery!  In October the air is cool, the weather is beautiful and the fall color is spectacular!

 There are fantastic potential sketches around every bend in the road.  We happened upon this well kept old school house near a small community of Whiteside Cove.  Impossible for me to capture the brilliance of the fall colors...beech, hickory, maple, oak, tulip poplar.....

 We stayed at the Old Edwards Inn in Highlands, North Carolina.  I could have sketched their building and grounds all week!

No trip to North Carolina is complete without a visit to The Biltmore Estate in Asheville.  I was able to sneak a few minutes to sketch the interesting roof line of the carriage house.

New Year's Eve Eve

The evening before New Year's Eve, we went to my husband's old college buddie's house for a party. Aside from his regular job, D's friend is a musician, as are his grown kids. Everyone brought food to share, I contributed a cinnamon-y Peach Cobbler. After visiting (and eating) for a while Bruce, Bob, Emma and a couple other folks got out their guitars and started playing. This was my first time to pull out my sketching material at a party and just draw. I knew they would not think it to "out of the norm" for me to do such a thing. A couple of folks could actually sing quite well, and sang along.

This is a collage of 3 pages photoshop'd into one image of the evening. Happy Pre-New Year.

the fountain at dos salsas . . .

Dos Salsas (translation: two sauces . . . roja and verde or red and green) is the premier Tex-Mex restaurant in Georgetown. As a matter of fact, according to Urban Spoon, it is the most popular restaurant in town. It certainly gets my vote! Pretty much on a weekly basis. . . usually for enchiladas suizas . . .

I arrived early for dinner with a friend the day I sketched the fountain (tucked into a corner of the parking lot, between the Dos Salsas catering truck and a loooong bench for the usual customer overflow . . . not a lot of space for landscaping . . . this used to be a Dairy Queen!). The water was turned off, but the steady stream of birds (mostly grackles) seemed to be enjoying it immensely. As a matter of fact, even though it was a little chilly and getting on to evening, one brave grackle helped himself to a serious bath . . . a whole lot of "splishing and splashing" went on!!