Chirp (listen to the mockingbird).

I’ve taken (and posted) numerous shots of mockingbirds on our retro antenna, which now has no functional use other than a bird perch and lightning rod, so I “special effected” all of these in an attempt to not be totally redundant. Hours of fun. If you’re snowed in or bored, try them out.

#1 is a Kim Klassen free texture, #2 is a poladroid (a very fun and easy app), #3 is another free texture from whom I don’t recall now, maybe Shadowhouse Creations, #4 is the old newspaper technique (also very easy to use), and #5 is another Kim Klassen texture.

The antique dresser…from 1929…

It pays to be buddies with the neighbors when they’re moving out-of-state and don’t want to take any furniture with them…after the inside furniture sale, there were some very nice items left that they didn’t want to just toss outside…so we took them off their hands. Nice of us, huh? They seriously did want us to take the stuff and, even though we didn’t need any of it, we couldn’t pass it up.

The nice, big sofa bed with a brand-new mattress…

The beautiful, new day bed…

The plush, comfy Indiana chair…

Now our fairly small house is jam-packed with furniture, stacked on end in the “spare” bedroom. But we all like the new stuff anyway.

“Thanks for all the new stuff to climb on and claw up!”

A few murals I haven’t shown you yet…This one is on Calle 16, which I have written about before as is the following one.

The next one I wrote about in a post almost exactly a year ago is also part of Calle 16. It was not quite completed at the time but now it is.

It’s got a 3-D thing going.

And this (above) is across from Calle 16.

The mural below is one I have mentioned several times, one that is overpainted every First Friday by Joe Pagac on Roosevelt Row. This was the December mural.

And the dumpster across the street…

There was a big article on the local murals in the Arizona Republic two Sundays ago, many of which I have featured on this blog. As Gennaro Garcia, one of the Calle 16 muralistas says, “”I hope to see more murals, not just graffiti, more murals with messages. Murals about diversity, about culture, murals that bring people together and educate them about their culture. That’s what I hope to see in Phoenix. I want to see young people paint for a change, to do something positive.”

I’ve been on a little blog break for a few days because I have the lingering crud that seems to be going around here. I missed a couple days of work and don’t remember a lot of last week but I think I’m coming back to the land of the living soon…

Well, I was a week too late to see all the sunflowers in bloom at Valley of the Sunflowers (which I have blogged about 1, 2, 3 other times since September) because they had started to harvest them 2 weeks ago. Today the rest will be harvested to be made into biodiesel fuel and soon the field will be back to brown and they will start the cycle all over again…one more time, in February. After those flowers are harvested, building is scheduled to begin in the formerly empty field. But you will still be able to see, from these photos, how quickly the sunflowers grew and how beautiful the field was…briefly.

And, yeah, their signs got tagged

There have been a lot of articles in the local media in the past couple of weeks. You can also keep up with this truly awesome project in real time on their Facebook page.

They’re gorgeous!

Some bees are going to be very unhappy when the flowers are all harvested.

Bye, sunflowers…

Hope your shiny new year is off to a great start! I wasn’t planning to do a 2011 year review but it seems like a good idea to take stock now and then and look back but, mostly, it’s an excuse to use photos I already have since I’m running low right now. So, in no chronological order, here are some of the highlights of my blogging year (some coincide a little with my personal year).

In April, after 17 years together, Tony and I got married.

We had a little wedding but a big party.

I made the invitations for the party.

We went on a staycation at the Hermosa Inn in Paradise Valley.

I did some “imaginary vacation” photos around town in the heat of summer when I couldn’t think of anything to photograph. The first place, El Maya, was torn down a couple of weeks after I photographed it. Oh, and I learned how to do rounded corners and played with textures a lot more in 2011.

A few weeks later I did another local imaginary vacation in the sweltering heat.

We did a day trip to Sedona, I took a lot of photos, and got 2 blog posts out of them. It’s really hard to take bad photos in Sedona. One of those posts was Freshly Pressed on WordPress!

2011 was the year that I FINALLY got some good butterfly shots! Some Giant Swallowtails:

Some Skippers:

And a Variegated Fritillary:

As if that weren’t enough, 2011 gave me some good hummingbird shots, on two different occasions, something I had also never gotten before.

I continued shooting murals in downtown Phoenix, something I’ve done for 2.5 years now.

I got all enthused about another downtown Phoenix project, the Valley of the Sunflowers, and will post some new shots in a few days.

I took a lot of photos of our 3 indoor cats as well as our numerous outdoor cats. Sadly, 3 of our outdoor cats died in 2011, including WB, our faithful friend for many years (as well as Snowy and Isabella).

My hibiscus plant was the subject of a few posts. It almost croaked last winter through a few frosts even though it was covered. It recovered and thrived through the spring and early summer. Again it got very sickly looking during the intense summer heat, and now it is once again thriving…

I learned how to do animated gifs, providing myself hours of fun!

I got hooked on my old 50mm f/1.8 lens from my old Nikon film camera and have to shoot manually when I use it on my DSLR which is fun. I like the looks of the photos with it, too.

We grew a giant basil plant from seed and it provided a lot of seasoning for us until quite recently when it died. We’ll be doing that again as soon as it gets warmer. They flourish in heat and sun, which we have plenty of here.

I took a zillion rose photos, some got texture added to them, some didn’t.

We took another train ride on the Verde Canyon Railroad with Tony’s sister and her husband when they were out visiting in November. The railroad asked for permission to use a couple of my photos, this one in particular, and in return sent us two first-class passes for another trip (and a photo credit, of course). Someone else has asked for permission to use another photo from that same train ride and it will also result in a photo credit and some goods that I may mention at a later date.

Some photos I liked, just because.

And a lot of my photos were just taken around my yard and neighborhood.

So that about sums it up for 2011 on this blog. Thank you to all of you who read it and I really enjoy reading yours, too, and seeing your photos of your lives. Photoblogging is one of my favorite pastimes as I’m sure it is for most of you, too. I hope we all have a fun, productive, creative 2012 blogging experience.

Here’s a slideshow of Dale Chihuly‘s dazzling glass sculpture installation, Desert Towers, which is part of the permanent collection at Phoenix’s Desert Botanical Gardens.

Happy New Year to everyone!

If you think the Mayans might be on to something, you can countdown on my Mayan End of Calendar page, listed in the sidebar, under “Pages.”

Marbles with the Nikon D80.

Google with the Olympus fe-4020.

Abbey with the Casio Exilim EX-S200.

…All culminating (after the last photo) in a minor trauma involving bushy tails, hissing, growling, chasing, coughing, and cat barfing. All is now well after a brief timeout, cleanup, and some treats.

Happy Holidays!

How are your holidays going? Busy? I never meant to not post for so long but there’s been so much going on that we just got our tree up a few days ago and we haven’t sent our Christmas cards out yet. They might be a little late. My out-of-town packages have been mailed but I still have local shopping to do this week. Today we’re headed out to a get-together with my local cousins.

I’ve had a lot of work-related parties and they were all fun (and involved alcohol, yay!) but this one was definitely the best invitation and the wildest party.

Poor Google is feeling this way right now (note the fishies in the cocktail glasses ).

He has been in the tree, as usual, this year although I haven’t gotten any decent shots of it. I still have my 50mm lens on my camera and since it doesn’t meter, I can’t get the shots off fast enough. It might be time to switch lenses for the rest of the holidays. The other 2 indoor cats aren’t that fascinated with the tree but Google can’t keep his paws off and, since he weighs 17 pounds, when he lays in the tree, it does a little damage.

Google in the Christmas tree, 2010:

Google in the Christmas tree, 2009:

And Baby Google, Christmas, 2008:

So you can see I need to have a good Christmas Google, 2011, shot.

And there’s the cliched shot we all get this time of year. So I hope to be back in a few days with something good. And I hope you’re enjoying the season…