Pouring My Art Out

Flowers in my mom’s garden…

Posted on August 27, 2015 by pouringmyartout

Posted in flowers, My travels, Stories of my life | Tagged art, bay area, flowers, nature, outdoors, photography | 6 Comments

Too much cuteness in one post… more pictures from our trip to the Bay Area…

Posted on August 27, 2015 by pouringmyartout

This post contains pictures of three adorable children… and me!

Some of you may remember a couple of weeks ago when I posted about meeting a new baby friend. This is that baby. I met him at Willie’s birthday party. We seriously bonded.

I ended up sitting on the grass cradling him on my lap for like 40 minutes, and he was staring at me and talking to me. His mom said she had never seen him act like that with anybody but her and his brother.

Remember… don’t trust people if babies, dogs and horses don’t like them. And yes, I know I need a haircut… don’t worry… I got one yesterday.

And here are a couple more pictures of Willie in that awesome fireman’s outfit we got him for his birthday.

The kid knows how to play fireman.

And, as if that wasn’t enough cuteness for one post, we also saw my little cousin, Clark.

You might remember him from the time I took all those epic pictures of the California coast, after spending the night with this little guy and his parents in Santa Cruz.

That’s his mom… my cousin… one of my all time favorite cousins!!!

And there is the whole family. They drove up to my mom’s house to spend the day with us.

awwwwwwww… Look at that little face.

See, this really was almost too much cuteness for one post.

Posted in My travels, Pictures of me, Stories of my life, Willie! | Tagged babies, bay area, family, humor, kids, photography | 22 Comments

Want to see some photos of a handsome young fireman?

Posted on August 26, 2015 by pouringmyartout

Oh yeah, our godson, Willie, turned 3-years-old. And guess who got him that fireman’s outfit. We drove up North to be there. It was awesome. And this post is the least I can do after posting that naked picture of me in the last post… HA!

The party was in a park in San Francisco, and Willie got his swing on!

Speaking of swings… seriously… do they make this one big enough for adults?

The park was cool, hip and artsy… the way only Bay Area parks can be.

Speaking of artsy, the party was a robot theme party… and Jessica, my older daughter, made all these robots by hand. How cool are my kids?

She even made enough for most of the adults… the ones who wanted to… to adopt one as well. You know I adopted one. So did some of the other adults… the only kind of adults I have any kind of respect for…

Eva, Willie’s mom, with some help from Willie, made this awesome robot big enough for the kids to get inside and have their pictures taken through that opening in the chest… torso… whatever…

You gotta love that!

There’s my little buddy, sitting on Grandma’s lap and having a healthy snack.

And now, stay tuned for some more awesome baby pictures.

Posted in My travels, Stories of my life, Willie! | Tagged art, bay area, crafts, family, humor, kids, party, photography, robots, san francisco | 18 Comments

And now… glaciers, icebergs, and one gratutous picture of me… completely naked…

Posted on August 26, 2015 by pouringmyartout

There I am, sitting on the plane coming back from Europe.

We flew over Greenland… which is the icy one, as opposed to Iceland, which is the green one.

That right there is an iceberg.

One thing about air travel, you see places that you have never been. We flew over Ireland on the way into London, and Scotland on the way out. That was pretty cool.

And now we can add Greenland to the list.

I think, all things considered, that Ireland and Scotland are higher on my list of places I have flown over that I want to visit than Greenland is… especially since no one from Greenland has ever bothered to visit my blog.

It turns out that glaciers have stretch marks.

I think Mollie took these pictures. I wasn’t in a window seat, but I did lean over them to take a look.

That is a pretty good picture of a flowing glacier, if you ask me.

The blue of the water and the white of the icebergs and the drifting flows of smaller ice is really sort of beautiful.

I guess if you like winter sports, this is the place to go.

It has its own bleak charm.

And that’s that for our European adventure… except for this one last picture… that I did try to warn you about… me… totally naked…

In my defense, I didn’t ask to have that picture taken. My wife took it to show how high above the ground… or floor… the bathtubs in Europe are compared to most American ones. I think that was taken in our hotel in London, but all the tubs we saw had the bottom of the tub way up off the floor like that, which actually makes stepping in and out a little more dangerous if you ask me. I apologize for sharing this picture with you, but I just couldn’t let it go to waste. I hope the image doesn’t stay with you for too long. I will post some other stuff soon to flush it out. HA!

Posted in My travels, Pictures of me, Stories of my life | Tagged flying, glaciers, greenland, humor, icebergs, naked, nude, photography, travel | 4 Comments

We did it!!! We reached the end! These are the very last pictures of our trip to Europe… except for a few taken on the airplane on the way back… and one really disturbing one of me naked in a shower which there is no way I am going to let go to waste… so… uh… yeah…

Posted on August 25, 2015 by pouringmyartout

This is it. These pictures of our day trip to Neuschwanstein castle are the last pictures I have to share with you… almost…

Oooh… look at that crazy bridge over that gorge way over there.

And look at that… the alps… Some of those might be in Switzerland, I’m not really sure. I know we were only a few miles away from the border.

Mollie and I found this little balcony on the back… or maybe the side… of the castle as we were leaving. It was past a small café and gift shop. I took most of these from there.

Must be nice to be the king… even a crazy one…

And even half way down… from the main top floor, not the tops of the tallest towers… we were still pretty high up.

This is the only picture I have from inside the castle. That is because right after I took it, I saw the ‘No taking pictures inside the castle’ sign. Too bad, because it was awesome in there… but on the other hand, it does keep you from having to look at 50 more pictures.

I think that is taken from our little balcony looking back up at the castle.

Man, what a view.

That is the little town we explored down there, the one with the horses and the wiener schnitzel… and the lake with the baby swans.

You can see the little golden castle on the hill to the right of the town.

I think we had a pretty good little adventure in Europe, and I enjoyed sharing it with all of you.

Then it was time to walk back down the hill and get on another horse cart to go back to the town.

I took that picture of my mom on the ride back down the hill. She didn’t understand why I told her to sit perfectly still while I fumbled the camera out of the backpack… but it was because I didn’t want that little fly on her nose to fly away… HA!!!

There is a bonus shot of my daughter, Mollie, smelling a little flower right before we drove back to Munich.

And I guess that’s it… except for a few weird shots I warned you about in the title… which I will share tomorrow… before I begin sharing the pictures of our epic adventure to the Bay Area!!!

Posted in My travels, Stories of my life | Tagged castles, germany, history, humor, kings, nature, neuschwanstein, outdoors, photography, travel | 10 Comments

Hello, Mrs. Evil Stepmother, can Cinderella come out and play?

Posted on August 25, 2015 by pouringmyartout

If Neuschwanstein castle looks a little familiar, that is because it is, as I mentioned before, the inspiration for Walt Disney’s Cinderella’s castle in Disneyland.

The funny thing is… and yes, I know I like to throw a ‘thing’ into my posts whenever I can, but this is just a regular, run-of-the-mill funny thing… this castle isn’t that old. It isn’t like some medieval fortress built to protect the area from rampaging knights.

It was built much more recently… by King Ludwig… known as the Mad King.

He just had it built to look like an old castle… or, to be more accurate, to look like a big-budget movie set of an old castle.

Basically, this was just a big clubhouse he and his friends could come and play in… a big-boy fort, if you will.

I think he spent so much money on things like this that his own people eventually did away with him… somebody Google that!

Because if it is true, then he falls into the same category as the King of France who was beheaded by his own people… remember, from my hilarious blog series; ‘Lifestyles of the rich and French’, back when we visited Versailles together… so maybe you shouldn’t take my tips on how to live like a king seriously after all.

The fact that this castle was built at the expense of the commoners by a rich douche-bag with a Donald Trump complex doesn’t really detract from its beauty.

It is still worth visiting… hey, at the very least, you might get to pet some horses, right?

And hey, who wouldn’t build a castle for themselves if they had the money, right?

Just open it up to the tourists when you aren’t there.

Your family should make their money back in just a few dozen generations.

Of course, it would be better if you could just use other people’s money.

Oh, and see those little dots way up there? Be sure, when you do build your castle and then turn it into a tourist destination, to put it way up in the mountains… so crazy people can hang glide over it.

Posted in My travels, Pictures of me, Stories of my life | Tagged castles, germany, history, humor, neuschwanstein, photography, the alps, travel | 8 Comments

The castle on the hill…

Posted on August 25, 2015 by pouringmyartout

Okay, people, it’s time to head up the hill to Neuschwanstein castle!!!

Yes, you can ride part way up in a horse cart, but don’t get too excited… there is still a long, steep walk in front of you.

The good news is that the scenery up there is awesome.

This really is one of the most beautiful parts of Germany.

Remember we are only a few miles from the Swiss border. There are lakes and rivers and the alps towering majestically in the background.

Small streams and big rivers run down the sides of the mountains, even in summer.

All in all, not a bad way to spend a day.

But if I just rode a bike up that hill, I sure wouldn’t be smiling.

Posted in My travels, Pictures of me, Stories of my life | Tagged castles, germany, history, humor, nature, neuschwanstein, photography, travel | 39 Comments

Because… horses!!!

Posted on August 24, 2015 by pouringmyartout

I swear this will be the last post for today…

But that cute German town was full of cute German horses… and I had to try to pet all of them!

There were carts you could ride most of the way up the mountain to the castle. We did end up riding in one… I felt bad for the horses, but hey, my mom is 92!