Congratulations to the homeowners for a lovely yard and garden.  You make us all proud to be living at the Lake at White Oak.

18533 North Lake Shadow Dr.

Beautifully designed and landscaped yard with an inviting entrance and

gardens to view along the way toward the front door. 

Great job!  Congratulations to the homeowners.

Members of the Baton Rouge Art League gathered at the LSU Rural Life Museum to decorate for the organization's 75-year Diamond Jubilee Art Exhibition and Sale.  This annual event is held to raise funds for the purchase of a painting for the Art League's permanent collection.  Guests are invited by Art League members, and attendance is by invitation only.

Carol Arabie and Jamie Berdon arrange a large vase of willow, palms, and other greenery.  Jamie stuffed a half-dozen fresh, large, white hydrangea blooms in the bottom of the vase to make an attractive base for the plants. 

 The Baton Rouge Art League was organized in 1934 to:

1.         cultivate appreciation of art among its members and the community,

2.         hold an art exhibit each year,

3.         try to purchase one painting each year,

4.         work toward developing art in the public school curriculum, and

5.         present a scholarship to an LSU student native to Louisiana.

 The Art League's permanent collection of artwork hangs in the Louisiana State Archives.

April 2009 Award Winner

5648 North Shore Drive

This beautiful home sits at the entrance to the north side of The Lake at White Oak Subdivision.  A wide expanse of colorful gardens and green lawn gives owners and visitors a welcome invitation to see more of the neighborhood.  Congratulations to the homeowners.  We appreciate you!

About 3 years ago I started exploring my family's history on ancestry.com, and rootsweb.com, and all over the internet, looking for any website with information about my ancestors.  All of my documentation includes as many old photos as I can find.  And there's another project -- scanning old slides and black and white negatives.  My relatives have been very helpful in putting up with me and my requests for scanned images of their old photos.  After the scanning is finished, I might end up with a great photo, but if not, then there is the restoring phase.  That's the fun part.  Here is my most favorite photo of my grandfather (on the left) and his older sister.  Don't they look like little angels?

 The first photo is the original digital image that my cousin sent to me.  The one below is my restored version.

I used JASC Paint Shop Pro to make the enhancements.  The clone tool seems to be the one that I use the most.  I just copy a small portion of the photo background and paste it randomly around the area to cover up scratches and imperfections.  Some photos might take some time to fix, but I think one hour is the most I have spent on any one photo.  When the results turn out the way I like them, and I can turn around and share the photos with family members, it is well worth the time.

March 2009

18432 North Lake Shadow

Weather forecasts called for snow, but who would have guessed anything liked this!  My husband got up in the early hours around 5:30 am to take out the dog, then came in and woke me to see!  And of course we had to wake our daughter.  Here we were, up before sunrise, and got a lot of photos.  We spent the whole morning playing in the backyard with the dogs ... they loved it!!  At one point it was very much like a blizzard.  We got about 4 inches in the Lake at White Oak.  Some neighborhood boys came around and made a snowman for us ... nice kids!!

Merry Christmas, Sallie

18422 North Lake Shadow Drive

Colorful crotons and ceramic pots adorn these beautiful gardens.  Special features like the blue

glass ball add focal points that highlight the area.  In September and October there were no awards

due to the impact of Hurricane Gustav.  The streets in LAWO were lined on both sides with 8-foot

high piles of debris.  It's nice to have everything back to normal, and these gardens show how

much work has been put into the cleanup project.  Congratulations to the homeowners.

I have just been tagged by Chris Fisher for this meme.

Here is the way it works:

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 56.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next two to five sentences.
5. Don't dig for your favorite book, the cool book or the intellectual one. Pick the Closest.
6. Tag five people to do the same

*The one book that this can not be is the Bible*

The bookcase behind me in my office is piled with books, so I picked the one on top.

Until the Final Hour: Hitler's Last Secretary.  My book club met to discuss this book yesterday. 

"We were right up under the roof in two little rooms of the old Haus Wachenfeld, which had belonged to Hitler's sister and later became the Berghof.  Everything had been modernized and improved.  Mine was a delightful, femine little bedroom decorated in pale blue and white, with a toilet mirror, a little desk and a lovely bed." (p. 56)

A good companion book to this one is Night by Elie Wiesel.  The two books show stark contrast between what was actually going on in the concentration camps and the young uninformed mind of Hitler's secretary.  Serious reading and well worth the time.

Now I get to tag 5 ActiveRainers, from the Pets are People Too group:

Chris Ann Cleland, Jane Grant, Lyn Sims, Jim Frimmer, and Mark Duncan

Enjoy!

                         YARD OF THE MONTH AWARD FOR AUGUST

18312 Weatherwood Drive

This was a fun experiment.  When the homeowner asked if I had driven by during the evening to see the lighted gardens, I had to admit "no" to that, but what a great idea (and truly an experiment) to take night-light photos.  First though, I had to figure out how to use the manual adjustments on my camera.  With a tripod, and accompanied by a hoard of mosquitoes, I set the f-stop to 16 and let the camera set its own speed.  And voila!  Some very pretty colors.  Gorgeous beds of caladiums and a beautiful yard at the Lake at White Oak.  Congratulations to the homeowners.