Interesting Frozen Lake Scenes

 Some interesting scenes from my lake front home this December 2012 during the Christmas holiday.The lake is definitely frozen enough this year to allow for the snowmobilers to make use of the lake and if you can see well enough, I tried to zoom out far enough to catch a picture of a lone skier walking or sliding across the lake.  That must have been quite a different afternoon "walk" for whoever it was. Due to the major drought this past summer and eventual lowering of our lake to kill off the fish by the DNR, our individual "beaches" have a much different look this winter.  Notice the stranded boat lift which would have normally been taken out of the lake but since it was already marooned on a shore, the owners just left it out this winter!! Underneath that ridge area seen bordering the beach area are dozens of dead fish. Nice new fish will be put back into the lake come spring -  whenever that will happen in 2013!!

Christmas scenes

Showing off my special Nativity scene this year as it has a new plant with it - a plant and unique vase that I purchased while shopping in Santa Fe, New Mexico this past fall. In case any visitors to this blog site haven't notice, I like southwest decor and scenery! The adobe Christmas village above my fireplace has been "in the family" since I was actually living in the southwest. Each adobe home has a light inside it although one of them no longer works.

May everyone have a Merry Christmas----- remembering that  there wouldn't even be a Christmas holiday without the birth of Christ!

 

Mrs. Claus visits the library

The library had a very special visitor earlier this month from Mrs. Santa Claus.  She was dropped off by her elves so she could read some stories to the children.  She also provided gingerbread cookies for everyone as one of her stories was about the Gingerbread Baby.  Over 20 young children attended the visit along with a few parents. Children were then seated in a circle on the floor to make beaded candy canes they could take home.  The weather cooperated well and Mrs. Claus was able to travel on to visit another group of children.

The town was also having its annual Christmas events this afternoon which included Santa himself being present.  Lots of Christmas goodies were on sale and the annual candle light walk down main street was held. The busy day concluded with Bingo lovers enjoying fun and fellowship at the local Legion Hall.

Decorating the library tree

Scenes of "after school hour" children decorating their own Christmas tree at the library. The library has a bigger tree in the main lounge area that is decorated by an adult volunteer,  but the children have their own tree in the room used for our many special events. Each child was asked to bring one of their own tree decorations to hang. They were then able to make use of candy canes and an assortment of other decorations. The pictures hanging on the tree are from this summer's reading program. With both Christmas and New Year's falling on Tuesdays this year, the library closes early on the Monday's before each holiday.  That means NO "after school hour" on those Mondays this year.  A special visitor is coming soon though so watch for news about that soon!

New Youth "Nook"

We now have a new area in the library that I'm calling our "Youth Nook".  It provides a somewhat private area for our older children to call their own space. The area includes all the fiction as well as non-fiction books for what Dewey calls "juvenile" as well as fiction books classified as "young adult". We actually receive several new books in the "young adult" section every month as we have a standing order for this age group. Right now the table is decked out for the Christmas season. There are two softer chairs in the area which is an extension of the children's area.  This allows for more room when necessary for whenever we have a lot of younger children. My "dream" is to eventually have more youthful looking furniture in the area but for now we're using what is already available.

This area has already been used quite favorably by some adult groups! Just shows that adults are often "young at heart"!

Special Wreath and Fence decor

This pic shows off not only my finished gate and part of my new fence, but it also shows off the wonderful surprise Christmas wreath I received in the mail this past week!!! The wreath is a gift from my New Mexico grandson!  What a beautiful surprise!! Looks great out here on my fence along with my new fence decor.  The New Mexico Zia symbol is a piece of metal work I purchased while visiting New Mexico in September. It, along with several wrought iron pieces add to the southwestern "flavor" to my lakeside exterior decor. 

After school campfire

On one of the coldest days this fall 20 plus students attended the "after school" campfire in my newly decorated "Spanish" courtyard.  The event had originally been scheduled to be held at a much more roomy location but due to the extreme cold we moved it to my more sheltered courtyard area. We roasted hot dogs and marshmellows on my firepit. Hot chocolate was also provided along with chips and orange frosted cupcakes. Thanks to a dear friend and two other adults for helping out as we all ate and snuggled around the fire. I had planned to share a special story called "Owl Moon" but again, most everyone was eager to eat and leave in order to return to indoor warmth. The event was to culminate the summer reading program theme and despite the cold everyone had a good time.

Library Planning Meeting

 Bonnie McKewon, representing our northwest Iowa library assoc. region conducted the first of two workshops to help the Lake View Public Library plan for their upcoming goals for the next 3 years.  This is a requirement to maintain our tier 3 accreditation status. Our small meeting room seated 26 community members, staff and library board members as we ate pizza, delicious bars and discussed the strengths, weaknesses and opportunities of our small lakeside community.  I for one would love to include the expansion of our meeting room as a long term goal but am not sure if that is a feasible possibility right now.  One can dream, right!!?

Special Home Interior Scenes

 A special mosaic designed by Zoe Mosaic Designs in Albuquerque, N.M. now hangs prominently in my hall entry way.  It was designed by my new Albuquerque friend who spent the night in my home during Iowa's recent RAGBRAI event this past July. I requested a southwest scene to go with a lot of my other southwestern decor in my lakeside home. I personally picked up this beautiful mosaic while traveling in New Mexico this past October. I also purchased the book you can see in one picture that tells all about the painted ponies that were famous several years ago throughout the state of New Mexico.  I have a small version of one called "War Pony". The painting above my fireplace was painted by a local New Mexico artist and was one of the few items that wasn't destroyed during my house fire in 2004.

At Journey's End in Santa Fe

These are shots of a special tourist attraction in Santa Fe, New Mexico.  The sculptures depict the end of the trail for pioneers heading west in the 1800s.  I was unable to take pictures from the opposite side due to the direction of the sun.  As such I couldn't get a good picture of the informational display case that told all about the building of this attraction.  Notice also the type of building structure of the home in the background.  Santa Fe is also unique to the fact that ALL HOME AND EVEN BUSINESSES have to be adobe brown in color with adobe looking structure as well. It is a great city to visit and especially if you know someone as I do who lives there to drive you around all the narrow and often dirt and steep roads within the city itself.  It is an easy place to get lost in if you don't know your way around.  I had another great but shorter visit to this area this past summer where I bought several new outdoor decor items from another unique place called Jack o Lope.  Not sure I have it spelled correctly but do recommend it if one is in Santa Fe.

Drought induced "beaches"

Some shots of the "beach area" along my shore of Black Hawk Lake after the drought and manual lowering of the lake level in preparation for the big fish kill expected later this fall. Certainly makes for some unusal sights. My brother, the painter, is able to paint the lake side of his storage shed much easier with there being no water to deal with. His steps that attach to his dock have never been this exposed -- as if they are like the Alaskan pipline that "leads to nowhere". haha Hopefully we will get enough snow or ice to help in the water level come next spring.  There will definitely be better fishing in a couple of years once the new fish are put in after the "big kill"!

Pelican's Return

Saw this large gathering of pelicans this past week floating by my lakeside home. They have "hung around" our lake longer than ususal this time of year probably due to the good fishing they are finding due to our lowered lake level - a process initiated in preparation for some major lake improvement projects already in progress.  Avid fishermen and women will have some great fishing to look forward to in a couple of years. They will just have to have patience as beautiful Black Hawk Lake is enhanced in the months ahead.

Do apologize for the somewhat blurry image.  Either they or I was moving too fast.

2012 Summer reading winners

Here are four of our 2012 Summer Reading Program winners. As you can see they chose these cuddly stuffed animals instead of some book choices. I guess they did so much reading during the summer and with school now back in session they felt they needed a comforting change of activity. Maybe these cuddly treasures will help them do their homework this school year! Absent from the picture is one boy who did choose a book on cars. These are children who also attend our weekly "After school hour" on Mondays. We are having a special emphasis on pioneer games this month since the annual Kid's Pioneer Day at our local log cabin was rained out last month.

Crimson Dawn Band

What an awesome band of young people from the Omaha area! This group called Crimson Dawn were one of the two bands that played at our final summer concerts held on our historic stone pier. The blonde guitarist is the grandson of my dear friend Diane. He has so much musical ability as do all the members of this special group of teenagers, but of course I am biased having known Tag before he became such a talented musician. Who knows how famous he may become and then these pictures will really be valuable! Perhaps this group will be able to play again during next year's Stone Pier Concert series on Black Hawk Lake. 

4th Annual Kid's Pioneer Day

Our 4th annual Kid's Pioneer Day was a somewhat bittersweet day. For the first time it rained on this day! The rain was badly needed for the area since we hadn't had a significant rainfall since last fall but it did keep the usual crowd of children and adults home on this particular event. For those of us who did come though it was a fun time of food, games and fellowship.  Our "pioneer teacher" again came dressed for the occasion and thanks to a newly renovated wardrobe of dress up clothes, one of the students wanted to have that "pioneer look" as well. We had some new pioneer games for the children which I will now make use of during my Monday "after school hour" fun at the library. Two children are seen here playing with one of the bean bag games while staying under the roof of the cabin. Stew was again cooked over the fireplace inside the cabin and a more modern campstove was used to make fry bread. Lon came prepared to again have the children make fire without matches and the children continue to thoroughly enjoy sawing logs. One grandfather commented when trying to get his grandson to leave, "Guess I'll have to set up a sawhorse at home and let him saw logs all day to keep him entertained!"

New Kitchen Look

Showing off my absolutely wonderful new kitchen look! Everyone who knew what it looked like before are in "awe" when they see the transformation! The general comment is how it seemed to open up the entire area. There was no "island" before and the old cabinets did NOT go all way to the ceiling.  The new stove is now a gas burning stove instead of a flat top electric stove. The overall decor goes with the southwest flare one can also see in the living area space as the gas fireplace also has the same geometrical shaped design on the mantel as seen above the window in this picture.

RAGBRAI IN THE LIBRARY!

Just another busy day at the library!  YEAH! It was RAGBRAI! The library usually doesn't have people laying around on the floor or even sitting all around on the floor -  unless we're having a special children's event. This is just a couple scenes of how many RAGBRAI participants chose to spend the extremely hot afternoon of July 23rd!  Needless to say, with over 400 bodies in and out of our building the AC had to work overtime and I, personally, couldn't tell much difference from inside to outside but our visitors evidently felt  they were better off in our library than outside somewhere. They were most complimentary, too, of the patience shown by the library staff as many patiently waited their turn to use one of the 5 public access computers.

RAGBRAI 2012

Just a few pics of the scene around small town Lake View when literally thousands of bikers came into town on Monday the 23rd to spend the night enroute to Webster City. With the temperature in the upper 90s and hitting 100 degrees our beautiful Black Hawk Lake was a welcome site to some.  One of the couples staying in my yard took a swim in the lake as did many others. Many food vendors were set up along the lake shore near the Information Center but I feel the church meals were the most favored if for no other reason than to get inside a somewhat cooler environment.

50 Class Reunion Banquet

Just enjoyed a wonderful two days of high school class reunion events.  Pictures here are just a few scenes from the Friday night alumni banquet.  As the class celebrating their BIG 50, we were in charge of the banquet that is open to all graduating classes from ESCO. Three of our living classmates were cheerleaders in HS and are pictured practicing and later performing from in front of the head table.  I was privileged to sit at the head table this one and only time and can say it was a real treat not only because it was cooler up there but you can see so much more!! One of our classmates got her husband to pose with her behind the special photo op frame depicting the dress of our younger days!