#kiw2020

[kiwtlppaintedrocks]

Signed, Sealed, Delivered

One of these seals is MUCH larger than the other.  You’ll see “the other” in the second photo if you really look for it.  TLP found the perfect spot to place this painted rock!

[kiwtlppaintedrocks]

I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream for Ice Cream!

Did screaming get you anything as a kid?  Not me.  Well, other than being sent to my room to cool down, nothing.  I certainly didn’t get more ice cream by screaming for it!  In fact, if the ice cream truck happened to come to my neighborhood in those days, my mom would remind me that we had perfectly good home-made frozen orange juice popsicles available in the freezer at no cost. Yum!  Yeah, right, not yum when compared with actual ice cream.  The silver lining there though, is that now, as an adult, on a diet, I can appreciate having a little bit more discipline because I didn’t always get everything I wanted, even if I learned how to ask nicely.

[kiwtlppaintedrocks]

It’s Not Easy Being Green

Today we’ve got an alligator, a dinosaur and a sleestak (from Land of the Lost).  They’re all creatures you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley or in broad daylight!  Unless they’re painted on rocks, in which case the threat is pretty much nonexistent.  Whew!

TLP introduced me to the whole sleestak thing; I never saw Land of the Lost.  He does a great imitation of the noise those characters made.

[kiwtlppaintedrocks]

This was supposed to be...

...the Toyota Racing Development logo or something like that, from a sticker that I saw on a vehicle in my neighborhood.  The next time I walked by that vehicle, I realized I was way off.  Oh well!  The rock was perfect for what I painted.

[kiwtlppaintedrocks]

If There’s a Song About Basketball...

...I can’t remember it right now.  But I think TLP did a great job painting this one.  It won’t bounce, but it looks pretty legit!

[kiwtlppaintedrocks]

Say I’m the Only Bee in your Bonnet

That’s a line from “Birdhouse in your Soul” by They Might Be Giants.  Remember them?  (Ever hear of them?)  I don’t think this painting by TLP is actually a bee, but that was the only song that popped into my head for a headline.  He did an awesome job painting this one, anyway!  Speaking of insects, last time TLP and I were in New England, we experienced an abundance of mosquitoes, and returned to the west coast with itchy red spots that weren’t chicken pox.  There just are a lot fewer annoying insects out west.  Yay!

[kiwtlppaintedrocks]

Seeing Spots!

A red, white and blue rock and a jaguar rock for today’s post.  Sometimes it’s fun to just paint a pattern on a rock, rather than making it look like anything in particular.

[kiwtlppaintedrocks]

It’s All Fun and Games ‘Til Someone...

...puts a painted rock in your yard!

Early on I painted a bunch of pairs of dice, to be ironic since most of the rocks I’ve found so far really aren’t cubes.  I haven’t tried rolling them to see if the same numbers come up each time due to their shape; maybe I’ll do a study on that if I get major grant funding.  Meanwhile, these pool balls were round enough to inspire TLP to non-ironically paint a 2-ball and a 9-ball.  Rack ‘em up!

[kiwtlppaintedrocks]

What is it? What is it? Open it!

Well duh, it’s just a rock.  But - my birthday was about 10 days ago, and I just got a really cool birthday present today from TLP!  Some things are worth the wait, but I’m not going to tell what he got for me.

Happy birthday to anyone else out there who IS actually celebrating a birthday today!  I hope you received everything you wanted, or at least that you had a really wonderful day.

[kiwtlppaintedrocks]

Smoke on the Water, Fire in the Sky

The song that inspired that headline was actually written about a true story, of which Frank Zappa was a part.  According to Wikipedia, of course!

For the water-themed rock, TLP added some iridescence by using a glittery blue nail polish that I recently bought.  I thought it’d look cool on my nails, but nail polish with glitter is always so much more difficult to remove, that it might be relegated to rock-painting usage from now on.  This rock kinda makes me think of being on a Caribbean cruise, which, for all we know, may not be possible again for several years after the pandemic.

[kiwtlppaintedrocks]

Start Spreading the News...

My sweetie and I were going to go to New York City back in April of 2020, and, well... our plans got changed.  Someday we’ll get over there; the pandemic has to be in the rearview mirror first.  I spent a year in college in Manhattan; TLP hasn’t been there.

I left this rock on a mountain in Idaho; I wonder how many Idahoan hikers will pass by it before someone throws it down the hill?  I guess I just figure that people who choose to live in rural areas aren’t especially fond of big cities, but maybe I’m over-generalizing.

[kiwtlppaintedrocks]

Starry, Starry Night

Stars in a vortex and a trio of starfish for this evening’s post.  Sorry that the top photo isn’t 100% in focus!  My sweetie and I recently spent a weekend in a place far from the bright lights of the city, where we could see many more stars than we can usually see in the sky near home.  It was beautiful.  We thought that being so far from a big city, it would also be a quiet place, but that didn’t work out as planned since the nearest neighbors were having an at-home wedding, complete with live band (and loud stereo system for when the band packed up and left).  Ah well, it was a lot quieter and more peaceful the night after.

We recently visited a beach where we found at least a dozen little red starfish, which inspired the starfish rocks.  The starfish at the beach were gently tossed back into the ocean so they wouldn’t dry out; we didn’t keep them.  Hopefully that was the right course of action; I’m not a marine biologist so I don’t know.  OK, that’s enough rambling for one evening!

[kiwtlppaintedrocks]

Face the Face

This one took some effort for TLP to assemble.  First, painting all the parts of the face.  Then finding a flat, face-shaped rock, which involved carrying said rock for several miles on a hike at the coast.  Then finding some glue that would hold all the rocks in place on the face.  This project was planted in the woods a few weeks ago; we gotta go back soon and see if Stone Face is still out there...

[kiwtlppaintedrocks]

The Spirit of Radio... 

...or the Ghost of Christmas Past?  OK, I’m having trouble coming up with a good song title for this cute little ghost’s post!  TLP painted this one.  A simple design, but it suits this rock perfectly so I love it.

I won’t be surprised if I start seeing Halloween decor in the hardware store very soon, although with the pandemic, I wonder what will happen to trick-or-treating.

[kiwtlppaintedrocks]

Das Wandern ist das Muellers Lust

The headline here is the name of a German folk tune about hiking, obviously the theme of this rock.  I haven’t put this one out on a trail yet and I might not ever do so, because of its sentimental value.  My mom always loved hiking, but she really started tackling the White Mountains of New Hampshire when she was in her 60′s, and she especially loved Mount Washington.  (I learned later on that there’s a taller Mount Washington in Oregon!)  My mom’s life ended recently at age 89, and I’ll always fondly remember her love of the outdoors.  When I was a kid, if I went along with her on a hike (I didn’t usually have much choice), it didn’t matter how much I complained, I understood that I was going to finish that hike, like it or not.  I think that kind of experience helps me nowadays - even if I’m getting tired and achy, I can keep going and complete the hike that I set out to do.

If only I had also inherited my mom’s ability to deal with heights and steep spots...

[kiwtlppaintedrocks]

Don’t Know Much About Chemistry

The rock with the circles kinda looks like a diagram of a big molecule, I think.  (I can’t remember if I included it in an earlier blog post, sorry!)  The other rock is covered with the chemical symbols for what’s in granite, since the underlying rock is gray and just might be actual granite.  Here’s to the Granite State and my family members who live there!