Flooded.

Heavy rain. A nightmare when your house is at the bottom of a hill, and at the bottom of your own steep terraced garden. And it's even worse when the drains outside your house get blocked. The road that runs alongside this house can get quite busy and, of course, no one takes any notice of the speed limit.
So when the drains get blocked, the road outside gets flooded, the cars and lorries speed past...and the whole of the front of the house gets washed with tidal waves of water. It doesn't really clean the windows though, and the scary part is that if I need to venture out into the weather I could also get the tidal wave wash.
The path to the front door runs alongside the road...and timing is everything.

This house is pretty old. 1830. It leaks a bit.

It also sits right next to some lovely trees, and the ocean is just across the road. I'm not really a landscape painter - the Moonlight ACEO at the top is about as far as I'd normally venture into that - but recently I've had some ideas for some landscape paintings. Watch this space, as they say...

Showroom Dummies

The challenge :

Create two display items suitable for use as hatstands, no funding available for materials (with the added bonus of these being available for jewellery display after the hatstand use)

So...some old newspapers, a small cardboard box, two balloons, some sellotape, a bag of wallpaper paste and one afternoon of messy fun later, these appeared !
Of course, they needed to be painted or finished in some way. I decided on white acrylic paint. I wasn't able to get a photo of how they looked with the hats on, but the hats involved are quite amusing - with multi-coloured furry ears attached !

They have a sinister look about them, maybe they could be villians in Dr. Who... !

I may alter them a little for jewellery display, perhaps add some fabric, but I quite like the serious-sinister look they have !

I think we missed it.

The storm.
Eighty mile an hour winds, torrential rain, hail and general bad weather. Somehow, all that seemed to bypass us, thankfully.
We did have a bit of hail and rain, but it wasn't too bad. I'm not sure how the beach has fared though, or that little lighthouse.
This was the view outside the house when the storm was supposed to be at its greatest...definately not beachcombing weather !

It was possible to see the waves smashing up against the wall further around the coast, which probably would've been a lot more awe-inspiring in real life than my photo of it is. I'm a bit too far away to be able to get much detail, but I tried.

Storm Warning !

According to the news, the UK is expecting some pretty severe weather...any time now.

I'm hoping that it won't get too bad here, but as I can see the ocean from most of the windows in my house I am a bit concerned. I'm not expecting to be flooded, but the concern about structural damage is high. Having said that, this house was built in 1830, so I guess if it's lasted this long already it should be able to cope with a bit more weather.

The pebble dash will likely be hit hard again. We've already had a few hail storms today, and there's nothing quite like hail to knock pebble dash off your walls !

Tomorrow, I don't expect the beach to look anything like this...

The last time we had severe weather, that Lighthouse was damaged. I remember seeing huge waves too. Hopefully, this storm won't be as fierce as predicted.