1980 @ MindSay 
The very first time I ever won an award for my art was back in 1980. I was second place. I had drawn and fully colored a haunted house for Halloween. I was very proud of this. The house was grey, broken, Victorian, in need of care, but for all the detail I put into it, the ghosts remained inside, no cartoon witches or pumpkin-headed demons were to be found. Perhaps this is why I didn't get first place!
In the following photo I am standing next to the board that displayed my masterpiece (my winning entry is the second one on the board). I've been fascinated with old houses from the start.
I really didn't illustrate that haunted house for the contest, nor did I do it to impress my teachers, I just wanted to create a spooky place I could call my own. After my teacher submitted the drawing and when I found out I won something for it, I was hoping that my award would be awesome, even a small trophy would've been nice, but instead I won a big stuffed elephant. Here I am recieving my award. The awards ceremony took place at Mayfair Mall in Milwaukee, Wisconsin... laugh all you want at the old fashions and how my dress is a tad too small for me!
Guess who won first place? My little brother!
Even though I won for best detail, Mark created this very unique portrait of a ghost within a ghost. And do you know what he got for an award? The frikkin' Hoth ice planet play set complete with Han Solo and Luke Skywalker action figures! I remember being so jealous. My mother tried to butter me up with "how often do members from the same family win in the same contest?" My reaction was, "whatever" and "let's go home."
Even at that age I knew the real reason why I got that stupid stuffed elephant -- I was a girl. Maybe if I had been a boy I would've gotten some action figures or comic books, but, no, I got a stuffed animal. A stuffed animal that collected dust in my closet for several years. Despite the anti-climatic award, the experience and the image of the house and my brother's weird ghost drawing has left a profound impression on me. My brother and I look back at these photos and laugh. I remember that day so vividly, it could've taken place only a few minutes ago.
Twenty-eight years later and I'm still drawing haunted houses and ghosts.
After being married for 27 years and for the past 15 or so years begging for it, I'm getting my Laundry/sewing/mudroom built!!!
I'm so excited! My washer and dryer have always been in my kitchen since we built the house in 1980/81. I have never liked that! Now they will be moved to my new room! We took the existing deck and are turning it into my room. It will be huge! 12'x12'! Lots of room! Sewing machine will go in there, washer, dryer and a new laundry sink! Yeah! And I have a huge walk in closet designed for the room for craft storage and such. 3 windows and a new door with a canopy roof over the doorway entrance. Before our son left for college, James took the deck railing down and sawed off the posts.This past Friday he added wood to the existing deck sides and put the floor down. This past Saturday James went under the deck and built 3 reinforcement walls with block and 4'x6'x16' beams.One on each end and one directly in the middle. Under the deck gets very shallow up near the driveway, so he was under there crawling around on his belly and back all day. I was too, helping whenever he needed it. He looked like a pig by the end of the day! LOL All muddy and nasty!
Then Wednesday, yesterday he framed out the first wall and got it up. Today, he and his brother got the rest of the walls framed out. Tomorrow the roof framework goes up cause Paul can help James tomorrow all day, so James took off from work. I am taking pictures as it goes along. I wish we had done that with our house as it was being built. We built it ourselves back then only getting someone else to do fireplace,wiring and plumbing. We built our house for $22,000 back in 80-81! That in today's numbers would probably be quadrupled! Here's the first picture:sides added and floor down.
This is a picture of the support beams added in. Here's two of them. 
Here is the third added support beam. Should have showed a before picture! LOL It was just a deck with a rail and now all railing is up around my deck off our bedroom. Moved the table,chairs, and umbrella to the very back deck with the grill. James will put a rail up for me around it this Spring so I can hang all my hanging baskets of flowers from it like I did on the upper deck.
This picture shows the deck off our bedroom with the new rail from the old deck!
My whicker chair pictured on the far left was chewed up by my daughter's dog! A Siberian Husky! She is still a puppy and she has shredded a lot of my things! She started chewing the siding off the house so we moved her away from the house now! My chair looks horrible doesn't it?! Bad dog..... Another picture of our deck from below:
We bought this canopy a couple weeks ago and put it up there. it helps keep it cool and now its my favorite place to snuggle up and read a book. Here's James adding the framework of the first wall!
and here's the first wall framed out: 
Here's today's pictures of all the walls framed out:
another one: 
and yet another:
Tomorrow I will post the roof pictures and whatever else they get done!
I'm so excited!
| Few comments were made on my post about the 80's music and the new styles that it inspired. So I decided to do a break down of punk to post punk, gothic, new wave, electronic, alternative, ska, industrial music that exploded in 1980 and carried on for the rest of the eighties, giving us everything from preppy beat music; black everything with big silver cross, pointy buckled boots and antique jewelry; guys wearing makeup, lipstick and eyeliner; kilts mohawks with doc martins, the new looks go on and on, in the late eighties the skater punk came of age and if I sat here another hour I could probably think of several more but my ass is sore... | ||
| Ramones | 1976 | Too my surprise the Ramones were the first band I found that fell into the "punk" category, you could argue New York Dolls or some other bands but I'll just start this list with Ramones, who were very much a New York band and I'm sure there was a scene in this tattered punk look, but it has not hit the masses of North America, certainly not my home town.. |
| ORIGINAL PUNK INVASION | ||
| Sex Pistols | 1977 | Arguably the largest of the London original punk bands, there were several but not to many that made were recorded. With this small number of bands, armed with a few recording, unless you lived in shouting distance from NY you'd be hard pressed to fined a scene where hair was spiked, big boots, studded neck collars, black eyeliner and leather jackets were common. |
| The Damned | 1977 | |
| The Clash | 1977 | |
| COAT TAILS OF THE PISTOLS | ||
| PIL | 1978 | Riding on the coat tails of the English punk invasion a number of American punk bands came of age and helped bring the punk scene above ground. As this was happening and more youth getting into this new look and sound around the smaller towns of America the English were bring in a new sound, Gothic sound, dark and mysterious, almost evil looking in attire and a lot slower than the hard core punk of the last wave. Ironically the original Goth bands were all part of the Bromley Contingent a devoted group to supporting the Sex Pistols, what moved them to move from a hard core fast loud sound to such a dark sound is not told but I'm glad she did because to this day I love the Goth sound lyrics and fell. This officially marks the Post Punk Era. |
| XTC | 1978 | |
| The Misfits | 1978 | |
| Bad Brains | 1978 | |
| Black Flag | 1978 | |
| Cabaret Voltire | 1978 | |
| Joy Division | 1978 | |
| Siouxsie and the Banshees | 1978 | |
| Forgotten Rebels | 1979 | Forgotten rebels, a Canadian band I love, was one of the last of the hard core punk bands, even though they are new bands today just not in the explosion we saw in 1978, and most of those bands had difficulty keeping there band's together, there was a lack of fame and fortune for hard core punk bands for the most part, even the Ramones never had a big hit or any of there 14 records go gold record, the did it for the love of the music period. |
| Bauhaus | 1979 | |
| DAWN OF A NEW ERA WITH MULTIPLE GENRES | ||
| X | 1980 | The eights was an explosion of New Music, new sounds, new styles, new everything. Although Siouxsie and Bauhaus already broke us into Goth there were new advances in keyboards that brought a lot of Glam Rock, like Duran Duran who made the new music wide spread, new fashion, guys tinting or dying there hair etc. I personally ran from that and tried to stay as close to Goth as possible with The Cure, Sisters of Mercy and there were a few other bands that escape my memory right now, some of the "New Wave" bands fell into a different category than Duran Duran, like Depeche Mode, I don't know why but I think it's because they had more of a "punk" look with spiked hair and big crosses hanging around there neck, I'm sure that a lot of these bands would be grouped together but back then they were strictly for the New Wave radio station. This is only a short list of bands, some I just can't remember the name, just the songs and others I purposely left out because I hated them back then and hate them today but it was a explosion of new music which was dubbed New Wave, a huge wave it was. With this explosion also came an explosion of a new look. |
| Dead Kennedys | 1980 | |
| The Church | 1980 | |
| Haircut 100 | 1980 | |
| Depeche Mode | 1980 | |
| Echo and The Bunnyman | 1980 | |
| Psychedelic furs | 1980 | |
| Images In Vogue | 1980 | |
| The English Beat | 1980 | |
| New Order | 1980 | |
| Killing Joke | 1980 | |
| The Cure | 1980 | |
| The Sisters Of Mercy | 1980 | |
| DOA | 1981 | This year brought a rally of more new music, hard punk mixed with new wave. Bands like Sonic Youth were amazing, not a huge following were I was but that didn't stop me from listening and buying there music. I would call this era the beginning of Alternative, Sonic Youth wasn't punk or Goth or New Wave but more alternative and more the direction I took my musical tastes, mixed with a strong dose of Goth. There also was totally new sound and look emerging and could be heard in some of the 81 bands, ska like The Specials, or English Beat. This style was of its own, kilts and Mohawks and doc martin boots. |
| Modern English | 1981 | |
| Sonic Youth | 1981 | |
| Black Flag | 1981 | |
| Husker Du | 1981 | |
| Sonic Youth | 1981 | |
| Suicidal Tendencies | 1982 | Some new sounds were being developed like Skinny Puppy, who were another Canadian band that didn't get much recognition but whose sound is now inherited by bands like Nine Inch Nail, or Marilyn Manson, which marked the era of yet a new genre of music, industrial punk. The rest of the eighties brought a small number of new bands, ska, new wave, punk, gothic, alternative, industrial. I list below a few of them. Some bands like Jesus and Mary Chain brought a new feel and were cast as industrial but I'd venture to say they were more alternative/industrial fusion. |
| Skinny Puppy | 1982 | |
| The Smiths | 1982 | |
| ToneOnTail Love and Rockets | 1982 | |
| Shriekback | 1982 | |
| Japan | 1982 | |
| THE END FOR NOW | ||
| Alien Sex Fiend | 1983 | I am going to continue this, just as my own journal of music. Bands that I could say defined me out of this list were;
|
| Howard Jones | 1983 | |
| The Dead Milkman | 1983 | |
| Violent Femmes | 1983 | |
| REM | 1983 | |
| Social Distortion | 1983 | |
| David Sylvian | 1984 | |
| Pet Shop Boys | 1984 | |
| Jesus and Mary Chain | 1984 | |
| The Smiths | 1984 | |
| Petshop Boys | 1986 | |
| The Mission | 1986 | |
