Hobbies

Time to enjoy your favorite hobbies

Retirement is a chance to reinvent yourself and enjoy your favorite hobbies. Now that you have more free time, it’s time to listen to that inner voice that says, “What if?” There are always things to do in retirement — whatever your interests may be. Knitting, cross stitch, crocheting, embroidery, punch needle embroidery, quilting, hooked rugs, drawing and painting, cartooning & animation, reading, LEGO, genealogy, etc.

We Love Music!

Me and Tutti Cowgirl Love listening to Music on our MP3 player from the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s; from Jazz, Rock, Motown, Rhythm and Blues, Disco, Bluegrass, Country and more. Groups as Bill Haley & His Comets, Four Tops, Paul Revere & the Raiders, The Beatles, The Beach Boys, Carpenters, Glen Campbell, The Rolling Stones, The Who, Eagles, Bee Gees, Electric Light Orchestra, Simon & Garfunkel, Jackson 5, Earth, Wind & Fire, Alabama, The Charlie Daniels Band, Willie Nelson, The Stanley Brothers, Hank Williams, Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash and more.

Bookworm Cowboy Loves to Read

I’m a bookworm and love to read, but our local library system sucks. Thankfully, we own an e-reader and can find exactly what we want to read on Amazon and send it to our Kindle Fire Tablet. Then we can go sit on the porch while we’re waiting for a package to arrive and read an excellent book. We love the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, Ian Fleming, Howard Lovecraft, John Bunyan, C. S. Lewis, H.G. Wells, Robert Howard, and others. Learn what we're reading @ Goodread.com.

Creative Writing & Editing

Creative writing is any writing that goes outside the bounds of normal professional, journalistic, academic, or technical forms of literature, typically identified by an emphasis on narrative craft, character development, and the use of literary tropes or with various traditions of poetry and poetics.

Scrivener is a word-processing program and outliner designed for authors. Scrivener provides a management system for documents, notes and metadata. This allows the user to organize notes, concepts, research, and whole documents for easy access and reference.
Campfire is creative writing software that helps authors imagine, plan, and tell their stories. Design your story today.
ProWritingAid is a grammar checker, style editor, and writing mentor in one package we use.
LanguageTool - another spelling and grammar checker we use.
Google Docs - Create and edit web-based documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. Store documents online and access them from any computer.

Cartooning & Animation

The best Cartooning & Animation software for free.... View some of the work produced by others at Bookworm's Animations Blog.

Blender is the free and open source 3D creation suite. It supports the entirety of the 3D pipeline—modeling, rigging, animation, simulation, rendering, compositing and motion tracking, video editing and 2D animation pipeline.
Opentoonz - Open-source Animation Software for the production of 2D animation. Based on the software "Toonz", developed by Digital Video S.p.A. in Italy, OpenToonz has been customized by Studio Ghibli, and used for the creation of its works for many years.
Pencil2D is a simple 2D animation, drawing and painting application that lets you create traditional hand-drawn animation using both bitmap and vector graphics. An easy, intuitive tool to make 2D hand-drawn animations. An easy, intuitive tool to make 2D hand-drawn animations.
Synfig is a free and open-source software licensed under GNU GPL v3. The sources are available on GitHub.

Painting

When it comes to learning to paint, the first name is Bob Ross and many in our family enjoyed his show on PBS to learn how to make amazing paintings.

Bob Ross's site has info about his oil painting techniques, supplies and more.
Bob Ross's Show on YouTube

Join us in a Game of Chess

Join millions of players playing millions of chess games every day 24/7. Play from home, work, and on the go with our mobile apps. You can join us on Chess.com or Lichess.org for a game today.

Chess.com is an internet chess server, internet forum and social networking website.
Lichess.org is a free open-source Internet chess server run by a non-profit organization.
weChess is an online chess community where you can play against players from around the world.
Chess.org lets you play a game of chess within seconds.

Genealogy

Genealogy is the study of families, family history, and the tracing of their lineages. Genealogists use oral interviews, historical records, genetic analysis, and other records to obtain information about a family and to demonstrate kinship and pedigrees of its members.

FamilySearch is an international, nonprofit organization dedicated to helping all people discover their family story for free. This is the only one we use today.
The USGenWeb Project of volunteers working together and having fun providing free online genealogy help and information for every U.S. state and county.
Find-A-Grave - Find the graves of your ancestors, create virtual memorials or add photos, virtual flowers and a note to a loved one's memorial. Also Free.

Photography

It's no surprise that Florida is a photographer’s dream. Florida has a rich ecosystem with natural springs, beautiful beaches, and wildlife. Many photographer’s come to visit Disney, Key West or Miami, Florida has much more to offer. Consider visiting something unique at one of the offbeat photo locations. You can visit the largest collection of Frank Lloyd Wright architecture in the world at Florida Southern College. Florida has many state parks, amusement parks, beautiful beaches, caves, and numerous other attractions, it is easy to see why Florida is a popular vacation destination for photographer’s. A photographer’s dream is going to Butterfly World, where 20,000 exotic butterflies and birds take flight! Beautiful gardens with many different and unique species of butterflies that you won t find anywhere else. Great picture taking opportunities of the butterflies. Bok Tower Gardens is a contemplative garden, and bird sanctuary located north of Lake Wales, Florida. It consists of a 250-acre garden, the 205-foot tall Singing Tower with its carillon bells, Pine Ridge Trail, Pinewood Estate, and a visitor center. Jungle Adventures, A Real Florida Animal Park, is the natural habitat jungle home of our rare Florida Panthers, Black Bears, Wolves, and many other critters. Monkey Jungle is a one of a kind wildlife park and discovery center established in 1935 in a natural subtropical forest.. The Jungle wildlife live here much as they would in their native habitats. Visitors, scientists and students experience unique encounters with these amazing creatures in Miami's natural 30-acre Jungle park. Look over our photo Gallery >>>>

Coin Collecting

Coins have a rich history, making collecting coins a rewarding hobby. People collect coins for fun, historic or artistic value, or to invest in silver and gold coins for potential profit.

COINWeek is the most popular on-line multi-media source for news and information on Rare Coins, Currency, Precious Metals and Coin Collecting.
Coin News is the latest U.S. and World coin news on existing and upcoming coin releases, coin sales figures, mintages, coin auctions and other information for coin collectors.