Easter egg roll

Former First Lady Barbara Bush attended this year's WH Easter egg roll, along with former Presidents Washington, Roosevelt 1, Lincoln, and Jefferson. Former football great Troy Aikman read One Fish, Two Fish for some reason.

Rose Garden in winter

The Time White House blog has a nice photo of the Rose Garden getting a snow shower, complete with one of Barney's stray balls.

Coolidge revisited

Added a couple of Coolidge era pics and also one of the diagram of the Kennedy Vermeil Room in blue and the Ford Library. I still haven't identified the location of those mysterious ones, but these seemed interesting.

I've basically run out of sources that I know of, altho there are a couple of magazine pictorials that I don't have.

Rosemary

Today's Time WH Blog pic is one of the sous-chef (the man that's one sugar beet away from being chef) clipping a bit of rosemary from the Kennedy Garden.

Inside the White House

Added several photos I got from Inside the White House by Betty Boyd Caroli.

Big storm knocked out access to the series of tubes that is the Internets. Just got access back after about 28 hours. What did I do in the meantime? Law & Order marathon on USA. And bailing water out of my basement.

White House fall garden tour

From the White House:

The Annual White House Fall Garden Tour will be was held on Saturday, October 13, 2007, from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. and Sunday, October 14, 2007, from 12:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.

Here is a pic of the Kennedy Garden, courtesy of visitor Lafayette.

Old stuff

Added a few old exteriors in the last couple of days.

Grounds

Added several photos of the grounds courtesy of vistor Lafayette.

Idle curiosity

Poking around the WH website, I came across a photo of Barney on the south lawn next to what is described as a "drainage ditch." I recognized this from the HABS collection as almost certainly the Andrew Jackson "milk trough" and felt superior for a moment before realizing that I have no idea what that is either.

Announcing: The White House in 3D

I have just posted a new page to house the latest addition to the site: Pete Sharkey's incredible 3D White House. Pete has put untold hours into building a complete and highly detailed and accurate Presidential Park with White House extererior and grounds, giving us the opportunity to view it from perspectives we've never had before. Look all around the roof, the grounds, the gardens.... It's amazing.

For those who remember Pete's fantastic Oval Office replica, this one is only the exterior, so you can't peak into Laura Bush's dressing room.

You'll need to load Google's SketchUp or SketchUp Viewer (both free) and download the BIG 20 MB file, or you can just look at the many great images on the page. You can use the tour feature (View>Animation>Play) or click on the page tabs on the top of the opened model to see preset views

Thanks, Pete! For diligence, persistence, and patience in toiling in the basement over a hot oven, I hereby award you the Chef Roland Mesnier Baked Mansion Award (the "Rollie").

Pool party?

A crazy almost-naked guy tried to get into the White House today. The White House denied that it was Henry Kissinger thinking he was late for a pool party.

Ike-o-rama

Andy send a note tipping me off to some Eisenhower WH photos now available on the Ike Library site. Great mansion interiors and exteriors and color Oval Office snaps! Wow! More here...

Thanks Andy! I'll get right to work on these. The WHM has been light on Ike all along.

UPDATE: Stuck in ORD for three hours, I added 16 Ike-era images, which nicely filled in holes on a dozen pages. Check out the porthole TV in the West Sitting Hall!

Andy's link to the Kennedy before-and-after photos. These are already included in the WHM.

A dip in the press pool

Julie Mason of the Houston Chronicle has indeed come thru with pics of the new press area! I didn't realize it at first because the Chron bloggers moved to a new site.

I also missed the tee-ball coverage.

Grounds

After a busy family weekend, I've added a couple of photos sent by Steven Brawley from his tour of the gardens. Others are available on his site, PinkPillbox.com.

New front page

I changed the front page to a nice springy one of tulips in the Rose Garden in 1988.

Easter

Added a pic of the 2003 Easter egg roll to the Overview page for a couple of days. Also, as a permanent change, I changed the background from green-gray to blue-gray.

White House overview & TR's trophies

I came across a couple of high-resolution overviews of the White House on a military site and cut them up to provide views of the grounds and exterior in 1984.

Also, John in NOLA sent a great cartoon from the early 20th century poking fun at TR's wildlife-encrusted State Dining Room.

Reagan additions

Visitor Geoffrey M pointed me in the direction of some Reagan-era photos new to the Reagan Library site since I visited there last. I've added eight to all different pages. I've also enhanced the Oval Office Patio page with a couple of new pics and some from other pages. See What's New.

Ford at play

Found a couple of pics of Ford on the Putting Green and Tennis Court (with a very young Don Rumsfeld) that were nice high-res images on the Ford Library site. I don't know if I overlooked them before or if they're relatively new.