Happy Valentines Day Art

    Hi everyone. Happy Valentine's Day. ❤ And happy weekend to you also.

    I'm not one that really celebrates this holiday, but I do like the shape of a heart. Every now and again it's fun to make some romantic art also.  Today I'm sharing  a romantic style heart laden page for Elizabeth's Anywhere, Any Placer, Any Time with Anyone challenge over at Art Journal Journey.  I also used at least 3 types of media on my page, so I'll also be linking  up to Creative Artiste Mixed Media Challenge. Their challenges are always anything goes,  and this month is their challenge # 123.

    I started by using a light pink ink pad directly on the page and adding a bit of color. Then I took a larger AALL & Create stamp. I tried stamping with sand colored ink once,but it wasn't what I wanted, so I went with a rosey pink and stamped the image several times over my page.  After that I took a smaller heart stamp from the same set and stamped that in red. 

    I colored in a few of the smaller red stamped images with a marker.  Then I added my details. These included a few flowers and also a scrap  paper edge from a 49 and Market punch out set. The butterfly is from the same company, but I didn't want the color so I painted it. I used a  "tag" die cut (the shape is for wrapping threads) from paper, and I wrapped a bit of colorful yarn around it. The quote on it is from a TH set.  I had a sheet of pink paper that was stenciled with grey paint, and I used that paper to die cut several hearts. I added one of those hearts. And finally I die cut the bird and used ink and paint to color them in. The details (eye and beak) were colored with a black Sharpie.

    This page (above) is in a Dyluions journal. 

    I decided to add one more page to this post, and it is nothing fancy but is Valentine's Day appropriate. It's on the back of a sheet of music paper in a homemade spring themed journal I am playing in.

    That's all for me. I hope your weekend is starting off or has started off in a good way. 

It's a Friday in Winter Again

    Hi everyone. Happy end of another Monday through Friday work week. Not that I go to work Monday through Friday any longer, but I still separate the work week from the weekend.

   Today I am joining Nicole at Friday Face Off and Gillena at Friday Lunch Break. 

   The good news about this past week is we've had several warmer days. Now  by warmer I mean it's been around the freezing point, but after weeks of some very cold days with wind chills driving the temperature down to around -10 degrees F/ -23 degrees C or even colder, these days at about the freezing point are wonderful. 👍 😀 ❤

  My husband is now semi-retired and working only 3 days a week. The other day he was off, and we went out to run an errand and to get some lunch. On our way to lunch we noticed that the runway on the Big Lake near us (Lake Winnepeesaukee) was open, and there were a lot of planes coming and going. We stopped to watch them for a bit.

  In fact, the frozen lake was hopping.  You can tell it's been a cold winter because for several years there wasn't thick enough ice for this runway to open. This is the only FAA sanctioned frozen lake airport in the lower 48 states of the US, and since it was a beautiful winter day at that point, I think  the pilots (and people) were taking advantage of being able to be outside.

    Here's (photo below) a plane taxing down the runway to take off. I couldn't get a photo of that actual liftoff since he was too far away to take a photo on my phone. I had hoped to catch a photo of a plane coming in for a landing since they land at the base of the bay near where we were, and I thought I had snapped a couple, but I guess I didn't. 😞

   And ha ha, notice the covered pool table and the raised fire pit at the bottom of the above photo. Off to the side of the runway are lots of ice fishing shacks.  I guess some people want something to do while they wait to hook a fish.

   All this adventure is right across the street from one of my favorite summer time places to eat, which many of you have seen several times in some of my posts. It was too bad they close for the winter (though they never even did take their umbrellas down this past winter) because a  Pop's lobster roll would have hit the spot. 😏

   Instead we drove around the lake and went to a local NH only chain restaurant that serves  tasty food. I had a bowl of fish chowder .

   By the time we finished lunch the clouds had moved in and a couple of hours after we arrived home we had another 4 inches/ 10 cm of snow. Here's the view from the restaurant parking lot. This view is another bay in another part of the same  big lake (Lake Winnepeesaukee.)

   I need a face  for Nicole's Friday Face off, and since the only photos of faces I've taken all week are of the dogs, I guess one of them will have to do. I take daily dog photos to send to my daughter since she likes seeing what the family canines are up to

   Now this may just look like Miss Maddie laying in a dog bed, but this has been Mr Pete's point of concern all week. This is actually Pete's bed, and Pete isn't the most flexible of dogs. Especially since Maddie believes her bed is my and my husband's actual bed, and she will  growl at Pete if he even looks  at it. For the last 10 years, this has been Pete's bed, and he hasn't had to share it.

   Then all of a sudden during the Superbowl, while Pete was laying on the floor elsewhere, Maddie climbed into Pete's bed, stretched out and went to sleep. Pete didn't know what to do. He kept looking at me and at my husband with a  practically panicked expression. If expressions were words, his face would be saying  "Oh no. Help! Maddie is in MY bed. What can I do?" And this event didn't happen just once.  It's been happening daily all week. 

  If you looked carefully  you can probably see that there are 2 dog beds in the photo,so I tried separating them so they would both have a bed. Ha ha. Neither of them would get in either bed, and Pete's expression this time said "What's happened to my bed?".  So the beds went back together, and the saga continues.

  Ha ha. You can tell life is wildly exciting at my house, can't you? 😂

  That's all for me. I hope everyone has  a great start to the weekend and of course, a lovely Valentine's Day if you celebrate. 

 

My Last Travel Post from Nova Scotia

    Hi everyone. Happy mid-week to you. Today I am sharing my final trip post from back in September when my husband, our 2 dogs and myself visited Nova Scotia. Time has flown by and that trip was now 5 months ago. Wow. Much of this post is about our last full day, and then I added some photos from our ferry trip back to Bar Harbor.

   We started our day in the Halifax area, and we ended our day back in Yarmouth. Although we needed to be in Yarmouth early the next morning to get the ferry back to Bar Harbor, we had the whole day to travel between Halifax and Yarmouth. 

   If you look on the above map, the red dots are places we stayed and the open green dots are general areas we visited. Halifax in the red dot just above the C in the words Nova Scotia. Yarmouth is  the red dot on the furthermost left (plus you can see the arrows where the ferry traveled to and from Maine).  We didn't have tons of miles to travel that day, but at the same time we did have some exploring we wanted to do.

   We started by taking a little drive around Halifax, and then we decided to drive to Peggy's Cove. The suggestion for Peggy's Cove came from a brochure we picked up at the hotel where we stayed in Dartmouth/Halifax.

   The drive down to Peggy's Cove was quite scenic. My hubby even turned off on a few side roads so I could take some photos. 

    These next 2 photos are from one area where there were these 2 photogenic  "sheds" or boathouses.

    Before we arrived at Peggy's Cove itself, there was a pull off. I knew right then and there that the lighthouse was going to be a little too crowded for me.

   There must have been at least 5 tour busses there as well as many cars. But we did find a parking spot, and we were there, so we just went with it.  I wonder if we had arrived at a different time of day if it would have made any difference.

   However, as I mentioned,  it was a little too crowded for me.  Too bad too because it was such a pretty spot. With a little walking and driving onward we did find some  spots that weren't such a mob scene. 

    I'm glad these people (in this next photo) went with bright yellow for their house.

   And after that, we were back on the highway until we saw a sign for Oak Island.

   Have you seen the show called  The Curse of Oak Island? Supposedly there is buried treasure on this island. That has been the belief since the late 1700's at least. The present treasure hunters are 2 brothers from Michigan and their partners. Plus they have a crew with archaeologists, hydrologists, geologists,  and other specialists. As of the date of me writing this post, they haven't found much treasure, but the archaeological items  have been pretty interesting.

   There are island tours on the weekends, and I asked my husband a couple of times, pre-trip, if he was interested in a tour. His answer was no, and since the tours aren't cheap, I never booked them. Of course, when we then ended up looking across Mahone Bay to the Island, he was wishing he hadn't said no. However at this point the tours were all full.

    We discovered we could drive onto the island. However you were limited to being in the parking lot at the end of the causeway.  For the hubby, that made up at least  a little bit for not going on a tour.

   If you've seen the show, here's the causeway going onto the island.

And here it is in the other direction.

    It wasn't the most exciting sight we saw, but it did make my husband happy. Now he can say he's been there.😏

    From Oak Island we meandered to the nearest "big" town called Mahone Bay. We had a really lovely meal at this Pub.

My fish chowder was amazing.

And right outside the pub were lots of boats for my husband to ooh and awe over. 

   Then the day was getting on, and we had an early morning ahead. We were off to finish our trip with a night in Yarmouth. 

   The next morning we caught the ferry known as The Cat home. The ferry left at 9-ish in the morning, but you needed to get there between 7-8 AM to line up. You can't just show up when the boat is closed up and ready to leave.  And just a note, there is only 1 ferry a day in each direction. It runs between Bar Harbor, Maine and Yarmouth, Nova Scotia  ( I trip per day in each direction) between May and October, but you would need to check the dates if it was something you were interested in. 

 The dogs were ready for their long morning nap. 

The ferry heading home was pretty full, and this trip we parked up on one of the top ramps.

The views leaving Yarmouth Harbor in the morning were really lovely.

   The trip back to Maine was relaxing. From our table we played along with some trivia, I read and warmed up with a chai tea latte.

But I had to watch out for sea monsters at the window...hee hee! 😛

And before we knew it, we were back in Bar Harbor.

  The hubby and I are  actually talking about doing this trip again sometime. Well at least some of this trip. We've been to almost all of the Canadian Provinces in the general Maritime area except Prince Edward Island and Labrador, so we thought Prince Edward Island  might make another good road trip with the dogs. I would also like to explore more of the Coast between Yarmouth and Halifax. And I would love to see the Maud Lewis art in Halifax too.  We will see what time brings, but we may take this trip sooner rather than later. 😉

   I hope you enjoyed some armchair travel to Nova Scotia. Thanks for following along.