In My Garden

Hi everyone.  Time for a new challenge at Try It On Tuesday.

But before I get to that, I want to thank everyone who joined in for our last "Wish You Were Here" challenge.

And huge thanks to Sandra for being a wonderful hostess also. 

So our new challenge we are inviting you into the garden. The challenge is IN MY GARDEN!

I began my page with some bright green paint I had recently picked up. Then I used part of a napkin on the left. It had lots of these black and white leaves on it so I thought it would make a great background for some flowers. But it was a little plain so I sprayed a bit of dark blue ink.

I added some white leaf trim on the far left. Then I doodled some flowers on some white paper, randomly stamped a newspaper image over my doodles, and then rubbed both pink and orange ink over the page. I fussy cut the flowers and added them. I started by putting a blob of orange paint the the center, and then once it was partially dry I added a small colorful button. Then I outlined the green side, added some letter stickers and outlined those in white pen.

And voila. That is my page.

I hope you join us for our latest challenge at Try It on Tuesday.

I look forward to seeing all the gorgeous art linked up.

T Day Again

Hi everyone.

 It's been a very humid Monday here, and last night we had a terrible thunderstorm. We just happened to have what was an empty bucket outside and this morning we could measure the amount of rain that fell into it. We got 4 inches of rain in that one short storm. And it sure played a lot of havoc.

Half of the basement needed to be mopped up this morning, and we lost a lot of our driveway.

Our driveway is packed gravel, as is our road, and these canyons are a good 5 inches deep. The storm work me up, but I didn't realize how heavy the rain was as we had our bedroom AC running and it is pretty loud. Looks like there's another house project on our horizon.

And it is Tuesday, so I need to share my drink with you. Stop by Bleubeard and Elizabeth's blog to join in for some drink related fun and see what the T Gang has been up to.

Last Friday evening the hubby and I went out to a local Asian restaurant for dinner, and although usually we don't order fancy drinks, we decided to this time. I had one called a Pearl Harbor.It had melon liqueur and pineapple juice in it and it was really refreshing on a warm evening.

 One drink was enough for me so then I  switched to a glass of ice water.

I can't show you my dinner as I forgot to take a photo of it.

And I want to remind you we have a new challenge starting at Try It On Tuesday so be sure to stop by and check it out.

Have a great T day everyone. And thanks for visiting my blog.

The Corn Palace

Hi everyone.  Hope you are enjoying your weekend.

Yesterday was a positively dreary day here in New Hampshire (some drizzle, no sun, but lots of low clouds) and I spent about 6 hours in my happy place making art. It was the perfect way to spend  such a dark day. (Except maybe taking a nap that is.)

So you might be getting sick of my trip journal, but I am back with another page today. Today's page I made yesterday and I also have some photos to show you that inspired the page.

So let's go  to the world's only corn palace.

Before I show you anything, let me explain to you what the corn palace is. (Some of you may already  know.) It is basically a building that gets decorated with corn each summer. Here's a zoomed in example of what I mean.

I had read about the corn palace when I was a kid, and I had always wanted to see it. (It is strange what sometimes what you remember as a kid. I can even see the Weekly Reader (a kids newspaper we got in school) story in my mind even now.) Since it was right on our way as we headed back to Minneapolis through South Dakota, I told my husband we were  stopping in to see it.

(He got it because his memory was reading an article in the same school kids newspaper about the Spruce Goose, a wooden airplane build by Howard Hughes. When we could go see that in Oregon he was pretty insistent also.)

Anyhow, enough babble. Here is my page.

I decided to stick with just corn as my drawing/painting skills could at least represent that.

But here's the actual building and some other photos.

 Here's yours truly. 

 The military was theme they put up last year, and they were just starting to take it down to put up the new theme for this year.
If you look at photos online you will see these colors are pretty muted because they are faded because when they are  first put in place they really bold and beautiful.

 And a close up although the corn around it had been taken off.

 You can see the plywood underneath here.

 And inside this building is a civic center/auditorium. 

 Here's yours truly again .

And this duck shows you how they do the designs.

 There even are some designs inside the main stage part. (And lots of vendors selling souvenirs.)

These look older in design (not military) so I don't know if they are new or have been there a long time. 

 And the pillars inside were decorated in tiles to look like corn.

I really like the looks of these tiles.

And on my journal page, I did some drawing, marker coloring and painting of the corn.

I don't think this page really fits any challenge so I am not linking up, but hope you enjoyed your visit as much as I did.

Enjoy what's left to your weekend.

Happy Weekend

Hi everyone. The weekend has arrived.  The weather sounds like it might be a bit 'sketchy' this weekend with rain, storms and cooler but muggy temperatures. I guess we will have to see what we actually gets.

But one thing I did do this week was finish painting my bathroom shelves which I showed you back in Tuesday's post. And today my husband put them back up, and here they are.

The white baskets are what I've had on the shelves, but they look much better on the white shelves than when those shelves were stained dark brown. And now the shelves really lighten up the room.

It was worth my time to paint them and freshen up the bathroom. (Not to be confused with the bathroom we took the tub out of. This is my downstairs full bath. The tiny bathroom where the tub was is upstairs where the bedrooms are. That bathroom needs new fixtures and a make over.)

And here's a few more collage pages from my Dakota journal. 

I love the eyes on Smokey Bear (the top spread), and there are also eyes on the gentleman right above so I am going to link up to Gill's challenge at ARt Journal Journey.

Wishing everyone a good weekend, and thanks for stopping by to visit my blog.

A Little Bit of Everything But Mostly Butterflies

Hi everyone. 

Today I didn't need to go into school; in fact I am done with school until next Thursday when the new year begins. (Teacher work days and then the kids the following week). But my room is ready to go.

 Boy is the floor shiny. That won't last.

Where has summer gone?

This morning after my walk I went out to pick some veggies in my garden. I'm not really happy with the method I used this year which was no rototilling and just using the decay of what was already in my garden. I have gotten a few tomatoes and peppers, but mostly I've gotten lots of weeds. And my zucchini are just starting to form. Last year my veggie garden was really productive, but this year it looks like I will just have a few veggies.

Oh well, next year I'll go back to rototilling  and and adding manure and compost.

But I did leave some milkweeds growing and they attracted some monarch butterflies. What I now have is a very healthy crop of monarch butterfly caterpillars. 

That makes up for the lack of veggies for sure. Hopefully they'll be a little increase to the diminishing number of monarchs.

And for art today, how about a few more butterflies?

Here's a page from my travel journal. I am trying to get this journal completed so I can put this art behind me. 

This spread is about Medora, North Dakota where part of Theodore  Roosevelt National Park is located. It has a very traditional western feel to it, and I would show you photos but it seems I didn't take any. (How did I manage that?) 

Seems the man on the left is very happy to get there though as his suitcase is packed.

I did some collaging of various bits including some assorted papers, a cool vintage postcard I had, the TH found relative, some assorted western scraps I had in my stash, some metal stars,  stickers, a couple of stamped images, and the cool little crocheted flower that I received from Mia.

I am linking up this art to Moo Mania where the current theme is butterflies. (And I seem to be on a butterfly craze lately.)

And since the man on the left is on a journey and both he and the crow have eyes, I am also linking up to Gill's Eye theme at Art Journal Journey

I would show you some park photos but I just realized they are all on my other/old computer, not in Google photos which is what I got my other photos from. 

Another day I guess.

Wishing you all a happy Thursday!

Green Wednesday

Hello everyone. We're in the middle of another week-already. August is just flying by, or at least it is for me.

So today I have this journal page from my summer journal that I made back in June and don't believe I ever showed you. (If I have, I am sure you will let me know. Smile)

The background is made of canvas and I painted it. And then I had this scrap piece of paper from which I had die cut some leaves. I cut around the leaf openings and then used some matte medium to attach them. I added a few notes, and then added a butterfly sticker and also a little note label. 

And since butterflies have eyes to be able to see where they are flying, I am going to link up this page to Art Journal Journey.  And the latest challenge at Moo Mania is butterflies so I am also going to link my page up to that challenge.

And lastly, this page is certainly bright, so I will be joining More Mixed Media and their anything goes with optional bright challenge.

 And Valerie has picked the latest Anything Goes theme at Tag Tuesday. Here's my tag for that challenge.

I made this summery Victorian themed tag. I stamped this chemical formula design on the ink colored background and added some TH images. Then I added a little wash tape, stamped the phrase, and did a bit of peach stitching. I used this color thread because of the peachy color in those old fashion roses. 

Today's overall post theme is green.

One of my favorite colors.

Maybe it's one of yours too?

Thanks so much for visiting. 

T Stands for Bye-Bye Bath Tub

Hi everyone. 

This summer my "job" has been to do a bit of cleaning, organizing and sprucing up around the house. Nothing too big, as I've set myself a 90 minute work limit each day.

I started by cleaning my kitchen overflow closet in the basement. 

 And then I moved onto putting up some new shelves in my basement laundry area. These shelves allowed me to get rid of an old particle board cabinet with had seen better days and also to recycle some smaller shelves. You can see them in this photo still holding lots of items before I emptied them and relocated them to another spot.

And this little table was what I kept my laundry supplies on. It was pretty stained from use as well as the fact that I nabbed it out of my mother-in-laws garage over 20 years ago. (I'm not exactly sure how old this table actually is.) The original color is the brown wood you can see in the middle, but I gave it a little color update.

(Sorry, I thought I had a photo of the finished table, but you can get the blue.) The table is now back in my laundry room with my laundry supplies back on it. You can see it in the top photo if you look carefully.

And I liked the idea of color updating so now I am changing the look of some shelves that are in my main bathroom. 

They're great shelves and were in the bathroom when we bought the house.

We kept the brown stain for the past 30 years that we've had the house.

Now they're going to be vintage white, once I finish with them. I have them upside down in this photo, so the tapered end  will be hanging on the bottom once they go back up on the wall.

But what I really wanted to get done this summer  was to start an update on my tiny upstairs bathroom. Other than painting the walls it is still in its original form from the late 1970's when the previous owners built the house.
Step one was to pull out the bathtub, and my daughter's beau told me he would do it for me.
So this past weeked, while he and my daughter were here, the tub was coming out.

You can see from this before photo how tiny this room is.

 Zach is a handy guy!
Within an hour, he and I were carrying out the tub.

 And my bathroom just doubled in size.

Come fall and winter we plan on replacing the floor and the ceiling and then also getting a new toilet and sink. We'll do this work ourselves, unless we can get my daughter's beau to lend a helping hand. (smile)


But since it is time again for T over at Bleubeard and Elizabeth's blog, I need to share my drink related photo.
As the tub was out before 10AM, and since we hadn't had our breakfast yet, the least I could do was take Zach and my daughter out for breakfast. (My husband had a meeting he had to attend that morning. I think he would have rather stayed for the tub removal and breakfast.)
So off we went to our favorite hole in the wall breakfast place.

 I had 2 blueberry pancakes, and you can see my diet Pepsi in the background.

But the breakfast prize went to my daughter who had this breakfast dessert. She had mascarpone stuffed French toast with bananas and walnuts. 

I took a taste. It was yummy!

Today I am off  for a curriculum work day at school. The new (and last for me) school year is just around the corner.

Have a wonderful T day everyone.

Park Geek

Happy end of the weekend everyone.  I am trying out my first post with my new computer. I switched over to a Mac and it is a learning experience how to handle all of the controls. But I can't say it is going horribly, and I like having a smaller lighter machine. (Plus right now there are back to school sales on computers and my old computer, though still working, is starting to have some major issues this summer. I figured better to buy a new one before the old one totally dies on me and I have to go without or spend more cash to get a new one.)

So thought I would write a post to try out some things. 

I have another page from my Dakota travel journal for Gill's challenge at Art Journal Journey. I drew and colored the ranger cap that takes up most of the page and then I added some stickers, a couple of cut outs, a feather I found and a postage stamp for one of the parks we visited. Besides my ranger cap I used a bit of watered down acrylic paint and some wash tape for the background.

Gill's challenge is anything with eyes and Smokey the Bear has eyes, as well as the imaged eyes on the park geek sticker.

Hope everyone is having a great weekend. My daughter and her beau are here and it's been busy for me. More about that another time.

Enjoy whatever time is left to your weekend. And as always, big thanks for visiting.

Travel Journal and Photos

 Happy Friday everyone. 

I've been a busy bee working on my travel journal from my early summer trip to the Dakotas as I am hoping to finish it before I head back to school in 2 weeks. 

I thought today I would give a couple of  views  and then show you some of the photos that go with them.

I'll start with this page. The left is a piece of cloud paper with a sticker I picked up. The right is some ephemera as well as a postcard I picked up when we visited Devil's Tower. We had actually been to Devil's Tower before, but I think it is  a fascinating place and there is a nice little walk around the tower which was much needed after a morning of driving.

So here's a few photos of the tower.

 Devil's Tower is the core of an ancient volcano. The volcano itself  has eroded away and all that is left is hard inner stone which many many eons ago was the magma. When it cooled it formed this 5, 6, or even 7 sided rocks. 

A sign told us how the top, which you can't see here, is not flat (even though you might think it is) but rounded.

 Can you find the climber in this photo?

 

Devil's Tower is a sacred place to some of the local Native Americans.  I don't know the meaning of the prayer clothes but they were many of them along the walk.

 And if you couldn't find the last climber, you can definitely see this one.

This is not for me, but this climber  was very close to the to. We watched him/her actually make it onto the top. But I wonder how they get down. Maybe they just rappel down. But we were watching with some other walkers and they suggested maybe these climbers need a helicopter to come by and pick them up. 

 And I made this spread in my journal about the center of the nation.

 I showed you some photos back on July 4, but thought I would put this one up again.

And yes, I took artistic license and added the clouds to my page, because who doesn't love to paint clouds?

 I guess I should have added more yellow clover flowers to my page. 

I added some flower arranging chicken wire (that you buy on a roll like you would buy ribbon) along the bottom of my page because there was some barb wire fencing off this field. But I didn't have any barbed wire, and thought that might be a bit rough on the project, so I substituted the flower arranging wire. I had the wire in my stash from back when I tried my hand at flower arranging.

That's my post for today. 

Wishing you all a fantastic weekend!

And thanks for visiting.