Creatures

Hi everyone. A quick post with not much writing as I need to get moving! I tried walking today and the mosquitoes were soooo thick I came back and did manage to get a little time to write this post. :)

First of all a page from my calendar journal. The plants were the coloring page next to the date boxes, but I enhanced them and added a few bugs, birds, flowers, outlines, words, dots, Xs...you ladies are all very smart and  get the idea I am sure.

I am linking up to Jo's challenge at Art Journal Journey which is Flora and Fauna, and lots of fun to participate in also.

And then I think I shall show you some of the Glass Sea Creatures at the Harvard Museum of Natural History where I traveled with my students this past Tuesday.  They were made by the same father and son team who made the glass flowers I showed you here Blooming.  The Blaschka's were extremely talented people I think.

Pardon the shadows.  The display lights in the cases made it difficult to not get shadows and glare.

 But some of those shadows were cool in themselves.  Here's one.

We're heading off later this morning and driving towards Cape Cod. The wedding is not on the Cape, but is on the way, and since it's a long weekend, might mean lots of traffic. We shall see.

Have a fabulous weekend everyone.

And thanks for visiting today.

Mount Fuji

Happy Friday everyone. This weekend ahead looks like a mix of some very hot and then some cool temperatures, as well  the possibility of some rain too, which is too bad as it is a long holiday weekend. I have my nephew's wedding tomorrow evening, which should be fun. Rain or shine, it is indoors so I don't think it will matter too much what the weather is doing.  We need to travel for the wedding so the bonus is that I get  a night away too.

I have another page in my Japan travel journal to show you today. It's our view of Mt.Fuji that I reproduced with a bit of artistic license.
The border I put around it is because we saw it from the bullet train window. I also created some abstract buildings and trees which were also in the view.
I think I might have showed you this view before, but in case I didn't, here's the view we saw.

I am linking up to Try It On Tuesday and their latest challenge which is Destinations.
And while I'm at it, how about a couple more Japan photos.

 Today, it's just some random shots.

 It must be a big tourist thing to rent kimonos and walk around the city in them. We saw a lot of people doing this.
 I love the mask. I kind of wish I had bought myself one to hang in my studio.
And here are some mangoes-Nango mangoes. Nango is the town where they are grown. These are grown in greenhouses where people are not allowed in until the mangoes are ready to be picked. The  growers  have to put bees into these greenhouses to do the pollination

 Once picked they hand  package them and ship them around Japan and charge a fortune for them. The ones we saw (even at the Tokyo airport) sold between $25-$30 US dollars. I guess they are famous in Japan. (I didn't taste one-a little out of my price range.)

 Love the playground squirrel. And the Buddha in a cemetery.

And here's the whole girl manga section in a bookstore.

And I love these cute panda cakes in a bakery near the Tokyo zoo.
Thanks everyone for visiting and
Happy almost weekend!

Blooming

Hi everyone. Here we are at the middle of another week and May is flying right by. Flowers have bloomed and the trees have all their leaves  and the weather has been mostly fantastic.

Today I have a painted page from my Nature Journal to share with you. I am linking up with Jo's challenge at Art Journal Journey. This challenge is Flora and Fauna. Thanks Jo for a great theme this month.

I have a weeping cherry in my garden that we call Al. It's called Al after my dad, as the tree was a gift from my co-workers when he passed. A couple of weeks ago it was blooming and I decided to document it in my Nature Journal.

And it has a very weird shape because one winter in an ice storm the top broke off, so now it grows fat but not tall. But when it blooms in early May, it is really beautiful.

I used paint, stamped images and some sketching to create my page.

I am also going to link up to the latest challenge, More Flowers, at Moo Mania.

Yesterday I went with some of my students on a field trip to Harvard Museum of Natural History.

The pride of the museum is their collection of glass flowers, made between 187-1936 by a father and son Czech glass working team, Leopold and Rudolph Blaschka. 

 They created some amazing flowers. I went there a couple of years ago with some students also, but they had a few things in the exhibit I don't remember seeing before.

This is view of the back wall of the exhibit looking over 2 of the cases that display the flowers.

Here are some of the glass flowers.They are scientifically correct for study.  Everything here is made of glass. It is AMAZING!

Any guess what this is? It's not a plant.

 A common fungus-mold.

They also had an exhibit of sea animals made of glass from this samee father and son team. I will show you those another day.

Have a great day!

And thanks for visiting my blog also.

T Stand for Comfort Food

Happy T Day everyone. It is Tuesday and time to share our drink related posts over at  Bleubeard and Elizabeth's blog. We'd love to have you join us if you haven't been by.  All you need to do is share something drink related.

Are you sick of me showing you Japanese food yet?

How about plastic food?

Many restaurants in Japan fill their front windows with displays of their food so you will know exactly what they serve.

This dish in the center above is Japanese comfort food. It is a plain egg omelet that is filled and rolled over some rice, and then served with either a barbecue like sauce or ketchup.

I had one with the barbecue like sauce. It's not my first idea of comfort food on a rainy day, but it was good and I certainly enjoyed it.

And as big as it looks, I ate the whole thing. :)

I don't actually know what it is called either. It is dinner food however, not breakfast food. To me it is more breakfast food and alot of  Japanese breakfast food is more like dinner food. But when in Japan, go with the Japanese way and enjoy it.

And one drink you might have with this  comfort food (other than water) is this watermelon smoothie.

And if you like Diet Coke, as I do, you would be out of luck in Japan. You can get regular Coke and a Coke Zero like drink, but that's it.

I was missing the bubbly drink  the night before we flew home, and I broke down and bought a regular Coke from the hotel vending machine. I am not used to all that sugar. Wow. But I saved the label and made this page in my Japan travel journal. I like that all the writing on what would be the back of the label is in Japanese.

I also found these little dog stickers.  We saw several of these dogs in Japan, and they are sure cute! The breed is called the shiba inu  (inu means dog) and here's a photo I found on-line at Japan Today. 

Ha-ha-I thought this face was as cute as my stickers.

Off on a field trip today with my seniors. Hopefully I will have some photos for you. And also, one month of work left until summer break. :) 

Wishing you all a wonderful T day-either what's left to it or your whole day.

Favorite Movies-Day 1

CJ over at CJ and Ink is running a challenge. She's asking that you post your 10 most favorite films for 10 Saturdays.  OK, so I started off a day late, but wanted to play along. They can be a favorite for any reason.

 It sounds like fun. I chose this film for day 1 since this is the first film that popped in my head and is a classic that I have seen about 30 times and really enjoy. I bet once you see the poster photo a certain musical refrain might start running through your head.

I was just a freshman in high school the summer this film came out and I remember going to see it with a couple of friends and my mom. My mother has never been a big movie lady but someone had to drive us since we were only 14. 

My mom also was never really a swimmer and I don't think she actually likes water, so I guess this film didn't impact her too much. I can't say it ever deterred me too much from going in because I love the water, but being more of a freshwater swimmer I guess it doesn't matter too much. I will say that since they have started having a lot of great white sighting off of Cape Cod (which isn't all that far away), it does make me wonder what is off the coast where we like to go boating.

But it's a great classic film and such a good story, even for someone who isn't much into blood and gore movies. I'll be be back next Saturday with my next film.

And speaking of movies, last night the hubby and I went to see the latest Avengers movie. I think it was definitely a film that required having seen many of the older Marvel comic films, but since the hubby and I do that together, I have to say I really enjoyed it.
Waiting for the sun to come out later today, but it should give me some studio time this morning. :) Sunshine makes the flowers bloom, so here's another page for Moo Mania and their more flowers theme.

This page isn't one of the most complicated ones I've ever done, but I went last week with a blank page in my calendar journal and decided I needed something. So this is what I created.

And flowers definitely fit Jo's challenge of Flora and Fauna over at Art Journal Journey too!

 I definitely need more art time lately.  Augh!!!! I've had tons of appointments, plus wanting to do some gardening, and work. And I have more appointments this week plus my nephew's wedding on Saturday night that I need to travel for. Oh I need to retire. so I can have more fun time. Ha-ha.

Hope everyone's enjoying their weekend.

Monkey Island

In Nichinan, Japan, there is an island where Japanese Macaque live. In the 1950's it was discovered these monkeys wash their food before they eat it. They became very studied and Kyoto University built  research station across from the island.

We got to visit the research station and listen to a little talk by one of the biologists there. And then we got to go out onto the island with him.

We landed, climbed out of the boat and watched as about 50 monkeys came running out of the forest. They had been trained for the food obviously, but how cool for us to see them running out.

And we could walk around on the beach, with monkeys at our feet. We just couldn't touch them or look them right in the eye.

I didn't bring my camera with me here, just my phone. So this is how close I really was to the monkeys. No zoom lens for this adventure. But I didn't really need it. It was pretty amazing to me.

Here's a view of my leg and a monkey.

It was one of the highlights of the trip for me.

So in my Japan travel journal I wanted to include not only paper pieces I brought home but some art, and some sketching. So I drew a few things that remind me of this part of the trip.

My favorite sketch on this page is the monkey face I made. Now a drawing I actually like. :)

 I am linking up to Jo's flora and fauna theme at Art Journal Journey. I thik this page is just perfect for that.

So totally on a different topic, I've been watching the royal wedding this morning.  Did anyone else?

I am ready to go back out (I did walk early today) and do some gardening before it starts to rain, which they say it is going to do later today.

Happy weekend.

The Golden Pavillion

 Today I will take you to the Golden Pavilion in Kyoto, Japan.  It was  gorgeous setting and the Emperor's palace was beautiful. However, all the serenity was disturbed by the HUGE crowds-I think the absolute worse of anyplace we visited. Luckily I had a zoom lense on my camera so I could get some decent photos, that and the fact that you had to keep to a path and could not go near the Pavillion.

And for something not from Japan, here's some sketches in my drawing journal which I will link up to Jo's Flora and Fauna challenge at Art Journal Journey

 One of these days I will figure out how to draw a bird that I really like. Birds are just one of those animals I can't draw quite right. :) But practice makes perfect, or so they say.

And we're still dealing with spring bugs-these tiny flies  are so bad on some days (if there's no breeze) you can't even step outside. Luckily there are only really bad for a couple of weeks and we are on the down side of them now.

Have a fantastic Friday. And thanks for visiting.