Time for a New Challenge

    Hi everyone. It's Tuesday so that means it is once again time for a new challenge at Try It On Tuesday.

    Thank you to everyone who joined our Pretty Paper challenge.  I loved seeing all the petty papers, and even better, all the things that can be done with it. ❤

      Our new challenge is one for the season here in the Northern Hemisphere. This time we're looking for art that showcases Autumn's Beauty.  I have a  collaged journal page to share.

   I started this page by using up some paper scraps to make my background. I like how some of the scraps were autumn papers. I also splattered some orange, brown and yellow watercolors over the background. 

   I knew I wanted to use this cute little mouse as the focal point of my page (just please stay outside eating acorns and keep out of my house). 😉   I had 3 left over die-cut leaves on my work table that I added first, and then I glued down the mouse. My page still needed something more so I used a bunch of assorted autumn stickers that I've had for too long. I also used a scrap of copper metallic paper trim that was sitting on my work table to ground my page.  Finally I added the quote (Unity Rubber Stamps) which is one of  my favorites for this season. 

   Be sure to check out the design teams art too. As always, you have 2 weeks to join this challenge. And we accept any art as long as it meets the challenge's theme.

 This is also my penultimate page for Sharon's Hello Autumn challenge at Art Journal Journey That challenge ends tomorrow so if you're going to link up a journal page, you need to do that ASAP.👍

   I look forward to seeing your autumn inspired art. 

T Stands for I'm Home Again

   Hi everyone. Happy new week to you. Happy last few days of September to you also. And for everyone who stops by Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's blog, Happy T day.

  I'm slowly getting back into blogging mode and getting around to people's latest posts. You might have noticed that I've been away from the blogosphere for the last 11 days. The hubby, the dogs and myself went on a road trip.  Now I'm home after our  adventures in Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and even (although not originally planned) New Brunswick. ❤ 

   I haven’t yet had time to go really through my photos so this post is more of an overview. Ha ha. Whether you like it or not there will be more photos to come  😉 Grin.

  For those of  you who aren't familiar with the area I traveled in, here's a map for you. I'll explain below  the general gist of my travels. 

  On the first day of our trip we drove to Bar Harbor, Maine (about a 4.5 hour drive from home) and caught the ferry over to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. That ferry trip took around 3.5 hours. Here's a photo I snapped of the image on my phone using the Apple maps app. I took this while we were in transit, and you can see the blue dot where the ferry was at that point.

   It wasn't the most scenic ferry ride because  other than in Bar Harbor when the ferry left (in the first photo below)

we had mostly fog the rest of the way.

   You might remember that last year we went to Nova Scotia. When  we went in 2025  we didn't get to do a few things we would have liked to have done. One of those things was exploring the south (Atlantic side) shore, so we spent the first 3 days of our journey doing that. During this leg of the trip we meandered from Yarmouth up to Halifax. 

  For the next leg of our trip  we drove from Nova Scotia into New Brunswick and then over the 8 mile/  12. 8 km Confederation Bridge to Prince Edward Island. 

   We hadn't been to Prince Edward Island (PEI) before, so we spent much of the rest of our travels exploring the island. From there we were supposed to  go back to Nova Scotia to do a few things on the Bay of Fundy shore and then to catch the ferry back to Maine  to head home.

   No trip is without a snafu or two, right? 😒 One of ours was a major Nor-easter storm that moved north up the US coast and was due to move into the Yarmouth, Nova Scotia area.  Because of this weather forecast the ferry sent out an advisory that it  might not be running to bring us back on our scheduled day. 

  At this point we looked at our options and decided it was easier for us to drive directly home from PEI, a 9 hour trip, rather than to drive south along the Bay of Fundy to Yarmouth for the ferry, a 6 hour drive. If we did drive to Yarmouth and couldn't take the ferry due to the weather, we would have had to drive the 6 hours back to be almost in PEI again and then also drive the 9 hours home.   Even though the storm was still a few days off, we decided to cancel the ferry trip back to Maine and also our other Nova Scotia stays. We now had new plans to drive home from PEI.

  This was the message about the ferry posted on Friday morning while we were still on PEI.

   After reading this we were glad we had adjusted our plans.  We booked a hotel in New Brunswick to break up our drive, and to get home we drove down through New Brunswick and back  into Maine before reaching New Hampshire.  Although not what we planned, it worked out just fine. 👍

    The other snafu was that my husband's car, which we were in, started to make a bit of a chugging noise. That noise  only got worse as a couple of days went on. His car ended up in the Subaru dealership in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island for some work. We decided to rent  a car while his was being fixed. Although it was a definite inconvenience at the time, at least we could continue our adventures on Prince Edward Island. And it was definitely better to get it fixed than be stuck someplace. 👍👍

   Here's my hubby waving from our rental VW at Seacow Lighthouse on PEI. 

  Other than those few snafus, we had a super trip.We saw some beautiful scenery, ate some delicious food, learned some new things, saw some art, saw lots of local culture, enjoy some gorgeous sunrises and even some more spectacular sunsets, well...basically we had a wonderful time.😊

  More about all that to come.

  It is the start of a new week, and time for T Day. Just like Dunkin' (Donuts) is practically in every town in the area where I live, (and as some of you already know) when you go to Canada there seems to be Tim Horton's all over the place. We stopped once for a breakfast treat, and when we did, I got a cup tea, as you can see in this next photo. It's my ticket for T Day this week.

   Being  a Harry Potter fan, Tim Horton's was running a Harry Potter donut special, so of course I had to see what that was all about. We bought a 6 donut box and enjoyed a couple of days of morning treats.👍

   OK, that's enough of me babbling. Wishing everyone one a wonderful T day and week ahead. 

 

One Last Post Before I'm Off

      Hi everyone. Happy Wednesday. Today I have a short post with a bit of art.

    I wanted to share this page for Sharon's Hello Autumn challenge over at Art Journal Journey since by the time I get home, it will be close to the end of the month. I was inspired by the fact that the days get cooler in autumn so instead of having some screen porch hammock time I tend to move inside. This is especially true after a day raking,  cleaning up the gardens or even going for a nice long walk. 

   My background is made with some watered down watercolor paint as well as a brown ink pad. I love the texture  I ended up with and even how there's white spaces.  All of the images are from either a couple of 49 and Market punch-out sets or from some Ciao Bella paper. I did draw in the yellow floor around the chair and the dog, and I stamped a quote from an old Hero Arts card sayings set. I also colored the lights yellow and added some color to the sunflowers at the bottom left.

   If you look carefully this page has many things I love on it. There's autumn leaves, pumpkins and flowers, books, dogs (even though I've never had a Golden Retriever) , cuddly blankets, a comfy chair and even a cup of hot cocoa or tea. It's a perfect autumn later afternoon scene to me. ❤

    I also have another  tag that I made for Lynn's Circles challenge at Tag Along (and ATC's too). It was such fun to play with some of those old circle stamps I haven't used for quite a while.

   This time I started with an oversized black tag. I had at one point cleaned off a stencil in the middle top, and you can see the white fuzzy background underneath my quote. I tried to cover it up as much as possible with my design, and although not perfectly covered, it did make a good place to put my quote.

   I used white pigment ink and a Darkroom Door circle background stamp. Then I took some leaves off a 12x12 chipboard sheet (by Mintay) and punched out the leaves. I inked them with orange, yellow and light green ink. Then I attached them to my tag, leaving room at the top for a cut apart quote (an oldie from Inkadinkadoo).   I added a few little confetti circles, and to cover up a messy edge at the bottom, I used a scrap of orange colored paper as well as a strip of scrap corrugated paper. 

  That's all for me today.  I'll "see" you when I get home from Canada so have a super next week and a half.

   

Time for a New Challenge

   Hi everyone.  Its Tuesday so that means it's time for a new challenge over at  Try It On Tuesday.

   First let me thank everyone who joined our Emboss It challenge. I can tell people like to emboss because there were so many great link ups. ❤

   Our newest challenge will also be fun because this time our challenge is all about Pretty Papers. 

    

    I used 4 sheets of paper to make my art journal page. I started with a very old sheet of green paper that I used as my background. Then I took 3 sheets from an autumn 8x8 package of paper from Creative Expressions. The designs on these sheets were beautiful so I did a lot of fussy cutting and arranging to make my page.

   The second sheet had the bottom bird, flowers and the music on it. Except for trimming off about an inch on one side, I attached that page directly down on the green background. Then I cut out the top bird and the flowers on the right hand side of the page from another sheet of paper. Once they were glued down and dried, I trimmed out that section with  some copper metallic paper trim, and along the top and bottom, right under the trim, I added a scrap pieces of blue paper to finish off the border.

   The page looked almost finished, but I needed something along the left edge.

   I inked the edges of the green background paper. It still didn't look quite finished to me, so I took my last sheet of paper and fussy cut some leaves from it. I attached those to the bottom left corner and part of a single leaf to the top right corner. Finally to actually finish my page, I added the gold paper sun and my quote.

   Don't forget to check out the other pretty paper art on my team mates blogs too. And as always, you have 2 weeks or join us with your art. Any art is accepted as long as it fits our challenge.

   I am also linking a up to Sharon's Hello Autumn challenge over at Art Journal Journey. Please remember at AJJ we only accept any type of art journaling but not cards, tags, ATC's etc. 

   I'm looking forward to seeing your pretty paper projects. I hope you'll join us. 

T Stands for the Final Summer Play and Then Some

    Hi everyone. Happy Monday and happy new week to you. And hello to everyone who stops by Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's blog  for our weekly T Day meet up.

     So what's new with me? Last week I continued with physical therapy and had something called Dry Needling done on my shoulder.  It's kind of like acupuncture but they also use a light electric current while doing it. It's supposed to be very good at breaking up knots in your muscles, and I have to say even though I was sore for about 24 hours afterwards, it has made my shoulder feel fantastic. 👍

    Otherwise I also went walking a couple of times and did some basement cleaning. The basement cleaning isn't very exciting except that I was able to get the new shelves my husband built (and that I mentioned last T day) organized. Now I can actually find things on the old shelves where everything had been crammed in and on the new shelves too. 😊 Those new shelves are actually pretty organized. 

     I also have a honey update. Thanks for all your comments on my Sunday honey post. I had read that since honey is more dense than honeycomb, if you let the comb sit for the honey to drip out, eventually the comb will rise up and  end up floating on the honey. That makes for easy removal. Well low and behold, it is doing that. 😊

      How cool is that? I'm sure by the time I come home from my road trip the comb and the honey should be completely separated.  👍

     A couple of weeks ago,  three of my friends and I had tickets for a play at the Ogunquit Playhouse in Ogunquit. Maine. It was our final play of a 3 show season pass we had bought back in the winter. This time the play was a  comedy called (as you can see in the first photo) The Producers. Since it was written by Mel Brooks (of Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles fame  as well as some other screwball comedy films you might be familiar with), it was full of laughs and crazy situations. That made it a fun production.  (And I think, although I have never seen it, this play is also a movie.)

   I'd actually seen this play maybe 20-25 years ago in Boston, but all I remembered was the crazy Springtime for Hitler in Germany part and laughing A LOT. The story of this play if you're not familiar with it is that a Broadway producer is told that if he puts on a flop he'll end up having more money and have to pay less taxes than if he produces a successful play. He joins up with his accountant, and they set out to make the worst play possible.

   That play is written by a former Nazi who is sad that the Nazi's didn't win the war, and the play is called Spingtime for Hitler in Germany. Even though everything sounds like it should be a one night bust, the play ends up being a hit.

   Again, no photos are allowed during the production, so here's a few  shots from the Playhouse's website.

  Since it's T day, I need to share a drink. Here's my glass of wine in my cup that I bought at the first show this season. If you save and bring back your cup, you don't have  to pay for another cup next time you are there. After this show I tucked my cup away in a cabinet for next year, because hopefully they'll be doing some good shows, and we'll be getting tickets again. 

   That's it for me this week. I'll also mention I won't be joining in for T next week as my husband, the dogs and myself will be on a road trip to Canada. We're heading back to Nova Scotia  for a few days and then we're driving to Prince Edward Island which will be a new province for us.  Since I'm not sure how my internet will be (and also how busy we might be), I might stop by blogs and I might not.

   Have a super T day and the next couple of weeks ahead everyone. 

The Art of Honey Collecting

   Hi everyone. I hope you've  having a nice weekend.  

   I'll also be joining Nicole for Sunday in the Art Room  and Gillena's for Sunday Smiles 

   The past week I had the first time experience of collecting honey from one of my bee hives.* I call it an experience because I learned a lot, and the biggest thing I learned was that I didn't really know much about collecting it. 😉 Grin.

   (*For those of you who haven't been reading my blog for awhile: I have 2 hives. The one that I started this year is keeping all its honey because basically this hive had to start from scratch this past May. The hive I'm collecting honey from is the one that is now just under 1 1/2 years old.)

   First I needed to get the honey super with the honey in it off of the hive. Our winters here in New Hampshire are too cold to leave  the third box on for the bees to enjoy the honey, even though they would probably love to have that honey to eat.  Because of the cold you really can't have more than 2 boxes on the hive during the winter. Bees need to be able to heat the inner hive by wiggling their bodies even on the coldest days, and the more space (3 boxes instead of 2), the more heat they need to make to keep the whole hive warm. 

   I'm also a little late getting the honey super off mainly because of my shoulder issue.  You can see the honey super in the photo below. Before I lifted the box, I took out the 2 empty frames on the bottom. I think this box weighed somewhere between 40-50 pounds (18- 23 kg), and being short with a rotator cuff issue meant I basically lifted and then let gravity help me bring it down onto the ground. The box was heavy, and I didn't want to injure my shoulder any more either.

     You might also remember that I left out a couple of frames last spring because the bees had already started to build honeycomb upward  when I went to put the super on. Isn't that a cool pattern they made? You can actually see the honey there too.

    It ended up not being a honey collecting issue though as you'll read further on in this post.

   And you can also see the honey on this one side of this frame. All the frames I left in the have  honey like this on both sides.

   There was no way I could carry this box very far, so I put the honey frames into a couple of garbage bags and then brought those  bags into my basement. It's cold enough in my basement and obviously not full of sugar loving insects so it was a good place to store the frames for a few days.

    I finally got my honey spinner  assembled so then I was ready to spin out the honey. (And please ignore the mess on the shelves of my laundry area. Eeek. Another day I did get them cleaned out now that I have some new basement shelves, but that was after my honey collecting adventure.)

    

    I now learned the most about collecting honey.  The biggest thing, and the most important when spinning it, is that you want the honey to be warm. OK, so I messed that one up having kept the honey frames in my nice cool basement. But I couldn't put them outside either, which I'll explain in the next paragraph. 

   The other thing I learned is that it would have been nice to do this in an area where I could have put a table. That is because you need to slice off the beeswax that is over the honey, so when you spin it the honey can come out.  I could have put a table outside, and I could have spun it outside, but then the smell would have attracted all kinds of 6 legged and potentially hungry visitors. 😩 This year spinning would be in the basement. With cold honey.  😰🍯

   Or I should say this year spinning would  collect hardly any of the cold honey. The honey was too viscous to come off the frames. It ended up being better to slice off the comb and  then put those slices into some large plastic food storage containers. Then, to warm up the honey, I put those food storage containers  on my kitchen counter near the sunny window. The warmth made the honey drip out of the comb. 

   I have 3 containers like this one. And it's a slow process. This could take up to 2 or 3 weeks for all the honey to drip out. Part of the slowness is that honey only  drips when it's warm, and at this time of year, other than for part of the day when my kitchen counter gets the light from the window, it isn't exactly hot. That's OK though since it's not like I must have the honey right this second. Besides, I'm also leaving later this week for an 11 day road trip, so I wouldn't even be home for it anyhow.

  I also have a few ideas  for keeping the honey warm too, but since I have yet to try them, I'll keep my ideas for another post.

   After that dripping finishes, I'll need to filter the honey before it is ready to use.  If I could have spun it out, I could have filtered it quicker and it probably would have needed less filtering.  I should also add, I did get some honey in the spinner, but that may end up being just a few spoonfuls.🥄

   This process left me with some still sticky hive frames. I could have washed them with soap and water right away, but I decided to give the residual honey back to the various bees. I took the frames and put them outside, leaning them up against a garden wall.

  And you can see the honey bees  and others really enjoyed the treat. ❤

  I'll have more of this adventure to share with you once the honey has dripped and I go to filter it.

  Have a super rest of your weekend and start to the new week also.

   

  

    

    

   

Fall Art and More Little Wildlife

    Hi everyone. Happy Friday.  This week has flown by; I think even faster than normal mainly because Monday (which was the Labor Day holiday) felt like Sunday to me, so because of that it seems like we somehow skipped a day. and today should be Thursday. 😏

   I also want to mention  just in case it hasn't been updated by Google and just in case I haven't visited your blog for a day or two, but now my reading list is stuck in Monday mode. If I haven't been by your blog, it's because my reading list hasn't been updated, and I don't know if there were newer posts.  😧

    I have lots of faces today for Nicole's   Friday Face Off  and also for Gillena's  Friday Lunch Break.  

  

  I'm going to start today's post with this journal page (that also has a face) for Sharon's Hello Autumn challenge  over at Art Journal Journey.

    I used one of my less busy Gelli print backgrounds for this page. For the leaves I used a leaf stencil and a green paint pen. The woman has an orange face because I was trying to get an image transfer on my Gelli plate. The image transfer didn't work, and the woman was covered in orange paint, but I still like her. I trimmed away the  excess and used her anyhow.

     Then I cleaned off some  pieces laying on my work table and used them on this page. The gears are chipboard I colored black. The envelope made a good tag pocket, and the tag is just a tiny piece of scrap paper that I stenciled a few more leaves onto.  To finish the page I added a couple of felt sunflowers from a package I had in my stash. I also added some bronze colored glitter glue to their centers. You can just see the sheen in this photo. Finally I finished by using a quote from an autumn Creative Expressions set that I recently found on markdown. 

   And how about a few more faces to wrap  up this post? My yard has been a very busy place. Some of these might be creepy for you, but I'm saving the creepiest for the end.  

    Above, some type of fly (I couldn't find an ID on it), and below, a bumble bee.  

   This nursery web spider did not appreciate me watering my plants. He/she crawled out from under the leaves to stay dry.

    I have too many yellow jackets around my yard. When they are in the garden, they don't bother me, but I worry where the nest is. They nest in the ground, and if you happen to step in the nest, they get angry and are aggressive attackers. But they also help eat plant pests, so I guess they aren't all bad. 

   I spotted this Eastern Red Spotted Newt in the driveway one day.

    This pickerel frog didn't enjoy me watering either. He hopped out and waited for me to leave.

   But this  little tree frog didn't seem bothered by my watering. He was just sitting on the plant in this post.

OK, here are the  views some of you may not enjoy. If you don't like spiders, click off now.

    There were several of these little huntsmen on one of the dock boards at my mother-in-law's home. I'm guessing they were babies recently hatched.

    And on another dock board was a big web with this giant Mama hanging in it. 

   She's a fishing spider, and if you haven't ever seen any, they are quite large, usually 3-4 inches (6-9 cm)  across. And this lady (yes, it is a she) was hanging out in a web filled with recently hatched babies.

   I know some spider mothers become food for the babies, but I couldn't find that answer for this particular species. However, I do believe she dies after this season, but these babies hibernate over the winter until the next season.

   That's it for me today. Wishing everyone a great start to the upcoming weekend. 

Wednesday Art

    Hi everyone. Happy mid-week.  I hope everyone is having a  nice week so far. 

     I'm posting today with some art for a couple of challenges. First, I'm joining Sharon for her Hello Autumn challenge over at Art Journal Journey.  Besides pumpkins, colored leaves and cooler weather, autumn is also the season (here in the US) when football begins. 

   To make this page I started with some watercolor paper and some green acrylic paint (to represent the grass on the field). Then I used a white paint pen and a ruler to make the field markings. The football  and the helmet are very old Quick-kutz dies that I had back in my scrapbooking days. I stamped 3 little stars on the helmet and then added green clutter glue to them. They DON'T represent any particular team.

   The words are from a very old Technique Tuesday stamp. And finally, to finish the page, I added some felt football trim from my stash.

   And then I have a tag for this month's new challenge at Tag Along (and ATC's too). This month Lynn  is hosting, and her theme is Circles. 

    You can see I went circle crazy!

   I started with a 49 and Market die and some paper bag paper. Then I stamped The alphabet letters (no marking on the stamp) randomly on the background. I also stamped the dotted circles (Hero Arts). I used a 1 inch paper punch to punch out the paper circles, including those that were on a sheet of alphabet letters.  Then I added the small dot circles and larger scribbles circles (from the same Hero Arts set). After that I edged the tag with black ink. I also stamped the quote on some white paper (Cornish Heritage Farms). After cutting it out and gluing it down I outlined it with a black Sharpie.  I love how there are little circular dots on part of the quote words too. 

   That's it for me.  Enjoy your day and thanks for stopping by.