Some Random Assorted Face Photos

    Hi everyone. Happy Friday. Today I'm joining Gillena for her Friday Lunch Break and Nicole for her Friday Face Off.

   As you might already know, a couple of weeks ago my husband and I spent the day in Boston with my daughter and her husband. I had lots of fun that day, and I had a blast  with my camera and all the photo subjects I came across. You may have seen some of the photos from that day in earlier posts. Today I have other random photos from our day with several faces to share.

   OK, and I have some flowers too. There were flowers all over the city. This flower display in front of a restaurant were all living plants.  Aren't they beautiful?

The face is some man on his phone.

A nod to history on the sign facing me as I walked down the sidewalk

This display isn't quite as lovely (to me at least-I would have gotten rid of the pussy willow branches) but still, all made of  beautiful living flowers.

The face of this building also had lots of flowers. I don't believe the flowers above the awning were  alive.

These were not all alive, but still looked lovely on the fence.

Another nod to history.

The face of this gate is quite lovely.

Need I say anymore?  I just watched a series on Netflix about George Washington, and he would definitely approve of the T shirt with his face on it.

A metal bird face

My son-in-law, my husband, and even a smiley face

Those window faces have some cool coverings

Lots of faces in the crowd, and a fun sign post

The face on a building

Lots of pansy faces

And finally

my husband  having fun at a statue. 

Have a great Friday and start to your weekend. 

More Bees

  Hi everyone. Happy Thursday. This week we started off with some  beautiful low humidity weather, but now we are into the heat and oppressive humidity of summer. Oh boy. 

 I'll start today's post with another journal page for Matilde's Houses and Buildings challenge at Art Journal Journey.

   Here's a page I made in my Dina Wakely ledger journal. The writing in the background came in the journal.

   I inked the background with 2 shades of blue and also some yellow ink. Because this page is in the back end of this journal, it picked up some texture from previous pages which gave it an interesting look.

   I created the ground by adding some ticket printed tape, some flower printed tape, and then a thin tape layer of green in between them. Then I fussy cut the 2 birdhouses and the beehive out of some paper.

   I created the poles for the birdhouses from some strips of  scrap paper. I also added some plants and the bird using some punch out images from 49 and Market. I then used a Sam Poole/Creative Expressions stamp set. There's a small stamp that has a little bee cluster. I stamped that image several times around the beehive. Those bees are always busy out on the hunt for pollen.

   The tag at the top (which is not crooked but my journal is almost finished so the pages aren't laying flat) was cut out of a sheet of paper. I stamped the quote from the same Sam Poole set that the bees came from. 

   And speaking of bees, I haven't shared any photos from my two hives as of late. It's very exciting because my new hive is doing great (as you will see), and I can finally say, after 5 years, that I have a second hive going. 😏👍❤.  And as you'll also see, my older hive is making honey in the  super/extra honey box, so it looks like I'll get a good batch this year. 😏👍❤ I don't take honey from a first year hive because the bees have to start making honey and filling an empty hive, but older hives usually have a reserve. 

   First here's one side of one frame in the new hive. Look at all the capped (brown) brood there is.

     That means the queen is successfully laying eggs which are needed to sustain the population of the hive.  In this next photo if you look on the middle-left side of the hive  you can actually see the queen. She's definitely larger than all the other bees and has a black tip of her abdomen/tail. This is a different frame, and it is filling in with brood too.

   I have some funky honeycomb in my older hive. When I went to add the honey super box (the box where bees make extra honey and is the honey I can harvest) there was some honeycomb the bees were creating upward because the other frames were filled. With no space  left, I guess you just go up-kind of like land in a big city. I decided to let them continue their upward creation rather than removing that  comb because I was curious what would happen.  I took a couple of frames out of the super before I added it.

   The bees have continued building this comb, and when I went into the hive the other morning I could see some honey glistening in it. These next 2 photos show that funky honeycomb structure. The last 2 also show it but you can see some honey glistening in the comb if you look carefully.

That's all for me today. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day, and thanks for stopping by my blog. 

Time for a New Challenge at TIOT

    Hi everyone. It's been 2 Tuesdays already, so it's time for another new challenge at Try It on Tuesday.

   Before I introduce our new challenge, thank you everyone who joined  our Circles challenge. And thank you very much Sarah for being our guest designer for that challenge. ❤

    Our new challenge for the next 2 week  is Flying High: Anything that Flies.

    I made a journal that incorporates a tag I made awhile back as well as some honey bees. You might know that I am a hobby apiarist with 2 hives of honey bees so when it came to flying I decided to go with the bees.

   I started with a white journal page that I  lightly used some yellow watercolor paint on. Then I splattered it with some blue watercolor to match the tag that I was going to attach. 

     The tag was made by stamping and embossing the numbers and then adding 2 flower stickers as well as a butterfly sticker. I stamped the quote and added a couple little confetti pieces. If the tag looks familiar it's because it is not new, and I shared it over at Tag Along (and ATC's too) a while back.

  Lately I've been adding older tags and ATC's to some of my journal pages just because it's a safe place to put them. Since this tag had a butterfly (which flies) and makes me think of my garden, I decided to add all the bees to finish off the page.

  The die I used to make all the bees and flowers is from an old company called Die-Namites. The original die had 3 bees and 3 flowers all connected by these swirling lines.  You can see I snipped and attached several die cuts together to make  all the bees and flowers.  I cut these from black paper and then glued them down. I then cut some more out of some mostly pink scrap paper to get the flowers.  I also cut them a third time to from white paper to get the centers. It was a lot of cutting, but I like the effect. Plus I ended up with some extra bees and flowers for other art. 😏

   Our Flying High challenge runs for the next 2 weeks, and I hope you're inspired to join us.  

T Stands for Treats in Boston

     Hi everyone. Happy new week to you.  And hello to everyone who stops by Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's blog  blog for T day too.

     What's new with me? Last week was a very busy one. I started the week on the last day of May (Sunday the 31st)  with a touristy trip into Boston with my husband, daughter and son-in-law. Then I spent some time in court, which if you haven't read my post from last Saturday, was because I had been selected for jury duty (That post can be found here:  It's the Weekend).

    Today I'm sharing some more photos from my trip into Boston. I also shared some photos (It's the Weekend and Boston Colonial Architecture) over this past weekend if you're curious.   Today's photos work for T day. And just a warning 😉, there's a lot of food that may make you hungry. 

    Here's a little background for those of you who didn't read my last couple of posts.

    Last Sunday was Free Ferry Day out to one of the islands in Boston Harbor. The ferry went to Georges Island, where there is a Civil War Fort. This island is operated by both the National Park Service and also the State Parks of Massachusetts. 

   My daughter doesn't work for the State Parks of Massachusetts but her department is within that group, so she had gotten an email about the free ferry day. There were 2 ferries that day, one at 10 AM and one at noon.  We hoped to catch the 10 AM ferry, and my daughter said she and her husband would get there at 8 AM when the ticket booth opened to get the tickets (since they could get 5 tickets a person). However, when my daughter arrived, the 10 AM ferry tickets were already gone, so she grabbed tickets for the noontime ferry.

    Since the ferry dock at Long Wharf isn't far from the North End of Boston and since we had a couple of hours to kill, we headed over to walk a bit of Boston's Freedom Trail. But besides some spots on the Freedom Trail, the North End is also known for some fantastic Italian restaurants and bakeries. Before we went in search of history, and since it was still before 9 in the morning, we decided to stop for a little breakfast treat.

    This second bakery was cannoli heaven. You can see all the flavors they had in the next photos. If you don't what a cannoli is, you can read about them Wikipedia: Cannoli. I bet CJ could tell you about  cannolis too. 

    When we stopped for a morning treat,  I had a small cup of chai latte tea as well as a slice of orange bread. The orange bread was just enough for my morning sweet tooth.   😊

     But I can't go into an Italian bakery and not get a cannoli, even at 9 in the morning. I bought one  to go. As you can see in the photos above, it was hard to decide which flavor to get. 😉 However, I forgot to photograph my cannoli. I went with a traditional plain one, mainly because I was going to eat it with my bag lunch later in the day, once we were on the island and were visiting the fort.

   I hope I didn't make you hungry. It made me hungry just writing this post. (And I know Iris will most likely tell me these all look too sweet. 👍)

   Wishing you a happy T day and week ahead. 

   

Some Boston Colonial Architecture

   Hi everyone. Happy Sunday. I hope you are having a lovely weekend.  Today I am linking up to Nicole's  Sunday in the Art Room  and Gillena's  Sunday Smiles .   Just an FYI-today's post is a litle long.

   Last Sunday was Free Ferry Day out to one of the islands in Boston Harbor. The ferry went to Georges Island, where there is a Civil War Fort. This island is operated by both the National Park Service and also the State Parks of Massachusetts. 

   My daughter doesn't work for the State Parks of Massachusetts but her department is within that group, so she had gotten an email about the free ferry day. There were 2 ferries that day, one at 10 AM and one at noon.  We hoped to catch the 10 AM ferry, and my daughter said she and her husband would get there at 8 AM when the ticket booth opened to get the tickets (since they could get 5 tickets a person). However, when my daughter arrived, the 10 AM ferry tickets were already gone, so she grabbed tickets for the noontime ferry.

   Since we were almost in downtown Boston when my daughter called with the news,  we decided to meet at a good gathering place near where the ferry would leave. We decided to meet at a place called Faneuil Hall/Quincy Marketplace and then take a walk over to the North End of the city since we had a few hours to kill.

    I found this vintage photo online of Faneuil Hall and the original marketplace.

Here's a couple of photos I snapped.

   If you're not familiar with colonial US history, Massachusetts was the second British colony in what would becomes the United States. Boston was settled in 1630, and  it's location allowed it to become the capital of the Bay State Colony.   Faneuil Hall was built in 1742 as an open air market. Later, in the 1970's it was restored. Quincy Marketplace was originally built in in the mid-1820's, and then in the 1970's when Fanueil Hall was revamped, it was also revamped. You can now find the National Park Service local headquarters in Fanueil Hall, and all kinds of things to eat in Quincy Marketplace. Sadly for us they didn't open until 11 AM, and it was still not even quite 9 AM. (But that's OK because I've been there many times before so at least I wasn't missing an experience.)

  On our way from where my husband and I parked our car  to Faneuil Hall/Quincy Market, we passed the old Massachusetts State House. This is Boston's oldest surviving building as it was built in 1713 (and then rebuilt in 1748 after a fire). Outside of this building is where the Boston Massacre happened which  was one of the big events that lead to the colonies to rebel against Britain in what is now called (here in the US) the Revolutionary War.

     Boston is famous for it's Freedom Trail. If you follow this brick line in the sidewalk it will take you to many sights from this colonial and Revolutionary War period. Here's my daughter in this photo also.

    I've walked parts of this trail before. And surprisingly for someone who is a Massachusetts native and who learned about all this history from about grade 1 onward, I have never walked the part of the trail in the North End. (But I have been to the North End of Boston before, just not walked on the Freedom Trail there.)

   I walked by 3 new places that I have heard about but never actually saw other than in photos.

   One of those places was the Paul Revere House. Paul Revere was a silversmith. During the early days of the Revolutionary War, he made a famous midnight ride to let citizens know the British were arriving to fight. Others also made this ride, but he seems to be the only one remembered by the general population. Although he never said "One if by land, two if by sea", he had lanterns lit in the steeple of the North Church. One lantern meant the British forces would be coming by land, and two lanterns by sea.

   We didn't go into the house, as it was early and it still wasn't open, but that was OK because I've been in a lot of colonial homes before. And just an FYI, two lanterns were lit in the steeple of the Old North Church which meant the British were arriving by sea.

    Here's that Old North Church where those lanterns hung. I'd never been here either. I would have  liked to go in and take a peek, but it was also too  early and the the building was still closed. 

   And here's the Old North Church as seen through a park and what would be your normal way to enter (but right now parts are under construction.) And below, a famous statue of Paul Revere in this park area.

    We stopped at one more spot along the Freedom Trail, and that was the second oldest cemetery in Boston, Copps Hill Burial Ground. I enjoy walking through old cemeteries, and even the short time we were there I took a lot of photos, but I'll share just a few since this post is already getting a bit long.

    I still can't say I've completed the Freedom Trail because I still need to visit the USS Constitution/Old Ironsides which is the oldest (US) commissioned ship still afloat and which was launched in 1797. I've seen it every time we drive over the Tobin Bridge from the north shore into the city, and I once took a duck boat tour which brought us over to the ship. But I haven't actually toured it. 

   The same is true for the Bunker Hill Monument, which I've also seen every time we drive into the city, but I have never actually been there.

    OK, this isn't the shortest post, so I think it's time to end it here. Hope you enjoyed a few views of colonial Boston. I still have some more photos to share for another time. Have a super rest of your weekend and start to the new week.