Wednesday Art

    Hi everyone. I hope your week is going well. I'm posting today with a bit of art for a couple of challenges.

     First  of all I want to share another tag for Brenda's All Things Autumn challenge over at Tag Along (and ATCS too).

    This time I went with a more traditional autumn view. I used stamps that came  with a stamping magazine that I bought on a close-out table several years ago. The magazine is long gone, and it doesn't say on the set except that it was from Practical Publishing. My guess is that is from Creative Stamping Magazine.

   I stamped the images using black and some colored Versafine Clair ink.  I colored in the mushrooms using markers. I  lightly inked the background with a blue TH mini-ink pad.  The 2 little squirrels are die cuts from a Poppy Stamps die. And to finish, I added a strip of washi tape along the bottom.

   I also have a journal page that I'm linking up to Mia's Beautiful World challenge at Art Journal Journey. This page is rather different but it is full of interesting autumn bits. I hope you think they all work together. I'm also going to link it up to Creative Artiste's Mixed Media challenge blog #131 where the theme is always Anything Goes. 

   I started this page by gluing down this scrap of mushroom tissue paper at the top of the page. Then I wasn't quite sure where to go with it. I decided to take some yellow watercolor and paint the bottom of the page. Then I added the bamboo wreath image. I added the bird to that which was from an uncolored fussy cut image booklet from Mintay Designs. I fussy cut and colored in the bird with markers and a white pen. After that I took a bunch of random words and added them into the circle. To make it feel more a part of the page I used the same yellow watercolor paint and colored in the inner circle area. It still didn't look right to me, so I used an old dictionary and added some definitions, and I also used black paper and an old Cheery Lynn die to make and then add the "fall" word.

   Now I needed to finish the bottom. Hmmm. I ended up taking an old Hero Arts grass stamp as well as some Versamark Claire ink. I stamped the grass many times with brown, yellow and green ink.  Then to border my page I added some washi tape along the bottom.

   The center wreath area still looked a little bare, so I added some chipboard mushrooms that I painted and decorated with some confetti pieces. I also added a left-over die cut pumpkin image and some red die cut leaves that were sitting on my work table. Finally, to finish my page, I added a couple of wooden oak leaves I had in my stash.

  OK, that took as long to explain as it did to make. 😉

  Wishing you a great rest of your day.

   

T Stands for More Autumn Views

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

     Last week was another busy week. It was also my 38th wedding anniversary, not that we did much since my husband was busy building some stairs that our home insurance company was requiring.  😩 I  heard back about my MRI results too. I have a small (less than 50%) tear where the muscle and tendon connect at my rotator cuff. Now I need to see what the doctor thinks I should do about it. ⁇

       We also had some rainy days, and one day that felt more like late November than October.

       Here's some beautiful autumn views from my area. I hope they aren't too boring, but I am just loving all the autumn colors right now. ❤ This first photo is the sugar maple in my back yard. I love this tree, and even though I had to move half of my veggie garden because it blocks sun from that area, I don't want to cut it down. 

And here's the sun through the leaves while I was doing some light gardening cleaning the other day.

   Let me add a few more  views on a rainy afternoon when I was driving up to a friends house for a visit.

   I've also had some more wildlife interactions. When I moved a pot after I pulled out the plants, I found this guy underneath it.  He's an Eastern Red Backed salamander. He definitely wanted to hide so he crawled into the rocks and disappeared just moments after I snapped this photo.

    As I was trying to spread some milkweed seeds/open pods off my plants, I found one stem was covered with these milkweed aphids. I read they are not native species and are invasive. 😕

  This one is pretty self explanatory.

    After some almost bird free time at my feeder, the birds are coming back. Here's a bluebird who was watching Pete, and Pete who might have been watching the bird back. Or he might have been just checking out his yard.

   For the last several days I've had a small flock of yellow rumped warblers (Myrtle subspecies) at my feeders. I didn't know they looked more grey-brown come fall.

    These zinnias and  my black eyes Susans have just about had it for 2026.

   But my heirloom perennial chrysanthemums are starting to bloom. They are very late bloomers. These originally came from my grandmother's garden, then to my mom's, and then I took some for my garden.

    It's still too warm to wrap the bee hives for winter, but we had some very cold wind this past weekend. Before that I put a tarp around the sides of the hives that get the wind. It wasn't so much for warmth, but more as a windbreak so the bees didn't have to work so hard to stay warm.

   And speaking of bees, I've been filtering my honey. This was my first batch. I think I'll have just under 3 liters of honey once I finish with the second batch.  That's so much  more than I thought I'd get from one hive. 

    Once I finish with batch 2,  I just need to filter the honey through a fine sieve and then sterilize some jars and fill them. 😏

   And to finish up this post I need a drink photo for T. I bet this will be one of the strangest ones ever for T day, but for lack of any other photos I am going to share it. 

    Two weekends ago we had a family get together for my mother-in-law's celebration of life. It was definitely a DIY service because you are even allowed to dig the grave yourself. (She was cremated so the grave did not need to be very large.)  The theme of the day was to celebrate things my mother-in-law loved, and one thing she did love was farm fresh apple cider. So here we all are, towards the end of the burial,  drinking a toast to my mother-in-law. The 2 cups on the top of the gravestone was because we put one out for her, and one out for my father-in-law who passed in 1990. We know they were there in spirit.

   That's all for me. Have a super T day and week ahead everyone. 

   

Maud Lewis- Part 1

   Hi everyone. Happy Sunday. I hope you are having a nice weekend.  Today I am joining Nicole for her Sunday in the Art Room (SITAR) and also Gillena for her Sunday Smiles. 

   I've been sharing a few photos here and there from The Nova Scotia Museum of Art in Halifax. Today I thought I would share a few photos from one of the permanent exhibits at the museum. This exhibit, although not large, was unique because the artist's entire home is in the museum. As I mentioned in the title, the artist is Maud Lewis. 

   This exhibit was the main reason I wanted to visit the museum. I had hoped to visit last year when we traveled in Nova Scotia, but there wasn't enough time. This year on our trip, I definitely made time to go. In fact, it was a rainy Sunday when we went, which made it a great day for a museum. 

(image from Canadian history)

  Maud (nee Dowley)  Lewis lived from 1903-1970, and for much of her life she had severe rheumatoid arthritis as well as a possible unnamed birthday defect. She was born in the Yarmouth, Nova Scotia area, and then later in life, moved to Digby. She married a fisherman/fish peddler named Edward Lewis. The two of them lived in a very tiny little house in poverty. That didn't stop Maud from painting however, and one of her biggest art projects was painting her home.

  After Maud died, Lewis continued to live in this home. In 1979, he was killed when a burglar attempted to break in. After that the house went into disrepair, but because of how beloved Maud's work was (and still is), eventually the house became the property of the Province of Nova Scotia. That led to the creation of the art museum in Halifax where you can see her home as well as many of her paintings. 

   When the museum acquired the house, it was in terrible disrepair and required a lot of restoration. I wish I had taken a photo of the photo of how this looked, but I didn't. 😟 But I can show the finished restored home that is in the museum. 

   I really love Maud's folk art style, and all the colors she used. She definitely made this small home (no bigger than sheds some people have) a cheerful and happy place.  There were also many other paintings in this exhibit area. I will share those photos another time, as well as some more information about Maud. 

   But if you can't wait, here's a great story about her that was broadcast in National Public Radio: The Unlikely Story of Maud Lewis.

   That's all for me today. Wishing everyone a great rest of your weekend and start to the new week.  

                               

  

It Was a Beautiful Day to Go Walking

   Hi everyone. I hope you're having  a lovely week. 

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

  

    Today I'm sharing some more photos from my and my husband's travels to Prince Edward Island. I have some views from a lovely day out on the trails in one section of Prince Edward island National Park.

  The day we visited this area of PEI was an absolutely gorgeous autumn day. The sky was blue: there were no clouds, and there was no wind either. It was warm, but not hot. I think, even though we had lots of sunny days, this day had  the very best weather of them all. 

   Prince Edward Island National Park has 3 sections, and the only one we made it to was the most eastern one. This one is known as the Greenwich area where  the biggest sand dunes on the island are located. You can find it on the map  if you look below the red A and R in the Edward part of the title.

   There were 2  different trails we followed.  The first trail was shorter, and since we arrived at this one first, we took the dogs for a little stroll. They were not allowed on the beach, so I went down solo onto the beach while my husband waited with the dogs. (Beach walking, although he tags along, is not something he'd suggest doing.)

    Here's a handsome face for Friday Face Off. 

   If I hadn't had to leave the hubby behind with the dogs, I would have taken a longer walk on the sand. 😏 What a gorgeous beach.

  Even though I didn't get a big beach walk, we did hit another trail a bit further down the road. On the next trail we left the dogs behind in the car. (The car was parked in the shade, the windows were half open, and we had a towel over the windshield to block any rays that made it through the trees). Maddie was exhausted from our first walk,and although Pete would have made this walk, we left him behind to nap with Maddie.

  Our next trail started through this lovely old farmland with views of a bay.

   And there were lots of purple asters in bloom too, so I couldn't resist a photo. 😉

   Then at a trail intersection we turned right and after a short walk through the woods, we came to this floating boardwalk part of the trail. 

   Your can see the dunes off in the distance as you walked over the water.

Here's another face for Nicole's Face Off.

   At the end of the floating boardwalk, you climbed the dunes to get down onto the beach. From the top of the dunes, you could look back and see the boardwalk.  Here's a photo I took while up on top of the dunes. 

    The hardest part of the walk was climbing up onto the dunes, but  it wasn't a very long stretch.

    But the views were certainly worth it.

      You can see we arrived at another gorgeous stretch of beach.  We only took a short walk along the beach however because 1) we had the dogs in the car to think about and 2) we hadn't eaten since breakfast and we were hungry.

   When we got back to the car after both of our jaunts, I was curious how far I had walked. 

  Nice. And we still had one more walk ahead of us after we finally got something to eat. But all of that is for another post another time.

   Have a super Friday and start to your weekend. And just an FYI- I need to be out early today and will be out much of the day so I won't get to visit blogs until this evening.