Owls in the Dessert

Happy Friday everyone.  Another week is winding down and it is almost April.

I am ready.  :) This has been a tough March here in New England with a couple of accumulating snowstorms and lots of cold and grey days.

Speaking of snowstorms, we have one coming tonight into tomorrow. 5-10 inches are predicted, which is a big storm in February never mind on April 1.

Maybe we'll see bare ground by May 1.

Ha-ha!

But it was a fairly fast week for me. I'm not sure what I will do this weekend with the snow coming, but I am signed up for an art class tomorrow morning if the weather should cooperate and I still want to go see Beauty and the Beast at the movie theater. 

So today I went Southwest for my journal page. 

These large cacti are called saguaros and I think they are fascinating. They can grow really tall- like a 10 story building (or more) and when you have a lot of them they form a saguaro forest. They can live for over 100 years too.

How cool is that.

Here in the US they are found mostly in Southern Arizona, and several years ago I got to go see them.

 I had fun painting this page. I worked backwards because I made the cacti first and then I went and did the background. 

I had so much fun I decided to paint some saguaros on a canvas. I had started a painting I truly disliked, but the background had some great coloring, so I painted my cacti over that and then added some  molding paste stenciled stars.  I decided to leave the background colors just as they are.

I'm not done yet, because I want to add an owl like I added to my journal page.

Maybe some details on my spines too.

Owls do make nests in these huge cacti which I think is pretty amazing too.
One last link up to Yvonne's great theme over at Art Journal Journey.  Today is the last day to go Out and About.
Have a wonderful weekend everyone.

Time to Bloom

Hi everyone. 

Many of you have some beautiful spring flowers in your world, but here in New Hampshire we have melting dirty snow and lots of brown mud. The color of March has been brown. (And not nice brown, but brown like when you mix too many paint colors together.)

No flowers yet, and they are saying more snow Friday night, but this month is almost over . (Of course Friday is still too far off to know for sure.) April HAS to be BETTER!

So I have been obsessed with painting flowers lately. You will notice that soon enough.

This is one of my favorites.  I used a Gelli print background. The flowers are created with paint and Dina Wakely's new Scribble sticks. Oh yes and a green wax crayon with the green paint on the stems and leaves,

So I am linking up to 2 challenges today.

First of all, once again I am joining Yvonne at Art Journal Journey. Just a few days left to go out and about, and I want to go out outside and see flowers. So this is a dream Out and About page for me.

And the newest challenge at Try It on Tuesday is Botanical. I'd say this journal page works!
Hope the flowers are blooming in your word, and if not, you have a bouquet or two inside.

Thanks everyone for visiting.

A Great Version of a Favorite Sandwich

Tuesday again! Happy T day ladies (and also to any gentlemen who stop by).

Time to share a drink and maybe some food to go along with it over at  Bleubeard and Elizabeth's    blog. Every Tuesday is T Day.

So I like a good BLT sandwich. BLT stands for bacon, lettuce and tomato for those of you who maybe aren't familiar with this American classic. I like it even better with some yummy avocado sliced onto it. 

And recently, I saw a recipe in blogger Joy the Baker's newest book-Over Easy -where she added  a fried egg and cheese and called her sandwich a Breakfast BLT.

I left off the cheese but added an over easy fried egg. And I used some hand sliced bakery bread along with thick maple smoked bacon, a good tomato and some lettuce. My toast was more toasted than this photo shows, but I had to lightened it to show you a better view, and that made the toast look more like fresh sliced bread.

 I might not look like much in this photo, but I must say, that was one of the best sandwiches I have had in a long time.  I left the egg slightly runny.

And I had my sandwich with a glass of ice water.

It was way better than eating out.
So its been a grey and wet Monday here in my neck of the woods. The snow is melting:), but the mud is practically up to my ankles.  I want to go slashing around in it like a 5 year old. In fact, I did go sloshing around in it like a 5 year and it was fun, but I am thinking about going back outside and sloshing some more. I also had the day off because I went and got my tests done to see if I can still be the donor of a kidney for my husband (waiting on results), and after that I came home and spent some time in my happy place. I am almost done with my major cleaning, which is a big deal since it has been going on since the middle of January.
Otherwise, I enjoyed my Monday off from work and enjoyed having the day to myself. I watched another Highlander movie (the third one) and read a little bit of a new book (Ann Patchett's State of Wonder).
I hope your Monday was a good one too, and more importantly-
Happy T Day!

Aliens Are out and About

Hi everyone. Today I am going to show you the last few views of my recent travel journal.
The aliens have landed as you can see.
Now my journal has joined the shelf with all my other  journals.
Maybe its time to plan another adventure!
 I would love that but hopefully the next plan in my house is a kidney transplant for my husband.  Keep your fingers crossed. Tomorrow I am taking the day off from work as I have to go do a couple of tests that will determine if I can still be his donor. I'm not too worried, but the thought does cross your mind that maybe something in my own health has changed. That would be a terrible thing, to keep getting so far and then have the whole process slam to a stop.
But that is NOT going to happen.

So here's a few more journal pages I have to show.
I've added a journaling card to the pocket below. 

And I am joining up to Yvonne's fun challenge, Out and About at Art Journal Journey.

And another round of New Mexico photos. Today I am showing you some gorgeous Native American art I saw.

That's all for me. :) I appreciate you stopping by to visit.

The Boston Flower Show

Hi everyone. Its Saturday night here in New Hampshire. I was out and about today. It was rainy but better than yesterday's weather.

This is the road on my way home from work Friday afternoon. There was some plowable fresh snow on the road.

And

4 new inches on the deck.

And the weather lady said it would only be flurries.

AUGH!!!!!!!

So today, needing some spring and green and blooms and gardening,

we headed down to the Flower and Garden Show in Boston.

It was nice to see some blossoms and leaves instead of all the white

(and brown dirty snow too).

I kind of expected more though. I had hoped to get some ideas for my gardens and see something a little more unusual. I saw some great things but I guess I just thought I would have had a few more WOW moments.

  Still, it was fun and I'm glad we went. Plus I got to spend the day with my honey and daughter too.

Here's a few highlights.

This stone house was pretty cool. 

And this garden mini-house would make a wonderful studio.

We didn't go in because the line was really long, but my family told me it would probably be too small for me and all my art supplies. :)

But it was really cute.

 I loved the bonsai. 

 These quilts made from flowers were also pretty cool. 

 And some interesting flower arrangements too.

Everyone was happy and had a good day.

So I have a garden page for Art Journal Journey too. Yvonne from Meggy's Way  is this months lovely hostess and her theme is Out and About.

That's been my weekend so far. How has yours been?

A Little Splash

Happy Friday everyone! (Or Thursday evening if you are checking in before Friday.)

This week has been a tough one to get through for me. What a LONG week. Nothing major-just more lingering winter  weather-and REALLY COLD temperatures-GRRR-and not enough snow melt. It might be spring on the calendar but can someone please tell that to Mother Nature. :) Work's been a bit overwhelming-too many demands which has made everyone pretty cranky. Oh my, thankfully it is just about the weekend.

I'm hoping to maybe get to see the new Beauty and the Beast movie this weekend.

This past week I managed to find Highlander 2 (an older film from the early 1990's) to watch which was also a good sci-fi film. I had seen the first Highlander movie by accident this past weekend and wanted to seethe sequels. One down, 3 more to go.

My journal page today has been in the works for awhile. I started by adding the black and white background image which I found in a vintage photography magazine. Then I was stenciling some red flowers on some other pages and decided to add them here. Another day I was stenciling stars, and also decided to add some here. 

I picked up a new set of Dina Wakely stamps recently, and so I used one to stamped this cool lady and then painted her. 

 I think she is Dina's take on Freda Kahlo, and Frida  was really about color. Funny, lots of kids have been talking about her at school lately. Interesting to see what the hot topics of conversation are. Add her to the March Madness basketball chatter from my crazy second block boys. Its quite the range of topics I get to talk about all day. 

That's all for me.

Hope everyone is having more spring weather than our cold arctic wind here in New Hampshire. Enjoy your weekend.

`

A Little Southwest Today

Hi everyone. I have a little more southwestern inspired art today.  This page is in my regular journal and it celebrates some of the artistic motifs from the Southwest.

I played around with some stenciling, rubber stamped images and paint on this page. 

When you are Out and About it is fun to see what images represent the place that you are. This month Yvonne is hosting over at Art Journal Journey and Out and About is her great theme.

A few more photos from New Mexico for you also.

Because I was out and about when I went on a visit there too.

This Native American dance group was performing at the Taos Plaza. I love their feathers and even more so the shells on their legs that made the most wonderful sounds a they danced.

A nice surprise photo. I snapped these daffodils from outside the window and also caught the clouds and the mountains in the reflection.

And how about these fun shadows in a store display? They were from these small ceramic bears and they look like are dancing.

And isn't this a fun ceramic and adobe bench outside of a school.

Cool leaves too.

And I love the look of this dilapidated old house. Its got some cool texture.

So many different things to discover.

When you go exploring,

Happy hump day.

Tuesday is Meatloaf Day

It is another Tuesday and another T day.

This week for T I am sharing my Saturday evening supper.

This past weekend my husband and I were out all day Saturday running errands. We ended up traveling to Manchester, New Hampshire for one of those errands. Its about an hour drive from our house. Manchester is the biggest city in our state and there are lots of places to eat there. One of my favorite places is called the Airport Diner. They serve lots of old fashion home style foods that taste great and also, they have pretty fast service. Since it was later in the afternoon and since we still had the drive home, we decided to stop and have dinner first. 

The Airport Diner is open 24 hours a day and is over near the Boston-Manchester Airport.  They are part of the Common Man family of restaurants which is locally owned and so far can only be found here in New Hampshire. 

I had a favorite meal.

Home-style meatloaf, mashed potatoes, carrots and a dinner roll. And a glass of water. This meal was only $8.99.

And yummy!

And even better than the meatloaf was the dessert the hubby and I split.

This "little" hot fudge sundae. The only bad part was the hubby got to the cherry before I did. But that's OK because I let him pay. :)

Also this past weekend I watched an old movie. I actually watched it by accident, as when I got up Saturday morning the hubby was watching it on TV. I got sucked into it, and luckily we can record it from the TV, so Sunday afternoon I managed to watch the whole movie.

Any of you remember Highlander?

The hubby had seen it already (along with the sequels), but for some reason I had never seen this 1986 sci-fi cult classic.  Yes, parts of it were a bit hokey, and it is so 1980's-which might be why it seemed pretty hokey in parts, but I must say I did enjoy it. 

Now I want to see the sequels.:)

Stop by Bleubeard and Elizabeth's Blog  and join in the T Day fun. You can share your drink/food posts and join the T Gang for a little blogging fun.

Have a great day!

               

New Season

Happy spring everyone! I may be a day early but this year with the late winter weather, I am very IMPATIENT.
My calendar page for this week is ready. I hope the weather will cooperate too and today will be more like spring than winter. Right now it is cloudy and there was some weather talk about snow flurries.
Hopefully NOT and it will go out to sea south of us.
I found this quote in a magazine while looking for something else and decided that I needed to remind myself that I can make it through this extended winter weather.

Last week I more or less finished up my New Mexico travel journal. Moving from winter into spring means I have mentally moved far enough away from this trip and that I am ready to be done making this journal. Trip journals tend to be like that. You get home, all excited to work, and then after a bit the excitement fades.

So let me share a few arty pages with you. I will probably have one more post with my journal views.

 I've since filled in this card with some  travel notes.

Now I did enjoy making this journal. Because this is the 4th one I made, I did make more arty pages than I often do in my travel journals. That's something I want to do more of, next time I go off on a wander.

This is my favorite spread. I like everything about how it came out.  I will say although I have had enough of snow (and if you stop be frequently you know that with all my moaning) but being away in a different place in the snow was quite the adventure. Maybe because I had fresh eyes on the scenery.
I am linking up to Yvonne's fun challenge-Out and About-over at Art Journal Journey.

Its been a busy weekend here running errands which have been put off for a few weeks. I was hoping for a more relaxing day today, but there's still a couple of things we need to do. We're going to try to get these chores done early today so maybe there can be some free time this afternoon. We shall see.

Thanks for stopping by.