All Over the Place

Happy Friday everyone. It looks like another grey and stormy day here in New Hampshire. What a week. We haven't seen much sun since Monday,and so far its been rather cool-not summery at all, but the humidity is on its way back. What weather! Its time for some more sunshine. 

Besides the weather, I've also been without my car as I blew a tire the other day. Finding a new match has been a pain, and I ended up back at the car dealer. I've only got 7,000 miles on these tires, and I guess their a rather new model, and most of the tire places around couldn't get them. But the dealer got one in so I have a 7:30 appointment to put it on. :) If the weather isn't too bad when I get out I'm going to go pick some strawberries (if you like strawberries-there's nothing better than fresh picked berries). We shall see.

So today I have a few sketch journal pages for you.

And a few random shots from last week when we went away on out extended weekend journey to Eastern Maine and New Brunswick.

We had some photogenic fog one evening.

And the lupines were blooming everywhere.

They were so gorgeous!

 And wild irises too.

And we saw lots of scenic harbors.

And we had this deer that keep showing up in the yard of our rental. I had a little zoom lens play.

Plus some crows that kept hanging around too.

I'm still working my way through my photos but having fun seeing what I managed to get.

So for some here in the US its a long 4 day Independence Day weekend. With July 4 on Tuesday, some people like my like hubby have Monday off too. Not my daughter though. I guess it depends where you work. Wow-time is just buzzing right by.

Hope this hasn't been too much babbling. Happy weekend! And thanks for visiting.

Where Would You Rather Be?

Hi everyone. Today I have a couple of pieces of art to show you.

First of all Joan's challenge over at Tag Tuesday is the Beach. So I made a shaped tag. 

I don't know why but the idea of a plastic bucket and shovel popped into my head. The kind little kids have when they sit and  dig in the sand. The kind that they use when they fill the bucket with sand and then tip it to make a sand castle. It brought back memories of when my daughter was a toddler and would play in the sand.

Its actually  double tag.The shovel comes out of the bucket. I painted some paper and then drew the shovel and bucket, cut them out, and added some details with markers. Then I added some die cuts that I colored or painted, and I stamped the sun, painted it and fussy cut it. I wanted the bucket to represent both my beach memories and also some beach things like starfish, shells and seagulls, of course.

And I wanted to participate one more time at Rosie's Circle challenge at Art Journal Journey one more time before June becomes July.

Can you believe it is almost July?

I've had this page pressed under books for 2 days trying to get it to lie flat and it has somewhat flattened out, but not fully. It looks a little lopsided in this photo, but that is why.

So my background is made with layers of tissue paper, napkins and paint. I've also added  some little stars, as well as my hand drawn and painted moon and a TH person. My scribble says He's a handsome man in the moon.

So where would you rather be-in space or on the ocean?

I'm definitely an ocean person but looking up into the night sky is pretty amazing too.

Hope its a beautiful late June day  or starry night where ever you are.

Thanks for stopping by my blog.

More from Campobello Island

Hi everyone. Today I have a lot to show you, starting with my latest piece for Rosie's circle challenge over at Art Journal Journey.

This page is almost all hand painted, with a little stamping and doodling. There are lots of doodled circles in the center of the flowers. These are my circles for the challenge. Hopefully its enough circles to fit the theme.:)

 Rosie's challenge goes through the end of the week so you still have time to join in with your own circle page.

I also have some more photos to show you from my recent extended weekend journey. Yesterday I showed you some photos of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt's summer home on Campobello Island in New Brunswick, Canada, right off the coast of Maine. If you want a brief visit to the Roosevelt summer home you can check out my post T This Week is Formal.

I will show you more of this house another day, but I want to show you this interesting lighthouse we visited on the opposite end of the island from the Roosevelt home.

This is East Quoddy Light  in a town called Wilson's Beach.  

Where you might ask is the lighthouse? You can just barely make out its red top off in the distance in the approximate center of the photo. 

So to visit and tour the lighthouse, you have to climb down a ladder onto the first stretch of beach, cross this rocky beach and then climb up another ladder  onto the little island between the mainland and the island the lighthouse sits on, then go down a ladder off of this island and approach the lighthouse's island over another small stretch of beach.

Notice I've used the word island. The lighthouse can only be reached in a 4 hour window around low tide, two hour before low tide and then 2 hours after low tide. After that the water comes in and it is impossible to pass from one little rocky island to the other and then back to the mainland.

They tell you this too with this sign in the parking area.

This area of Maine/Canada is at the base of the Bay of Fundy. If you don't know the Bay of Fundy has the world's biggest tidal change. In some places further up into the Bay there is a 60 foot (18 meter) difference between low and high tide water levels. The tide changes here were very dramatic even though we weren't that far up into the bay. Of course the fact that we had a full moon also meant the tides would be lower and higher than usual.

Although none of the ladders were really high, they were high enough, and steep too.

 This ladder  brought us back up to the mainland. 

And this ladder brought us up onto the island between the mainland and the lighthouse island.

It was pretty exciting.

You could finally see the lighthouse when you reached the peak first island. To get out to the lighthouse you had to cross this rocky and seaweed covered little beach.

East Quoddy Light is one of the few wooden lighthouses still standing. It was opened around 1831. It also goes by the name Head Harbour Lighthouse. It was manned and in use until 1986 when the Canadian Coast Guard decided to close it down. It was in disrepair when a group of both Canadian and American lighthouse lovers bought it for $1. However this was in 2000 so by this time a lot of work was needed to repair the structure.

Two of those people were there to give tours. Our tour guide was a retired man from Pennsylvania in the US. He had so many fascinating stories to tell. Each one of the renovators got to pick a room to fix up. Our guide fixed up the keeper's office and every item he included had something to do with the lighthouse's story. 

For example, the cross on the light house is called St. George's cross. St. George supposedly slayed the dragon, so one item he had in the office was a rocking chair with twin dragons carved into the back.  He had some other clever pieces with stories like this one.

Here's some views in the lighthouse, starting with the dining room in the home at the base where the keep er and  his family lived.

 Here's the  actual light.

 And the cool crackle pattern in the old paint around the windows in the top lantern room.

 I'm not sure what this is, but it was at the very top of the lantern room.

 And a view out of a window part way up the lighthouse.

And from outside.

 Here's the view from the lighthouse top of how we needed to walk to get back to the mainland. You can just see the cars in the parking lot back on the main island.

It was a really cool little hike and a unique way get to a lighthouse. We were lucky to get there just at the right time to make the walk out, since we weren't planning our day around the walk out and back. I would definitely say this experience was one of the highlights of my trip.

Hope you enjoyed the views and story.

Thanks for stopping by.

T This Week is Formal

Hi everyone. I'm glad to be back in blogland after our extended weekend vacation. We went to the most eastern city in the US, Eastport. Maine.  We rented a little cottage on the ocean and it looked out onto Passamaquoddy Bay and across the bay into New Brunswick, Canada. 

This is sunset but sunrises were also quite pretty too.

We even went over to Canada 2 of our 4 days, as well as doing a bit of hiking, beach walking, and some other adventures which I will share with you in the days to come, once I get my photos organized.

One place we visited was Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt's summer home on Campobello Island in New Brunswick. Too bad they had that piece of equipment in front of it to intrude into taking a good photo, but they were putting on a new roof.

Franklin Roosevelt was the US president from 1933-1945. Last summer you might remember I visited both his and then his wife's homes (Eleanor lived her own home after Franklin died in 1945 as his family home was left to the US Government/National Park Service) in Hyde Park, New York. 

 If you are interested in those buildings and info you can check out my posts from last August, Eleanor Roosevelt and also Franklin Roosevelt. 

Many wealthy people from Boston and New York had homes on Campobello so they could escape the summer heat. This house was considered a rustic retreat since it has no central heating and no electricity. 

You can see that it overlooks the ocean. In fact the city on the opposite side of this Island is Eastport where we stayed. The cottage we rented was about 1/1000th the size of this house.

I will show you more of the home another day  ( as I still have photos to go through).

But I wanted to tell you about this because it is Tuesday which means its T day. T Day is time to share a drink and some food if you want to include that. I am going to share some tea today, in fact, tea with Eleanor Roosevelt.

The Canadian Park Service runs an hour long program called Tea with Eleanor. You go to a cottage on the park grounds to have formal tea, eat cookies and hear stories about Eleanor Roosevelt. I thought it looked like an interesting and unique thing to do, so we went and had tea.

The day we went they served ginger cookies, which is funny because I baked a huge batch of ginger cookies so we could have some snacks on the trip.

You can see the cookies we were served above, and here is my cookies.

We heard some wonderful stories about this woman who was truly ahead of her time. One story was about how at age 72 (or around then) Eleanor took shooting lessons because she had been asked to go speak in an area where she had threats on her life. Did she shy away and stay home?  No, she drove herself there and went and spoke, carrying her gun in her purse. If you don't know, Eleanor Roosevelt died in 1962 at age 78 and I'm not sure how many women in the 1950's or in their 70's at that time period would do that. 

Serving tea on Campobello was something Eleanor would have done when she summered on the island.

Stop by Bleubeard and Elizabeth's blog to see what the T Gang has been up to.

I'm working on catching up since I only had my phone when I was away, so be patient and I will be by to visit your blog.

Happy T Day everyone.

Can You Find all the Circles?

Hi everyone. I have another page for Art Journal Journey, Rosie's fun theme is circles, and I am making this a one of those "Where's Waldo" hunt pages to see if you can find all the circles/ovals.

LOL

It also works for Moo Mania because the theme there is Underwater and mermaids, starfish, shells and anchors are usually found under the water.

My background is made by collage paper scraps and some tape, and then I did a bit of painting (the palm tree) and some drawing,painting and cutting (the mermaid and the hard to see scallop shells) and some die cutting (the chains, anchors and starfish).

So not a long post and also my last post for the week.  My family and I are heading off for an extended weekend in Maine for a little change of scenery, This just might be my summer of visiting one of my favorite states. Or at least my June of visiting Maine. This will be trip number 3 for me as I've been to Rockland, Portland and now about as far downeast as you can go, all the way northeast  to Eastport.

And please keep your fingers crossed that Sunday the weather will be nice and most importantly, the seas are calm. I booked a boat trip out to a puffin nesting island last January (thankfully I jumped on it-the boat trips were sold out for the season by February 1) and if it has to be cancelled, we won't be doing that this year. I had wanted to see some puffins in Iceland last year, and I did manage to see one-though I didn't know it until I got home and zoomed up my photo on Photoshop. I hope I should be able to see thousands of them since they say around 5,000 of the birds nest on this sanctuary island. 

I'm especially excited about that part of the weekend.

So enjoy the rest of your week and your weekend. Hope its a good one. I'll miss being by but hopefully I'll see you on Monday.

Thanks for visiting.

Lunch at the Museum

Hi everyone.  Its been a couple of hot and humid days here in New Hampshire. In fact this morning (Monday) we had to leave at 4:30 AM for my husband's appointment back at the hospital in Boston, and it was already 71 degrees F (about 22 degrees C). Its hardly ever that hot so early in the morning here. And that weather brings storms, which is what we've got going on tonight.
But the good news is the hubby now doesn't need to go back to Boston for a month, which means he is doing well after his kidney transplant. :) He was going back every week and then every two weeks.
 I'm writing Monday evening to celebrate  Tuesday which is T day. Time to stop by Bleubeard and Elizabeth's  blog and to share a drink and maybe some food. We T Gang regulars would love for you to join us too.

For T Day today I have some more photos from the Museum of Art in Portland, Maine which I visited last Tuesday.

Part of the museum is an historic mansion- the McLellan House. It is only recently been refinished and opened up as one area of the  museum. If you look at this photo of the house, you can see the brick building behind it which is the museum proper. You enter the home from the actual museum, not the front door.

The art of architecture- the walls, trim, windows, stairs and other design elements of the house are the art they are showing here.

(Whole house photo is from Wikipedia.)

The front door and main stairs made quite a statement.

And looked cool from underneath too. Pretty interesting how they are free floating.

There were a few pieces of art in the house. I wonder what was in the original framed white space to start with?

I love these antique plates.

 I think this wallpaper is stunning, but I don't think I could live looking at it every day. But it would make cool fabric for a quilt.

The federal style details are wonderful. I liked the few additions they added, like this mirror that could be lighted with candles for evening viewing since this house was built pre-electricity. The Federal style (roughly 1780-1840) grew out of the US now being a new nation and the European style of the time (that went by names like Georgian, Empire,Regency and  Biedermeier) . 

And for T Day, how about this statue?  I see a coffee pot, milk, pancakes, a donut, and a few other yummies?

A view of the neighboring mansion out one of the windows.

And a view out a different window on the opposite side of the building into some of the homes and business in downtown Portland.

And lastly, I needed a drink and  some lunch-especially with a 1:30 appointment. I had to go talk financial planning for retirement.  Eeks. Sounds a little daunting to me still. So I went down to the museum cafe and had a little lunch.
So I had this chicken salad wrap with chips  (I believe they are crisps in Britain? If not, please let me know)  and a ice tea/lemonade 1/2 and 1/2 drink. Perfect for a very hot day even in an air conditioned art museum.

Got my body and brain in perfect mode to go  to my meeting. :)

Hope you stop by Elizabeth's blog to see what the T Gang has been up too.

Thanks for visiting.