Documented

Hi everyone. Its Wednesday already. Only one more day of August. Summer comes and goes way too fast, doesn't it?

This first week with kids at school is just exhausting. Man, I need a vacation!  Ha-ha. The good thing is that we start school 50 minutes later than ever so my mornings aren't quite so stressful. The bad news is we get out 50 minutes later which is really throwing off my mental clock and means I have to deal with a lot more traffic. 

But I am glad it feels like fall and is cooler. Not so bad being back in a building all day when the temperature is only in the low 60s or 17 degrees C.

Ha-ha-sorry to complain but it's better now that I have that off my chest.

The other bit of good news is we have a long holiday weekend ahead. Looking forward to that.

So how about some art.

Here's a spread from my night skies journal.  Can you find the quote?

It will be my last link up to Jo's challenge at Art Journal Journey. Thanks Jo for the fun month.

This page is made with some stamping, a cool lunar image from an old calendar, as well as some paper tape and other paper bits.
Oh yes, and yesterday lots of folks asked about the fish.  Here's the photo again.

And here's a photo I found online that shows their pretty blue color.

They are mackerel. I think they are really attractive fish. I love the blue. Sometimes we keep some and eat them but this time they all got released. They are back taking a swim in the ocean.

Keeping this post short today. Thanks for visiting!

Picnic on the Boat

Happy T Day everyone. I can't believe we're at the end of August already.  I hope none of you are involved in the Texas flooding. The views from the news are mind blowing. Wow, what a lot of water. My heart goes out to the people and the pets suffering through the floods.

On a happier note, Tuesday means it's T Day.  Time to stop by Bleubeard and Elizabeth's blog to join in the weekly fun. Just share a photo and a story about something you drank. Include a meal with it if you like. Or maybe even a little adventure story too.
Today I am going to share a little barbicue story.

So my husband found this little portable boat grill last year. Someone was selling it after just a couple of uses. I think one issue with a boat grill is that you're not going to use it all the time, but a new one will still cost you a lot of money. Last year we never used the grill at all because the hubby decided it needed a better way to connect to the boat, but one gorgeous Sunday this summer we decided to see how it worked since he had recently picked up the better connector on eBay.
So we bought some hot dogs because they were easy to transport and if they ended up on the ocean bottom as crab food at least it wasn't a huge loss.
And you can see our dog Pete liked the idea of hot dogs too.

 Of course I never thought to bring any plates since we've never needed them on the boat before, so cups had to make do. But the hotdogs actually came out pretty good, and I did remember all those toppings many of us New Englanders like to put on our dogs. It was a total junk food lunch, but I think a Sunday afternoon boating lunch calls for a little splurge.

 But the beer we  had to wash down the hot dog was certainly not junk. We had this brew on our Finger Lake journey and it was superb, so we brought some home. A gorgeous Sunday was reason enough to celebrate.

 I finished mine with our dessert.
But I must report that when we went fishing that day, I caught by far the most fish. Nine for me and only 2 for my husband. :)

 And I thought this reflection in the water was pretty amazing. It looks like an impressionist painting.

That's my post for today. Happy T day ladies (and gentlemen too).

Roses with the Crooked Trim

A new week is here. The weather was gorgeous this past weekend and is suppose to stay that way most of the week. That is good.  Usually when school starts it is hot and humid, so I am happy that we are having September weather so it feels more like back to school.

Plus I just love this weather.

So my journal page today is quite romantic BUT I can't believe how crooked some of the upper trim is. Guess I must have been looking at an angle when I attached it. Not good, but it as what it is.

So I am also linking this page up to Jo's Poetry in Motion challenge at Art Journal Journey. There's hardly any time left to month when the challenge changes, but there are still a few days. :)

I made my page with bits of a napkin, some white gesso, a magazine cut out of some roses, along with a postage stamp and some rubber stamped images.
And I'm going to join up with Try It On Tuesday which has a theme right now of In My Garden, since these blooms look like they freshly cut from the garden.

And it's that time of  year when there seems to be so many different mushrooms appearing. Here's the latest I have come across.

Thanks for stopping by!

Saturday Play

Hi everyone. It was a gorgeous Saturday here in New Hampshire. Blue skies, around 70 degrees (22 degrees C), and tonight is again crisp and almost fall like.  Good for sleeping for sure.

So I had a great day with LOTS of art time and even a little nap. It was my kind of Saturday.

Here's some more collage pages I finished up in my "travel journal" from my extended weekend in New York's Finger Lake region. I am making this in a blank  board book and cutting up lots of travel brochures you can pick up for free. I've also added some ephemera and a little paper tape too.

 The left hand page has 3 cards that flip up.

 In this view you can see them flipped up.

I've got lots of quotes, so thanks to Jo's suggestion, I will link up to Art Journal Journey and her great theme of Poetry in Motion.
And how about a few other random photos from the journey too.

 A mural on the side of a building in Watkins Glen. They have a major race track in the town.

 Some fun painted moose when we passed through Bennington, Vermont. (We had to travel through Vermont to reach New York).

 And we stopped at this wild gift store.  All the statues outside attracted our attention, which is the plan I am sure the store owners had when they put them there.

 I kind of liked this giant hotdog.

 They even had statues on the roof.

And at a brewery we visited, they had the really interesting bathroom sign.

And this is the view from one end of Seneca Lake at sunset one evening. We had dinner on the deck of a restaurant with this beautiful view.

And finally, some parting words of wisdom.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

The Lovely Couple

Happy Friday everyone. I am glad the weekend is almost upon us even though this is only day 2 of work. Actually it hasn't been all that bad being back to work, but I am  ready to slip back into summer mode for a couple of days.
So I have another journal page for Jo's fantastic challenge at Art Journal Journey.

So this month's theme is Poetry In Motion, so I used a rubber stamp I have to stamp these 2 lines from a Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem with the same title as the first line of my stamp. Longfellow was a New England poet from was born in Portland, Maine. 

The poem has nothing to do with a wedding. You can read the whole poem here: Longfellow poem. I went just by the 2 lines on my stamp, and this TH found relative couple is what I thought worked well with those lines.

So for my background I took out a magazine page from an old issue of Daphne's Diary that I had. The only coloring I added to it was the brown inky background to make it a little more vintage. I die cut the frame from gold metallic paper, and added those little gold dots. I also used a bit of some clear acetate paper that had quotes printed on it, plus a little white paper lace and a butterfly image. The top and bottom edges of the page are painted and I added a bit of silver tape.

And since there are some birds in the background, I am also linking up to Moo Mania. The current theme is birds.

And I'm going for 3 link ups today. :) The newest theme at Try It On Tuesday is In My Garden, and I think this pieces works for that too. 

That's all for me today. Happy start to your weekend everyone.

Back to School

Hi everyone. Yes I go back to school today but that's not why I titled this post as I did.

Here's why.

The latest challenge at Tag Tuesday is Back to School.  I thought the colorful leaves reminded me of fall, which is when school used to start around here. And I had this fun  paper tape, as well as the A is for apple little minnie banner piece.

So since its my back to school day, how about a little history lesson?. Have your ever heard of Glenn Curtiss?

When we went to the Finger Lakes a couple of weeks ago we visited the Glenn Curtiss museum. It was my husband's pick, since he knew about Glenn Curtiss. I learned a lot about this man at the museum.

So Glenn Curtiss was an inventor back in the very early 1900's. In fact, he ran a motorcycle shop in Hammondsport, NY and he actually set a world speed record that lasted until 1930 on one of his bikes.

What I found interesting is how motorcycles changed my motorized bicycles to later on something that looks more like a motorcycle. The museum had a collection of his motorcycles.

But even more interesting was Glenn Curtiss's aviation story. After the Wright Brothers made the first flight, Curtiss was building planes and actually flew on a frozen Lake Keuka, which is the second Finger Lake we visited. 

However, he was then sued by the Wright Brothers because they had a general patent on airplane design and they claimed he stole their design. However, he then worked with Alexander Graham Bell (the telephone inventor) to make a moveable tail piece. It gave better flight control, and in many people's mind, made his plane design different from the Wright Brothers. Curtiss even won a Scientific American award for flight, and won a challenge to be the first to fly from Albany, NY to New York City.  He started Curtiss Aviation and built lots of planes.  Eventually his company joined with the Wright Brother's aviation and they formed Curtiss-Wright Aviation.

The Wright Brothers are names that went down in all the general history books though. Not Glenn Curtiss. Here's a few examples of his planes.

 The Curtiss Jenny.  Several countries used this plane as a training plane during the Second World War.

 He was also the first to develop planes that could land and take off on water.

And he designed planes to lands on naval ships too.

(As well as he was the first person to design travel trailers to be pulled behind cars too.)

The museum had some other interesting antiques too. But those will need to wait for another day.

Thanks for visiting me today.

Scissors and Glue Equal Collage

Hi everyone! I am waiting for the less humid air to move in, which they say it will be doing anytime now. The breeze has just picked up as I write and I've already opened the windows so maybe it will feel a little less damp and more comfortable in the house.
Yesterday I went to visit my mom in the morning and then on my way home stopped and did a little back to school clothes shopping for myself. Got a couple of things which is always fun. Those first few weeks of school usually require summer clothes, and my work collection is getting pretty shabby,  (seeing for some reason summer fabrics never seem to stay nice as long as the heavier winter fabrics), and right now if you can find anything there are pretty good deals. :)

One thing I haven't done in forever is to cover a blank board book with paper. It's fun to cut and paste and see what happens when you combine all the scraps. 

I usually come home for a journey (big or small) with lots of free tourist brochures and other paper pieces I collect along the way. So this time I decided instead of making a travel journal I would cut and paste and college. I would see what the process gave me.

This is the first half of the book. I  like the fact that it isn't a huge book to complete.

And how about some more photos from the trip to the Finger Lakes. I can't believe we left 2 weeks ago. 

These thistles were in a field next to the hotel, and when we left one morning , the sun was trying to burn through some fog which made it rather intriguing. 

So tomorrow it's back to work for me. I am 50% excited to go back and 50% ready to retire. I guess the fact that I am 50% ready to go back means I am not ready to retire yet. :) It amazes me I am starting year 34 of teaching. Holy cow. Where did time go?
And on that comment, I will wish you all a great day.