A Trip Down Memory lane

Happy Tuesday all my T Day friends and visitors.
 First I would like to share the cool ATC I received from Deb for the T Day celebration a couple of weeks ago.

 And this fun little package of goodies was included.

Thanks Deb for this great ATC and little package! You were an awesome swap partner.

So today for T Day I want to share my lunch from last Saturday. My husband and I took a 2 hour trip out to visit our daughter who lives on the opposite side of New Hampshire from us. We live on the east side of the state near Maine, and she lives on the west side of the state near Vermont.

When I was a kid, my grandmother had a little cabin in the woods in southwestern New Hampshire near where my daughter lives.  I used to go stay with her during the summer (the cabin was strictly seasonal) and I have really fond memories of those visits.

A couple of months ago my daughter told me how she'd gone to eat at this place that is now called Kimball Farms but used to be called Silver Ranch. This was one of places we used to go have ice cream or a rare dinner out when we went to visit my grandmother at her cabin. I told my daughter I wanted to go there one day this summer and take a little trip down memory lane.

This past Saturday was the day.

When I arrived I was surprised to see how much things had not changed. It's been a lot of years since I had been there. I won't mention how many years, but it has to be  since disco  and those funky platform shoes  were the hot trends. 

You went up and ordered at an outdoor window and then you could either eat outside at a picnic table or inside at a slightly fancier  picnic table.

Even the inside looked the same.

 In all my excitement I almost forgot to take a photo of my lunch. I had  a tuna sandwich on rye with coleslaw as my side. All plates came with a slice of watermelon, and in my green cup was a diet coke.

After lunch I took my family on a little drive around to check out some of the places I remember from my childhood.

The beach on Lake Contoocook where I used to go swimming.

 And a quick stop at the Cathedral of the Pines. The Cathedral of the Pines is an outdoor nondenominational church that was built by a family after their son was killed during World War 2. There are also some walking trails which is what we used to do with my grandmother. 

In the church area is this great view of Mount Monadnock. This is the second most climbed mountain in the world behind Mount Fuji in Japan. I think it is so popular because it is not very high ( a little over 3000 feet or 965 meters), has several trails to the top ranging from fairly easy to more difficult,  has a great view from the top , and is in an area where it is accessible to a large population base. I climbed it once as a kid, and think maybe I need to do it again sometime.

This house has no connection to me but it  is a good view of how pretty this area is.

And after our little drive, we stopped and got some ice cream.

This is back at Kimball Farms.  I had a lot of ice creams here as a kid.
Stop by  Bluebeard and Elizabeth's blog  to see what food, drinks and fun the T gang has to share.
Thanks for visiting.

Finally the Humidity is Gone

It's a beautiful Sunday morning here in my world. The husband and I are relaxing  and not rushing anyplace. I should have gone for an early morning walk, but being lazy seemed much more appealing. :)

I thought I'd start out and share some of my favorite reads as of late since lazy mornings are good times to read (or to talk about books at least).

A playful cozy mystery set in Oxford and Cotswolds. Nice writing and not too much brain power needed on a warm summer afternoon. 

A little classic literature so my brain doesn't turn into mush. It may not be one of Jane Austen's most popular stories but did she really write any bad books?

OK, I loved this book. Talk about great characters and a story that ends up making you feel so good inside. I couldn't put it down and read it on the plane trip home from Canada. Eleanor may be quirky-with good reason you discover, but she is completely fine in the end.

I read a book a few years ago about Tombstone and the 'old west" days by this author and decided to read something else by her because I enjoyed her writing. I chose this one because the cover looked exotic and it was set right after the first world war and into the 1920's, a period I hadn't read much about. I really enjoyed it. There were some famous characters in it too like Winston Churchill and Lawrence of Arabia.  But all in all it was an interesting read with good characters.

 This is book 3 of a mystery trilogy. You really need to read them in order starting with the Vistant and then the Summoning God. I liked how they jumped back and forth between the Anasazi, a Native American culture that disappear many hundreds of years agos, and the present day archeologists who were finding info about them. The authors are archeologists (and they cite sources in the back)  so I am guessing that the info is pretty accurate.They were really enjoyable fiction reads with some memorable characters.

 And last of my summer reading was something a little more educational but this was a cool story about a couple of men (but really one in particular) who brought us Americans fruits and vegetables. I didn't know that we really were a culture that for the most part ate only  meat and starch before the late 1800. Lots of things we now see commonly, peaches, navel oranges, avocados, nectarines, mangoes, were brought into this country during end end of the 1800's and into the early 1900's. 

And before I sign off, how about 3  pages I recently made in my Newfoundland travel journal.

This first one included a hand carved maple leaf stamp since I wanted something that matched the one in the Canadian flag and I didn't have any images that did.

You might notice the stamp doesn't say Canada but says Newfoundland. That's because until the late 1940's Newfoundland was its own country, not part of Canada. 

 And this next one to remember the name of the road we traveled on our trip, one of the top 10 scenic routes in Canada. The Viking ship is colored die cut.

 And finally this page because we spent several days exploring Gros Morne National Park, which was beautiful with mountains, coastal beaches and some beautiful fjords too.

 And yes,  I will show you some photos soon.  Today's post is a little long already for much more. photos

The tree in the page above is so bent over because of the strong ocean winds. It is hard for these evergreen to grow straight and tall. Locally they are called tuckamores. 

I am linking up to Chris's challenge of Art For Art's Sake over at Art Journal Journey. Hard to believe there is only a couple of days left to this month.

That's all for me today. Think we'll head out for a little boat adventure as it's a gorgeous day.

Enjoy what's left of your weekend.

And thanks for visiting.

Pages and Weather Talk

Happy Friday everyone. It's still very humid and steamy here today, but with the sun out this morning I did manage to squeeze in a shot walk. That feels good because with all this rain lately I am feeling very cooped inside. And they say we are going to have more severe storms this afternoon and then more rain tomorrow. I would hate to be one of the tourists renting a lake house in my area this week because it hasn't been a great week to enjoy the outside for certain.

So today I have some collage pages from my Japan travel journal to share. I am not sure they are really art pages, but you can decide that for yourself.

First of all, there is the side of Japan that is Hello Kitty and other cute things. So I made the spread above with stickers, magazine cut outs, the back of a mini playing card and some postage stamps. I didn't realize until I visited Japan how big they are into Peanuts cartoon characters, especially Snoopy. (I saw a store that was just Snoopy things in Tokyo.) And since Snoopy is a favorite of mine also, I added the big stamped image on the tag. I've had this stamp for years and think it is one of my best (and most used) mark down finds.

 This page is on cloth. I taped down a receipt (pretty cool in Japanese) and added a few postage stamps.  I bought a whole packet of used stamps off of eBay when I came home because they aren't expensive to buy and make great page ephemera.

And another cloth page that I added a map from a tourist booklet I had (in English at that), with a bit of stamping and some postage stamps also.

My studio cleaning is coming along nicely and actually moving quicker than I expected it too. I should say the closet is getting done quicker than I expected. I still have a lot to go through elsewhere in the room. I have so many art supplies. I guess that is good in many ways and unnecessary in other ways.

Wishing you all a great Friday and start to your weekend. And I'm thankful you stopped by to visit.

It's Raining Again

We're having another dark and wet morning here in New Hampshire, although they do say we might see some sun this afternoon. But it's still supposed to be humid and tropical at least until the weekend. 

Today I have a tag for Tag Tuesday. The newest challenge is nautical/seaside.

And I have also started working on a travel journal for my last trip to Newfoundland a couple of weeks ago. I knew right away what I wanted my first page to be.

The biggest challenge for me was to make the iceberg look more than just a white painted chunk. I wanted it to have depth and also to show a bit of the blue tint it had. But of course an iceberg isn't blue. And since 2/3 of an iceberg is below the surface of the water, I wanted to show how you could see at least the different color below the water's surface.

I am linking this page up to Chris's ART FOR ART'S SAKE challenge at Art Journal Journey.

My husband and myself spent part of a day on an  iceberg hunt. We saw quite a few.

 This is the one I roughly used as the inspiration for my page.

 I love how the top looked with the sun hitting it.

 Even more cool was how fast the iceberg melted over 24 hours.

You can really see how much of it is right under the surface of the water.

All of these icebergs broken off from the Greenland ice sheet and happened to float down to Newfoundland.

OK, enough for me today. Thanks for visiting!

Practicing for Retirement

That is how my summer feels this year. I have sunk into the land of  domestication. It's been humid and rainy all week and this morning we had a peak of sun so I went out and did some gardening. My vegetable garden is like a jungle and full of budding fruit.

Today I picked my first produce of the season:

3 cucumbers, 1 green zucchini, 1 yellow zucchini and 1 bell and 1 jalapeno pepper.

Looks like tonight I might use the bigger zucchini to make some chocolate zucchini bread for our breakfast tomorrow. The garden is full of potential.

 My tomato plants are as tall as me. They are LOVING this summer's excess amount of humidity.

 And a few peppers are almost ready to pick.

 And there's more zucchini both green and yellow to come.

This week I have been also baking-banana bread and a loaf of sourdough bread and I've started a major studio rearrange and clean out. Well really started it. Last week I moved a couple of things but now I am full on in cleaning mode. The place is in the what a mess stage.

More rain due this afternoon and tomorrow and I hope to make some headway into my cleaning and maybe even manage to take a break with some art.

Or work on the pair of socks I am knitting as last week I found 2 different skeins of sock yarn I forgot I even had.

And lastly I have a page from my Japan travel journal for you. I am linking up to both Chris's challenge at Art Journal Journey and the latest challenge at Try It On Tuesday which is book paper.

This lovely Japanese woman serving up some kind of food came from an advertisement in a Japanese travel magazine I brought home. I made the page by first stamping the background, then adding a piece of origami paper and then my magazine woman. I finished off the page with some metallic tape along the edge. 

That's all for me. Hope everyone is having a fantastic day.

T Stands for a Newfoundland Food Tour

Hi ladies. Happy Tuesday and Happy T day. Today for T I am going to take you on a culinary tour of some foods which I discovered in Newfoundland .

Hopefully this won't be too long or overwhelming.

 I am going to first start with this beer my husband had with dinner one night. I took a couple of sips. It was light and refreshing.

And I actually wanted to try this  Vinland Martini cocktail when we stopped for lunch one day, but I also didn't want  an alcoholic drink at lunchtime as I would be down for the count for the rest of the day. I am a lightweight as I have been constantly reminded from my daughter when I had 2 margaritas on the 4th of July and then needed to go take a nap. :)

So I had water instead.

And one day my husband and I had to try another local specialty for lunch

 I actually once had moose many years ago when I visiting relatives in Sweden. But that time is was in a roast form. I guess I found the burger a little strong tasting compared to plain old beef burger, but my husband enjoyed his. But now I can say I have had one.

And a local berry called Bakeapple is found  in Newfoundland. It is also known as cloudberry, which I had all those years ago in Sweden also.  But since I couldn't remember what it tasted like, I tried it in this pie.

 To me if was like a mix of apple and orange together. I liked it, but with a little ice cream on it it would have been even better.

 Then we tried a local meat that is popular in a sandwich. It is  lightly sweetened beef concoction called a donair. The sweet tasted like maple syrup but I am not sure about that. When I looked up the recipe on how to make donair I don't see anything sweet in the ingredients at all. This local pizza chain had created a donair pizza that wee tried.

I enjoyed the cool veggies on the top of the warm meet and cheese, but no tomato sauce.

 I'm not sure the husband cared for the Donair.

 We also tried a seafood pizza. We ordered the small pizzas which was six inches in size, so even though my photos might make them look big, they were not. We each ordered a different pizza and shared with each other.

 One  night for dinner I wasn't very hungry so I ordered an egg and one of these local fried breads called a touton. It was served with cranberry sauce and molasses. I don't think you were suppose to mix the 2 sauces together but you could use one or other. I prefered the cranberry sauce over the molasses, and this touton was so big I couldn't finish it. It was tasty, and from what I read about its history, it was created as a way not to waste  left over bread dough.

And since Newfoundland was partly settled because of it's rich fishing in the Grand Banks, there was lots of cod on the menu. (And sadly, cod fishing is very limited now because of overfishing from all the big trawlers that came from all over the world for cod but there is  still have enough for it to be popular on the menu everywhere  we went.)

 One day  I had delicious seafood chowder (and a diet coke).

 I would have tried these cod tongues actually, but it seemed like a lot of cash just for a taste. And there was no way my husband was going to split an order with me.

 And a couple of times I had fish and chips.

Fish and chips is one of my favorites anyhow. But I liked how in Newfoundland they used the fluffier British style batter on the fish than we have here in the US. Just no mushy peas (which I wish we had here). Instead the fish was served with coleslaw like we get in the US.
And one my other best meals was this lunch. A beef brisket, provolone cheese and shrimp sandwich. Who knew the 2 flavors of beef  and shrimp worked so well together? It was really cold that particular day (I even bought a winter hat as the wind was whipping and bitingly cold) and the warm sandwich hit the spot.

Of course water and a diet coke to drink for me.

And lastly, I have 2 other sweets bites to share with you.

First of all, another local berry. This is partridgeberry pie-with ice cream this time. Partridgeberry is slightly tart and related to cranberries here in the US.

Later when I looked it up I found out it is also called lingonberry, which is very common in Swedish cooking and I've had many times. But never in pie, and I really liked it that way.

And finally, no trip to Canada would be complete without a stop at this Canadian Institution:

Tim Horton's. We got a mini box of donut holes, mainly because I do like a good donut or donut hole for a snack on occasion. It made good junk food while on the road. :)
Stop by Bleubeard and Elizabeth's blog to join the T day fun.
I just mailed my ATC's out this morning so I'm not showing anything to ruin the surprise. Next week!
Thanks for visiting my blog.