Little Blessings

Hi everyone. August is quickly winding down, isn't it?  The weather is still extremely hot and summery here, although by Friday it is supposed to cool off, but maybe only for a couple of days. The summer heat sure doesn't want to end yet. 

I wanted to post one last journal page for Bleubeard and Elizabeth's challenge at Art Journal Journey. This month we've been counting our blessings. Thanks Elizabeth for such a good challenge.

So my page is about some little blessings in life. I did some coloring, some doodling, and cutting out some quotes and faces from an old FLOW magazine.

Keeping this post short. This extreme heat has been wearing me out, but at least today the AC at school worked. That was a lot better than yesterday.

Thanks for visiting.

T Stands for Relaxing

Hi everyone.  Happy T Day to you all. If you don't know what T day is, it is when we share a drink and often food related post.

Thanks to Elizabeth our hostess. Stop by her blog and join us for a cup of cheer.
This week  T is all about relaxing.

Last Friday evening was warm but not hot and we were tired after work. So my husband started a fire in our fire pit and we spent some outside time.

We cooked some Polish sausage and some veggies over the fire. While it was cooking we enjoyed a cold margarita.

I put them in our insulated tumblers so the ice wouldn't melt and they would stay nice and cold. OK, hard to tell what was in the tumbler. I use my tumbler all the time, for ice tea, hot tea, and on occasion, a margarita. 

It was nice to enjoy the evening and watch the light fading. 

But at least no bears came out of the woods to join us for dinner.   :)

And on the back to school front:

My teacher work days and freshman orientation are over and today, classes start fresh for another school year on this T day. Year 35-holy cow.

Have a great T day my friends.

Thanks for visiting.

Taking a Walk

HI everyone. Just got home from my morning walk, and what a nice walking morning it was. Our humidity is due back by tomorrow, but right now, it is crisp and cool.

And that is the theme of my page today. It is in my Newfoundland travel journal, and it is a bit curled on the bottom so the bottom words look a little tilted.

I made my page using watercolor crayons first to make the base mountain. Then I used watered down acrylic paint for the sky and not so watered down acrylic paint for the clouds.  Then I cut out the people from a travel brochure I brought home (as well as some of the words) and I finished up with a sticker and a little wooden mountain.

Walking is a huge blessing in my life. The worst part about going back to school for me is giving up my morning walk, especially on this crisp and cool fall mornings. I love to walk and as you know, it is good for our bodies too. I wish I could get my husband to walk more often with me, but at least I am blessed with 2 dogs who thinks it the highlight of they morning.

I am linking up this page to Bleubeard and Elizabeth's Count Your Blessings challenge over at Art Journal Journey

This page is when we went on a ranger lead walk on part of the earth's mantel in Gros Morne National Park. Because this is land that came up from under the surface of the earth, it has a high iron content (as well as other heavy metals) and so it is orange as it has rusted when it met the air. Here's the photos I showed you already from this place if you are interested: The Tablelands.

But since my post today is about walking, I will show you some photos from my walks in the last week.

 The beaver pond looks like a prehistoric swamp.

 Tussack moth cterpillar.

 Mushrooms and thistles.

 And a feather I found. It is either from a hawk or owl.

Have a great rest of your weekend and start to your new week.

Friends

How about a slightly crooked photo for this Saturday? 

I colored the background in my calendar journal page, added a bit of napkin, then cut up a postcard I had with all these photobooth snapshots of people. And I added some mini numbers from some TH emphera. 

Friends are certainly a blessing. As are family members, who can also still be your best friends too.

I wanted to link this up to the Blessings Challenge at Art Journal Journey  It is being hosted by the handsome Bleubeard and the lovely and smart Elizabeth. 

It's suppose to be a nice weekend here. Two days back at school and I forget so fast that it is still summer. The cooler weather the last few days probably didn't help.  Guess I am in  September mode. Funny how fast vacation mode goes away and how fast you fall back into work routine. It is hard to believe that in a week it will be September. Where did the summer disappear to?

Hope your weekend gives you good weather and a little fun. Whatever good weather would be for you and whatever is fun for you.

Enjoy!

Ogunquit Museum of American Art and a Bear Story

Hi everyone. Another Friday has rolled around again.  One day down at work and I am right back in the routine. At least that's not the worst thing. But of course I was tired when I came home yesterday and decided to go read on my hammock on my screen porch. The dogs came out and joined me.
So it is just before 5 PM (17 hours) and the dogs get crazy. I figured it was a wild turkey wandering through the high grass off to the side of the house because they have wandered there before. So I look out and about 15 feet from me, sitting in the high grass, is a bear. I think he was trying to decide whether to go snack at the bird feeders or not.
I think, maybe with my phone (which I have with me) I can get a photo. I think oh no, I have to go out to get into the house.  And then I think about the dogs chasing the bear, just as Pete, who knows how to open the screen porch door, lets himself out and chases the bear off into the woods.
Then I worry that Pete is going to be clawed by the bear because I know that can happen. Black bear around here are usually run and climb a tree if they can't get away (I know that because one of the dogs we've had liked to tree bears and then spend like 2 hours running around the base of the tree barking at them), but you never know. A bear has big claws and if they turn the dogs can be severely injured. Luckily about 5 minutes later Pete comes running back, wagging his tail and wiggling his body like he's just had the best fun of his life.
Guess tonight the bird feeder comes back in for a while again. I already brought it in once earlier in the summer when the bear was out there one night at 3 AM. (More normal bear time and 5 in the afternoon.)
OK, let me get to the post I had planned.
Today I want to show you some photos from my trip to the Ogunquit Museum of American Art in Ogunquit, Maine. I went  last week with a friend, and surprisingly, I had never been there before. In fact, I didn't even know there was a museum there, even though I used to go and visit some other  friends in that town when they lived there.

The museum is small but sits on a gorgeous property right on the ocean. The art wasn't bad,  but the gardens were amazing. It's a beautiful day to be outside so let's take a walk.

Hope you enjoyed your walk around the grounds. I don't know about you, but I would love this garden to be at my house, but I guess I'd need a permanent gardener to do all the work it requires. Ha-ha. Guess I better stick with just enjoying the memories or going back for another visit.

 I will show you the art another day in case you are curious about that. If you're curious you can check out the museum's website at Ogunquit Museum of Art.

And as always, thanks for visiting.

Up, Up and Away

This page makes me think of that 1960's song which goes "Up, up and away in my beautiful balloon."

I am linking up to the newest theme at Try It On Tuesday which is Take a Ride. Just to show you how long it took me to finish this page, the background is some book paper from an earlier theme.  I used a page from a magazine which is sprayed with ink. And I took some string media which I bought off the markdown rack awhile back. I usd a bit of blue paint to give it some color, and then I swirled it over the page. 

The border flowers are die cuts which I added and then colored with either markers or paint.I also added some paper tape along the top and bottom. I drew and painted the balloon, and then I added the chipboard dragonflies which I painted and outlined with black Sharpie.

I also think music is a blessing so I am going to link up to Bleubeard and Elizabeth's challenge over at Art Journal Journey. The challenge this month is Count Your Blessings.

Hope everyone has a great day. And thanks for visiting.

Bittersweet

Hi everyone.  It's almost time to go back to school. The last day of vacation is always a weird day. Excitement for the new year, sadness my down time if over, ready to see my co-worker friends on a more regular basis, wondering what this years kids will be like, all kinds of thoughts running through my head. I'm sure those of you who teach or have taught know what I am saying.

But no complaints about my summer break.

I thought I would share a day I did some dyeing a few weeks back. Nothing fancy, just some purchased dye and some white sheeting, and me twisting the strips into all kinds of contorted rolls and rubber banded designs.

 I soaked the strips in soda ash first and I will say I was happy with the color results. When dried and rinsed they still seemed pretty bright.

 But I have had better results wrapping and tying with strings or rubber bands.

 Some of my rolled forms took the color all the way through better than others.

Now I need to decide what I want to do with these. 

But I am sure I will figure that out.

Have a great day everyone, and thanks for visiting my blog.

T Stands for Words of Wisdom

Hi T Day ladies. Tuesday has come around again and it's time to share our T related adventures. My adventure today is this cup and mug journal page. Since there are 3 cups on this page, I'm inviting you all to share a drink with me. Sorry, I don't have any coffee on my page so maybe you only want to join me if you are a tea drinker.  Ha-ha.

I am linking up to T Stands for Tuesday over at Bleubeard and Elizabeth's blog.

I also think our T Day group of blog friends is a blessing because it is great to meet and communicate with people from all over the place. You ladies are a nice group to touch base with once a week. And since our T Day hostess Elizabeth is also the hostess this month over at Art Journal Journey and since she picked a theme of Count Your Blessings, I am going to link up with that challenge also. 

I'm keeping my post short this week. I go back to work on Thursday and I spent the day trying to wrap up a bunch of chores. Tonight I am all worn out. 

Thanks for dropping by to visit.

Ancient Life

 I recently left a comment on a blog post about how it is good to learn new things. I'm sure you all agree with me.

So today I want to show you a very ancient form of life called a thrombolite.

Don't get too excited that you are going to see some large dinosaur like creature. Thrombolites were some of the first forms of life on Earth and were single celled bacteria type of creatures which used photosynthesis to get food. They grew in round mounds, and some of them even fossilized.

I thought the only remaining fossils of them could be found in Western Australia.  But then, when preparing for a trip, I did my research and found out there is one other place on Earth (that we know of) where thrombolite fossils can be found.

Those who stop by regularly probably guessed it was Newfoundland.  For me, with a biology degree and teaching a class of microbiology, it was really exciting to see these. 

I created this page in my travel journal using material from a brochure write up, some tape, some paper scraps and also stamping this windy face image. Once I stamped him directly onto the page and the other time I stamped him on tissue paper and then used matte medium to attach the tissue paper to the page. But here's the biggest thing I find confusing. On my actual page, they both look the same color. I wonder why one of then (the tissue paper one) didn't photograph the same. (And it's the angle of my photo that makes the bottom piece of tape look so crooked. You'll just have to bear with the photo on that one.)

I used the wind image because it was incredibly windy the day we stopped here. Cold too.

Learning new things and then actually seeing these fossils was a blessing to me. (What a geek I am!) So I am linking up this journal page to Bleubeard and Elizabeth's super challenge over at Art Journal Journey.

And although they might not excite you, here's a few more thrombolite photos.

Thanks for visiting. And enjoy your weekend.

Friday

Happy Friday everyone. Today I have a tag that I made for Tag Tuesday  and their latest challenge of landmarks. I used some napkin bits, a stamped image, a transparency and some writing that I clipped out of some left over Japan travel brochures.

And how about some more mushrooms? There are so many right now. Our humidity has left for a few days but guess what, more rain storms are coming in today. This has been one wet month here. No wonder why we have so many mushrooms.

In the garden there are a thousands of these little ones.

And if you don't like mushrooms, how about these sunflowers that grew up from some bird feed that must have been dropped by some birds.

Happy weekend. (Or almost weekend!)

Thanks for visiting.