Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween! 

Today I have a couple of pieces of art for 2 different challenges.

First for Tag Tuesday  I made a tag for the Edgar Allan Poe challenge. I focused in on his poem the raven and used some raven/crow stamps I have to make this tag.

I took my inspiration for this tag from my latest book I am listening to. It is called Ravenmaster: My Life with the Ravens at the Tower of London by Christopher Skaife.

I have to say I am really enjoying this book. I know the legend is that if the ravens disappear at the Tower, England will no longer exist as it is and plunge into chaos. So it is fascinating to learn about living at the Tower and mostly about the ravens that live at the tower (and keep the country stable too.)

And my other page is from my journal and I am linking it up to the Thankful challenge at Try It On Tuesday  

I had started this page and never finished it, and when I saw this latest challenge I decided my background was perfect for a thankful page.

That's all for me today. Thanks so much for visiting, and

I hope your Halloween is spook free.

T Stands for Birthdays

Hello folks. Tuesday has arrived and so it is time for T again. Stop by Bleubeard and Elizabeth's blog and join us where we are  sharing our drink related posts.

For T this week I am celebrating the birthdays of 2 of my most favorite people.

The 29th of this month is my husbands birthday and the 30th is my daughter's birthday. So this past Sunday I made a cake and we had a little party.

I had my piece of cake with some water. (Pardon the bottles of water. We have well water and don't drink it as we have to treat it for iron bacteria. Better safe than  sorry we say.)

I made a vanilla cake with chocolate chips, strawberry jam and some vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream. My daughter wanted the chocolate chips layer and my husband wanted the plain vanilla. So they both got the cake they wanted.

It wasn't it wild party but we had a nice time with each other. It's good to have some 3 of us time since my daughter lives 2 hours away. She was home for the weekend and even though it wasn't my birthday, it was like I got a little gift too. 

Happy Halloween tomorrow also for those of you who like a spooky.

Thanks so much for stopping by my blog.

And wishing you  fantastic T Day.

The Comfort of a Little Light

Happy new week everyone. The weather never cleared up this weekend, but at least today (Sunday) we didn't have as much wind and rain as yesterday.

 And no snow today either.

It wasn't much snow but we now officially have had our first white ground for the season.

Oh boy.

I've been staying up late watching baseball this weekend. They have been fantastic games. The tough part is the games aren't ending until after midnight (3:30 in the morning for the Friday night game- but that's about 3 hours later than I can handle, even with a little nap mid-game).  It's one thing on the weekend, another when you have to get up early for work. But I know there will be a lot of tired folks in school tomorrow, just not sure whether I will be one or not. Let's see how the game goes tonight.

And finally since October is winding down, I have one last page to link up to Linda's Creature Comfort page at Art Journal Journey.

The page is from this week's spread in my calendar journal.  I attached the grey-blue paper over the page, drew and colored in the candle with a white fat tipped marker. Then I used yellow paint drips for the wax and some red and yellow paint for the flame. And finally I decided to use the spooky golden eyed tape to finish off the page.

That's all for me. Have a great start to the new week.

It's Feeling Like late Fall

Happy Saturday everyone. It is cloudy with some wet weather coming in for the day. And it is cold, so our wet weather may start off as snow or ice. Oh boy.

But whatever falls from the sky, it is the weekend and I squeezed in my morning walk. My plan is to stay home today and I have a big to do list so whatever I end up filling with my with, the weather shouldn't affect anything.

 How about a spread from the smaller of my 2 Halloween journals? I couldn't get the book to lay flat and this page is in very back,  so you'll have to excise that in my photo.

I create a little interest I folded these 2 pages over so they are more narrow than the full spread. You can see that here.

The light really make the gold eyes on this paper tape glow on the top of the page.

On the left side I used some TH paper and I cut out the faces and created the background. Then I added the die cut  and  little wooden bat. On the right side I used some background paper, some funky eye tape, this fringey trim nd a Halloween image that was in my stash.

I am going to link up to Art Journal Journey and Linda's Creature Challenge. I am also going to link up to Try It On Tuesday and their Trick or Treat, It's Halloween challenge.

Hope you have wonderful weekend.

Late October

Hi everyone.  It's Wednesday night and I am watching the baseball World Series game. For those of you outside of the US and parts of Canada,or anyone not familiar with baseball, this is the final series of games. Whichever team wins the best of 7 games is the champion for the year. This year our local Boston team, The Red Sox, are playing, which always makes it exciting. They won game one last night and hopefully they'll win again tonight.

The wind and rain lately means we've been losing leaves. Everyday there seems to be more bare trees, and brrr. We're chilly with lower than normal temperatures.

This is the sugar maple in my yard. usually it is more read in color, but this year it is far more yellow. I wonder why.

 And there were a few roses left when I took these photos back on Saturday.

And my perennial chrysanthemums are in bloom. These plants originally came my grandmother's garden many many years ago. They were moved to my mother's garden. and then later to me. 

 And here's the view from my walk last Saturday also.

And here's another page in Halloween journal.

I had this piece of cardboard and I decided I liked the printing on it so I left that and attached the piece into  to my journal. Then I added tape along the edge as well as the black and white trim. Finally I layered a bit of tissue paper over the top and I then painted it black.

Then I added the skeleton die cut as well as some holiday emphera that I had.

I am linking up to Linda's Creature Comfort Challenge at Art Journal Journey.

I'm also going to link up to the Halloween challenge at Try It On Tuesday

That's all for me today.

Happy rest of the week, and thanks for visiting.

T Stand for Playing Hooky

Tuesday is here again. That means it is T Day.  Time to share our drink related posts over at Bleubeard and Elizabeth's.

It's always fun to see what all you T Gang people have been up to.

My husband and I had our 30th wedding anniversary last week on the 15th, but because of my mom's birthday and my mother-in-law's health issues we never had a chance to celebrate then. So since this is a bigger anniversary year, this past Friday we both made arrangements to take the day off from work and decided to do something fun.

We started by going out to lunch at a restaurant named Tucker's in Dover, New Hampshire. Tucker's a small local chain that has yummy food and also does a lot of locally sourced food. They are only open for breakfast and lunch and are about 30 minutes away so we don't get there very often.

My husband had breakfast which is available all the time, but I was cold so I wanted comfort food to help warm me up..

I started with one of their mega mugs of chai tea while I waited for me meal. 

And for my lunch

I had a grilled cheese on sourdough and a cup of butternut squash soup. Boy that soup was yummy. And the sandwich was excellent also.   And to drink with my lunch I had a glass of water.

Good thing we had planned to go to the beach for walk for a walk that afternoon. I was pretty full and needed to burn off some of those calories.

It was a gorgeous afternoon for a walk. (This is York Beach in Maine.)

The dogs were quite excited to be invited along. I was walking Maddie and I will say my arm got a workout as she wanted to chase every seagull she saw.

She was not chasing these however. They were all clustered in some shallow water and I am guessing there was something good for them to eat in that spot. We weren't very close but I used the zoom on my camera lens to get these photos.

My biologist eye likes to see all the wing positions as they take off.

And I watched this flock of cormorants soar over the beach.  

I love seeing the dynamic shapes they form as they fly.

 And happened to spy this bird on the rocks near where we had parked the car.

I believe it is a killdeer, and Elizabeth I think this is the bird that you used in your art in your past Saturday post.

We had a perfect afternoon.
It was nice the weather cooperated, and it wasn't as cold as it is today.
I am also sending get well wishes to our hostess Elizabeth too.
Thanks for visiting me today and have a fantastic T day!

Sunday Chattering

Hi everyone.  It's already Sunday night here in New Hampshire.  Today was quite chilly and windy, the perfect day to stay home and make a pot of chili and an apple pie. And make a little art too. 

I started a stack of journal pages today but the only thing I finished was this tag for Tag Tuesday and their latest bunting/pennant theme.  Everything I used for this tag came off my work table, which I actually cleaned off today. (And boy did it need it!) The tag is actually a tag from a beach towel I picked up last spring and all the other bits including the pennants were in the mess pile. The words were something that had been printed on some type of ad that arrived in the mail and that I had used the photo from. I decided to use the words so I could throw the scrap out.

And here's my pie. It may not be really clear but I used a  couple of different sized maple leaf cookie cutters to cut out leaves, and then I overlapped them to make the top. It looks rather like my yard right now which has filled up with leaves today since it's been so windy.

And thanks to those you who left me a comment mentioning the BBC show AutumnWatch  and how they have some episodes on New Hampshire. I went online and looked through all the clips and  they looked fantastic. Now I need to see if I can find a way to watch it. They have a similar show on our public tv station but I'm not sure if it is the same or not, but I know the hosts are definitely not the same.

I hope everyone enjoyed their weekends and have a great start to the new week.

Halloween 2

Hi everyone.  My title today sounds like a horror movie title, but instead it is this Trick or Treating page that I recently made. 

The background is collage of various bits of tissue paper. Last year Hobby Lobby had packets of tissue paper (1 X 1 inch or 2.5x2.5 centimeter) squares you could buy for fall. (They might this year but I haven't looked them.)They worked out great here and you can see where I used them in the piece.  I also did a bit of stamping and then collaged over and around that also. I added some bits of paper tape to my background also.

Then I added the party style trim, the cut out paper crow, the TH found relatives, the TH stamped haunted house and some cut out pumpkins from a collage sheet. The crow needed to say something, and he announced that it was time for those kids to Trick or Treat.

Sorry for the the crooked trim at the top. This page is in a BIG book that is  one of my 2 Halloween journals. I like this particular journal because it is big enough to put 8 1/2 x 11 inch pages right into it. It doesn't, however, lay flat any more as I've been making some pages in it for several years. I really needed an extra hand to keep the top down when I went to photograph this, but having the kids in the middle be centered and straight I think is the most important.

And the milkweed were seeding today when I went for my walk.

I thought they looked pretty cool, and I image with the wind the seeds will be flying around soon enough. I hope most of them get to grow into new plants next year and help attract the Monarch butterflies.

That's all for me. Chores on the agenda for me today.It's that time to make the clothing change over and to pick up the lawn furniture on my screen porch.

Enjoy your weekend. And thanks for stopping by.

Halloween

Good morning from a very chilly New Hampshire. We even had a few snowflakes this morning. Brrr. Not sure I am ready for this.  

So I am going to join  up to 2 challenges today.

 I want to join in to the new Halloween challenge at Try It On Tuesday. This is a page out of my Halloween journal/altered book. Maybe I should have colored the background page but I liked the black and white. Then I added some bits and bobs including the sparkly  tree and bat, as well as a couple of wooden cats that I colored.

I am also going to link up to Linda's Creature Comfort theme at Art Journal Journey. 

And I'll also show you the latest autumn look here in my world. (These photos are from earlier this week. Since then we've had  rain and wind, and since it is still dark here, I bet we have a lot fewer leaves left on the trees.)

Thanks so much for visiting me, and hope all is well with you.