Happy Halloween

 Happy Halloween everyone.  I have one more Halloween page to share with you today. 

And before I go any further. I want to share with Chris a huge thank you for such a fun month at Art Journal Journey. Your Hold the Line challenge was awesome!

Today's spread from my Mystery, Mayhem and Magic altered book has a very vintage and traditional Halloween feel. 

See all the lines here on the right side of the spread?  I am linking up one last time to Chris' Hold the Line challenge at Art Journal Journey. 

It was hard to get this page too look straight as I had a hard time holding it flat open.

Although with some bending I did get it here.

On the left I painted the page with 2 colors of watered down  paint. I created the stripes using some sticky trim in my stash. The costume frame is an older TH item that was also in my stash, although I did add a bit of glitter to the cat's eyes. And the girls are TH found relatives.

On the right I collaged bits of paper. I added stickers and some tiny tags left overs from a die I used. The words are also left over stamped words I colored and added. Everything on these pages were in my Halloween box  and in my stash.

And I thought I would share a few walk photos from earlier this week when I walked into my mother-in-laws home. She lives on a private gravel road, so I like to walk there when we go up as there is very little traffic.

At that time there was still quite a bit of color in the leaves, although now (sadly) that is going away quickly.

And how about  couple of seasonal pumpkins I passed while strolling?

The dogs also enjoyed their walk.

Since I have company (the daughter and her beau are here), this is a pre-post. I may not get to blogs until later or  until tomorrow, but be assured I am not ignoring you. (smile)

Have a super start to your weekend.  And hope your Halloween is not too spooky!

Halloween Collage Day 3

 Hi there everyone. 

It is almost Halloween so today's spread from my Mystery, Mayhem and Magic altered book has definitely a more mayhem or scary feel. 

Too bad my quote is too hard to read here. It talks about the witching time of night, and it is on acetate.

I don't know what this woman is more afraid of: the death card or the bug on the next page. 

There are lots of lines here, especially all those in the spiderwebs on the right, so I have another page for Chris' Hold the Line challenge at Art Journal Journey.

I definitely think my Mystery, Mayhem and Magic altered book isn't the most cohesive book I have ever made. My pages go from fun fairies to autumn to some spooky pages, like this one.  Yet I must say it is fun to make a book that covers all these things that happen in October.

That's all for me. I am in birthday binge right now. Not mine, but yesterday was my husband's and today is my daughter's. She and her beau are coming  to celebrate tonight, so I am off to make her birthday cake. Well not a cake but a key lime pie, her favorite. And yesterday I made a Boston cream pie for my husband as that is his favorite.  I'll share next T day. Just preparing those of you who stop by for some more food photos.

Have a great end of your week.

Halloween Collage, Part 2

 Hi there. I am back with my Mystery, Mayhem and Magic altered book art today. Today I am going to continue with the mystery theme with some more palm reading and fortune telling.

On the left is a tag. Is it All Hallow's Eve enough to link up to Tag Tuesday?

And more lines on the fortune car on the right, so I am once more linking up to Chris' Hold the Line challenge at Art Journal Journey.

On the right is a fortune telling spread. I have to laugh at the man on the bottom right. I cut him out of the back of a playing card. His club look like a giant green pickle.  At least to me.

 I made this page with a story in mind.  The man with the pickle club is in love with the women whose face is on the 2 of clubs playing card at the top of the page. He is not sure she loves him back, so he goes to see a fortune teller to find out. 

Her answer is shown in the gold rectangle with the 8 hearts with the sword. Now this answer is open to some interpretation. It might mean he will have 8 women he loves and that don't love him back before he finds his true love.  It also might mean that he rejected the love of 8 women for the women in the card. With fortunes, they are always so vague you can interpret them to fit your life. 

One of my friends had a fortune telling party many years ago.  She brought in a palm reader/card reader. On my turn she said 2 interesting things that I remember. She told me that one of my passed relatives looked over me, and that he, being a brick mason, just loved my living room fireplace. (You might remember from my decorating photos is made of both brick and stones from the property.) She thought it was my grandfather (who was not a brick mason) but when I mentioned the name she said no. When I mentioned my mother's uncle who was a brick mason, she said no. She said he had an unusual name (at least for her) in the US.  I didn't know who else it would be. Later I was telling this story to my cousin, and she said it had to be her dad. His name was Idoff, and he is the only one I have ever heard of with that name. He had been a brick mason, and he had passed when I was younger. And my cousin said he would have loved my fireplace.  Maybe, maybe not. But it makes a good Halloween story.

The other things this lady told me was that I needed to continue with my watercolor painting as I would make a name for myself if I did. I looked at her and said I didn't watercolor paint. She told me I had better start.  That I would be really good and make some money also if I did. At that time I scrapbooked in my own journalish way but didn't even really art journal.  

Hmmm.  Even now I sometimes think if I should take up watercolor painting in a serious way.

OK, enough for me today. Thanks for visiting and hope your day goes well.

Halloween Collage Part 1

 Hi everyone. With Halloween just a few days away, I figured I would share a spread each day from my Mystery, Mayhem and Magic altered book. I have some autumn spreads left, but I'll save those for next month.

How about some mystery. Like palm reading and astrology?

The left book page was left plain, but I did stamp some painted circles and added a molecule printed piece of acetate, a velum palmistry image, a stamped gentleman, and a stamped quote. I finished the page with a little paper trim and a plastic spider.

My right page was painted and then stamped with the same pink paint on a circle as my left side. I added some printed tissue paper, a playing card, a moon sticker, a vintage man cut out of from a page as well as some punch out designs. I finished by stamping a few star cluster/horoscope designs. 

And there are lines too. Like on the palm and also all over the right side. Just perfect for Chris' Hold the Line challenge at Art Journal Journey.

With a few days left this month, you have a few days left to join us for this challenge.

Hope your week is going well.

Time for a New Challenge

 Hi everyone. I am here today to tell you about the new challenge at Try It On Tuesday.

This time we are asking you to Emboss!

Any kind of embossing will do.

I'm taking you to the pumpkin patch today for my embossed page.

I stamped some various pumpkins and embossed with some bright orange and some rust colored embossing powders. I did think about dry embossing, but then I would have had to dug out my embossing folders which are neatly packed into a box and put up on the top shelf over my head as I haven't used them lately. Maybe it was time to dig them out. Figured I would stick with embossing powders and my autumn stamps which were already out on the studio floor. Smile.

 I colored my pumpkins with markers and gelatos. Then to complete my fall scene, I die cut lots of little leaves with an older TH leaf strip die. I also used this very old Cornish Heritage Farm dog in the pumpkin stamp.  

The grass is painted and then I doodled in some texture, and the sky is an ink mop up. 

Don't forget to stop by and visit all the design team art.  There's lots of inspiration there for you.

And I can't wait to see your embossing. I admit, I'm not much for embossing, and I am really hope to get some new ideas.

Thanks for visiting.

T Stands for Some of Last Week's Highlights (Again)

 Hi everyone. Can you believe this is the last T day for October? I really don't know where this month has gone as it wasn't it just  the first T day of the month?

It's been a very  dark and wet Monday. But I just saw the forecast for the end of the week and right now they are talking some snow.  NOOOOOO!

We had some grey and wet weather a couple of days last week so I did a bit of baking. Since there were no more Trader Joe's pumpkin cookies in the house (thanks to the dogs who ate them all-ha-ha), I decided to make some homemade cookies.  You can see my drink for T in this first photo, as well as my sugar cookie dough and supplies.

Don't forget to stop by for T at Bleubeard and Elizabeth's blog where we share our drink related posts.

After I made my dough I added in some yellow and copper colored food coloring and hand mixed it a bit to marble the colors.  Then I added some yellow and orange sugar on them.

I also made some shortbread with stamped some Halloween images as well as some colorful sugar too.

And this week I noticed some spelt flour at the grocery store. I had found a recipe for honey spelt sourdough bread and have been wanting to try it, so I bought the flour. Here's my results.

It was suppose to make 1 large loaf, but instead I made 2 smaller loaves. I must say this recipe is now one of my favorites. It's from King Arthur Baking Company if you're interested.

Sorry for any temptation I might have caused some of you. Time to get out of the kitchen and onto other things.

My daisy like chrysanthemums are blooming. 

They always bloom right around Halloween. 

The first clump of these  particular plants came out of my mother's garden years ago, and her plants came out my grandmother's garden years before that. They are really a heirloom variety,   The draught didn't seem to affect them this year either. It's nice to enjoy some blooms when everything else is dying back.

And hurrah! My husband volunteered to powerwash the garden fence for me. That saved me hours of work.

Now it's ready to be painted. Hopefully I can get to that before the snow falls. I don't think it will be this week though with rain predicted. Pluviophiles (thanks Iris for the new word the other day) will be happy, as will all the plants!

Leaves are falling too.

 I'll wrap up my post with some autumn color.

Last Thursday I had to go to Portsmouth for an appointment. I took the backroads home instead of the highway as I wanted enjoy the scenery a bit.

On this trip I ended up on what's called the New Durham Ridge. I live here in New Durham, and the Ridge is across town and as the name suggests, a long high hilltop. On the top of the ridge where 2 roads intersect, there is an amazing viewpoint. With some colors in the remaining leaves and sky just right, it WAS beautiful. 

The mountains look like a painted backdrop, don't they? 

And that's all she wrote. Hope you have or are having a great T day.

As always, thanks for visiting.

Yellow is the Color, Well Mostly

 Happy weekend everyone.  Hope you have something "good" on your agenda.  (Or maybe no agenda. That is also a very good thing!)  I'm hoping to get my garden fence cleaned and maybe painted, or maybe just cleaned. Let's see what the next 2 days bring. Not that I want to spend my  weekend working on the fence, but it is high on my to do list, and it would feel good to get it checked off before winter arrives. We shall see.

My art page today began with me using up some extra yellow and red paints. I stamped the circles (Paper Artsy), the quote (Alison Bomber at Paper Artsy) and the fish head men (Postmodern Design). I also did some coloring as well as doodling with a white pen, and I added the this bat that was sitting on my work table (being a scrap from another project). Oh and I shouldn't forget the white and black paint dots either.

I didn't color the fish head men as I thought they stood out better that way.

I see lots of lines so I am linking up to Chris' Hold the Line challenge at Art Journal Journey .

And for some more yellow and other autumn colors, I have some photos from a recent walk.

Last Sunday I met a friend for a little woodland hike. We followed some of the Sweet Trail, located in Durham, New Hampshire. (Durham is about 35 minutes away from where I live.) It was only 37 degrees (about 2.7 degrees C) when we left, but the morning did warm up as the sun got higher.

It was a still morning though, and there were some amazing reflections in the marshes.

Below, you can see the beaver lodge off to the left and the dam right in the front (bottom) of the photo.

And the lodge is on the left in this next photo.

We had to use my phone's  GPS to find the trail, and for some reason it brought us mid-way into the trail, where it crosses a back road. I'm not sure why it didn't bring us to one of the ends of the trail. We decided to park on the back road and head out from this middle point to one end of the trail, and then turn around and walk back.  It was my kind of trail, meaning it was relatively flat.

Here is the end of the trail for us, actually the spot many people park and begin, and where we turned around.

My friend Deb spotted this moss in the sunlight. And look how green it is! I did not do anything to this photo, so this is the actual green.

I never appreciated moss until I visited the moss museum in Japan. Moss is a pretty amazing life form.

And one final reflection photo.

Hope you have a fantastic weekend! 

Lines on the Map

 Happy Friday everyone. Another week has flown by. This weekend I am hoping to get my veggie garden fence cleaned and painted, a somewhat big job, but one that needs to get done every few years. I'd love to get it finished  because depending on how long winter lingers, sometimes there isn't enough time in the spring to do it without all my garden plants popping up and getting in the way. We shall see whether that happens or not, depending on the weather (not as much sun is now predicted).

I thought I would share another page for Chris' Hold the Line challenge at Art Journal Journey. There's just a little over a week to go this month (wow!), and it would be great if you would like to join in.

This map postcard  was my inspiration for the page. Since  it was blue and white, I went with a sprayed blue background. I also added some stenciled deli paper scraps to give the background some texture as well as to help make the postcard more of a part of the page, rather than just being on the page.

A ticket sticker, some striped paper tape and a stamped and fussy cut emblem finished off the page. the quote is hard to read, but it says "Follow your bliss."

And how about  a view of my Halloween decorations? I don't go overboard, but I have a few fun things I like to put out. I'm not into scary as much as I like the vintage look. And since we are into the home stretch to the end of the month, I thought today would be a good time to share them for those of you who like a little Halloween.

On my fireplace mantel I have just a couple of vintage looking pieces.

And do you like my quilted pumpkin banner? I made this several years ago (and it was in Somerset Studio's Home many years ago also).

I have a hanging light over my table that makes a good place to hang ornaments. These are some silly ones I bought at Target several years ago.

The vintage looking pumpkin with the ribbons hangs off the middle of my light, but it was not part of  the Target  set.

I also picked up this fun little sign at Target years ago also.  The "out" at the bottom can switch to in, which usually happens when my daughter is around.

And finally a couple of years back I bought a Halloween "tree". I made most of the decorations that year from some  coasters.

The 2 Day of the Dead "dolls" I  picked up at Target. also

My latest purchase was this witchy crow which I got on sale after Christmas from Annalee Dolls. They are a local company (Meredith, New Hampshire) . They make all kinds of felt creations. After Christmas they have a 50% off sale, and I picked up this witch. I didn't think she'd work on the top of the tree when I got her, yet she does work well there!

The owl wizard on my mantel (in an earlier photo today) is also from Annalee Dolls.

That's all for me today. Have a great start to your weekend!

And as always, thanks for visiting my blog.