Wrapping Up April

       Hi everyone. Happy last day of April to you. What a month it was at my house, starting with winter weather and now we're (happily) into spring.

        Today I want to share my final pages for my Spring Birds challenge at Art Journal Journey. I've been hosting since March 1 with two different challenges, and I'm ready to pass the baton (or should I say journal page) off to our new host tomorrow. Check back then to see who our next talented host is and what the May challenge will be. 

    And before I move on I want to thank everyone who joined in at AJJ this past month. It's always appreciated, and it made for such a colorful as well as flower and  bird filled month.  I always enjoy seeing how people interpret  themes too.  Thank you everyone who linked up.

      For my last art journal pages for April let me share a spread from my envelope journal that is all about spring.

     I used a lot of scraps from my scrap pile including a tag that was cut out of some paper, a luggage tag back from 2022 when we flew home from California, some assorted die cut "extras" and a few stickers too. I also did a bit of stenciling and painting. Plus I used a bit of velvet ribbon. You can see the spring chick, the spring bunny and also the spring flower with the pink button center.

     And here's each side on their own..

     Here's the tag in the pocket of one of these  pages. You can see it peeking up in an above photo.

     I didn't use an actual vintage photo but instead used a copy of one. Then I added the clock and a stamped word.

     That's all for today. I hope everyone has a wonderful end  to April, and a happy start to May. 

Time for a New Challenge at TIOT

      Hi everyone. It's Tuesday and time for another new challenge at Try It On Tuesday. Before I move on let me thank everyone who joined our Oh So Sweet challenge, and I also want to thank Ester for being our guest designer. ❤

     For our new challenge, we're taking you out into the woods, because our challenge is Deep In The Forest.

     I live in a wooded area, and lately there has been lots of hooting going on in the evening, (I think the barred owls that live in my area have a nest near the house.)  I decided I wanted to make my deep in the forest page about owls, and since they tend to be nocturnal, I wanted to make a night page.

     The night part was a bit of an issue for me, because if you've ever tried painting night, you have to use dark colors that still stand out with some details. I decided to use a dark purple for the sky, black for the branches of the forest trees and then some platinum paint to give the purple sky more depth. I don't like the branch across the full moon, but I decided to keep it so it would be more forest like.

     The owl and the quotes are from a stamp set by Visible Images that I've had for quite some time. The owl is stamped,colored and fussy cut and the quotes are stamped on with white pigment ink.

   You have 2 weeks to join our challenge at TIOT, and we'll accept any type of art. And if you are looking for some other ideas besides owls, be sure to check out the other design teams pieces.

    I hope you're inspired by the forest and will join us at TIOT. I'm looking forward to seeing all the different ways of being/portraying Deep in the Forest. 

T Stands for Some Art

     Hi everyone. Happy new week to you. I'm here with my post for  T day over at bleubeard's and Elizabeth's blog. I thought I had scheduled this post for later this evening, but I guess I didn't so it's up a bit early. However it's not that early where I have to delete it. 

    Last week we had some lovely weather, and I spent much of it working outside. But on Friday one of my friends asked me if I wanted to go to the senior project presentations over at the University of New Hampshire. Graduating seniors work on some sort of research project depending on their major. They then create a display  board and at a selected time, different majors display their project boards. Visitors can walk around and view the boards, plus the students are there to talk about their projects or answer your questions. I remember going to one of these when my daughter was about to graduate, and since she was getting a degree in civil engineering, her presentation time was with her school of engineering. This past Friday was when the biology/biological science students were on display, and so I was really interested to go (since my undergrad degree was in biology and I taught high school biology for 36 years). 

    It was fascinating to see what some of these students were working on. My friend's former student had asked her to attend, and his project was in immunology. I learned some new things and was happy I remembered as much my pre-retirement life as I did. 👍 And boy, biology has sure come a long way since I was in college. Grin.

    I won't bore you with the details of the presentations, but afterwards my friend and I took a walk around campus and the town of Durham (where we parked and where the University is lcoated). We even happened upon the University art museum where some student art was on display. I thought I would share some art today since I am sure many of you aren't interested in the Hedgehog signalling pathway (the name of a human cell development pathway I learned  a little bit about at the presentations) or other biological process.

Here's a few murals that were downtown where we parked.

    And here's a permanent collage on the outside of the art building. This must be fairly new because the last time I walked around this campus (a couple of years ago) I don't remember seeing it.

And here's a few pieces of student art in the campus museum that I thought were interesting, starting with this paper sculpture.

     And my favorite pieces in the student museum were these next few by artist Miranda Fay.

     And I'm not sure who this next artist was, but they had a collection of clothes made out of paper on both full sized and doll sized mannequins that I thought was pretty clever. I only ended up with one photo, so sadly I can't share the other clothes.

     Afterwards my friend and I went to lunch. We didn't want to pay for more parking so we headed to the next town over (Dover) and went to a place we had been to before called the Fat Dog Cafe. They make the best BLT's there (bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches) with chipotle mayo and avocado.

    I upgraded to sweet potato tots, because I'd never had them before, and I would get them again in a heartbeat. They were really tasty. And you can see I had water to drink which is my ticket for T this week.

    That's enough for one post. Wishing everyone a wonderful T day and week ahead. 

    

Spring Blooms

    Hi everyone. I hope you're having a wonderful weekend. We had a lot of rain yesterday, but that was good for the lawn, gardens and woods. Plus, it was a good excuse to take a day off from doing yard work and be a little lazy-grin 😏.

     It's always exciting to see the world greening back up and flowers starting to bloom. I know my area is behind so many other people's, but since I'm happy to see them, I guess you'll have to bear with me. 😁

    The cherry blossoms on the tree that my co-workers gave me when my Dad passed will be blooming very soon.

     My transplanted roses are starting to get leaves. I hope that means they are adjusting well to their new spot.

     And the sugar maple in the yard is blooming too.

     Then those blooms fall to the ground.

     And I'll wrap up this post with some more blooms, this time from the envelope journal I made. I'll be  linking these  up to Art Journal Journey  where the challenge is Spring Birds and which runs through this coming Wednesday. I know there's no birds on today's posts, but the flowers are definitely for spring, especially the second view.

    I'll also be linking up to Gillena's Sunday Smiles.

    Enjoy the rest of your weekend and start to the new week. 

Friday's Face

     Hi everyone. Another week is wrapping up, and before we know it May will be here. It's been a lovely week at my house weather-wise, and I've been busy with a lot of outside work.

     Today I am joining Nicole's Friday Face Off and also Gillena's Friday Lunch Break. 

     As I mentioned, I've been busy outside. We get these small flying and biting insects called Black flies that come out around May 1 so I'm always in a bit of a hurry to get some yard work done before that. (Although I've already noticed a few that have come out 😒)  Anybody who lives where these 'bugs" come out en masse knows exactly what I mean when I say I don't want to be doing yard work when they're around. Luckily they are only bad for a couple of weeks.

     One thing I've been doing is raking up my gardens. Last fall was a huge year for acorns. I cleaned up what I thought was the worst of them last fall, but no, in some spots there were still a lot of them. Here's a photo I took earlier in the week in one of my gardens.

    I think there was about 100 of these piles in my garden, and the worst of it is that you have to pick up the acorns by hand or with a shovel since you can't scoop them up with the rake. 

   I wonder if the big acorn harvest means there will be lots of baby squirrels this year? Of course, if food is easy to get like at my bird feeders then I guess the acorns will just remain on the ground.  

    Here's my squirrel buddy (?) who has figured out how to get on  one bird feeder that can be reached by jumping over from my back deck. Of all the squirrels that come through the yard, this guy is the only one who  is smart or brave enough to do this. 

    He and I often  have stare offs through the window, and it's probably 50-50 who moves first.

      I was the winner in this particular stare down as he took off after a minute. But as soon as I left I bet he was back to jump onto the feeder. 😏 😐😖

     And the other night I had a stare down with a much larger visitor. It was just around midnight and Mr. Pete started barking and going crazy. I jumped out of bed, grabbed my glasses but sadly left my phone charging upstairs.

     You can see how close to the house the bear was. Just sitting there on the sidewalk, using his paws to pull out the food out of this feeder and have his snack. He wasn't a young bear either but a big older guy. I pounded on the window and told him to leave, and he got up, slowly ambled off across the lawn, looking back a  couple of times, and then disappeared into the woods. And luckily, other than sort of pulling the pole partly out of the ground, there was no damage to the feeder. It's permanently tied onto the pole as it's one of those video feeders, and it had been a gift a couple of Christmases ago from my daughter. 

     It took a good hour to calm both dogs down, especially Maddie who I think scared the bear more than Pete, even though Pete was right in the window. She has that deep more ferocious bark.

     Which she was still barking the next day. I guess when you're blind you want to be sure that bear is long gone.

    That's it for me today. Have a wonderful weekend ahead. 

Beautiful Moments

    Hi everyone. Happy Wednesday. We're having more fantastic weather this week, so once again I am back outside working in the yard. 

     Today I want to share another journal page for my Spring Birds challenge at Art Journal Journey. 

     You can barely see that I made this page in my ledger journal. The background is inked in blue and pink, and then I added a large die cut pink square.  I also added some scraps from a book in Greek, which I have no idea what it says. Hopefully it is  about something nice and not about a bloody war-grin. Mia may be able to tell me if she can even make it out with the inks rubbed over it. 😏

    The bird's nest image is die cut and colored, and I also added the 2 die cut flower images. Then to finish I stamped the quote and used a white Posca paint pen to add lots of dots. I'm a little worried those dots look like snow, but maybe that's because it wasn't all that long ago it snowed too many days at my house.

    Over Easter my daughter came for the day. We had a lovely day. One thing we did was go for an entire family walk along the road where my mother-in-law's house is located.

     And look at this tree along the driveway (at my mother-in-law's house) that I've never noticed before. It has so many holes in it. I wonder if anything is or will be nesting in any of those holes.

     I wonder why it took me so long to notice it. Maybe because there's no leaves on the trees (in the woods where this holey tree is standing) around it yet so the sunlight hitting it just made it stand out more.

      And let me leave you with the cake I made for Easter.

      It's a vintage style pineapple upside down cake with some chopped pecans on top too. It was tasty, but if and when I ever make another one I am going to cover the top with crushed or chunked pineapple so there will be pineapple in every bite. 😏

     Have a super middle of your week. 

T Stands for Lots of Outside Time

      Hi everyone. Happy new week to you.  If you celebrated any spring holidays recently I hope they were good for you. Also hello to everyone who stops by for T Day over at  Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's        blog.  I want to wish our lovely T Day hostess a happy birthday, or should I say Bearthday since T day this week happens to fall on Earth Day.

     After a snowy week, last week we had some nice spring weather, including some warmer weather too. It was an outside week for me. I did a lot of  yard work ❤ and took a long beach walk one day too.  Plus I got some new glasses. This first photo is of me inside of Costco when I picked up my glasses. They say big glasses are back in.

    Here's a snapshot of me in my new sunglasses in my car before I was going to drive home. My daughter asked me to take photos and send them to her so she could see what I picked out. I thought I would share them with you also. 

     As I mentioned, I also did a lot of outside work. In last week's T day post I wrote about how I was going to move and spread out  some rose bushes. They are all moved now. This week I need to get some bark mulch and mulch the area. You can also see some of my irises coming up on the left too.

    My daffodils are way up but not budding or flowering yet. The little green leaves around them are the sweet woodruff which has spread out nicely in the last few years and the rest of the green is moss. If raking didn't rip up moss, I think I would love a whole lawn full of moss. It's an amazing plant.

 I  have a few crocuses flowering-finally. 😏

The seeds I planted a couple of weeks ago are really growing. First of all here's some kale.

And here's some spinach.

In a big planting bag I put in some beet and carrot seeds. The bigger seedlings in the front are the beets. My carrots are just starting to break the soil.

I also have a little bit of garlic coming up too.

When I picked up my glasses at Costco I bought a new rosemary plant. 

     I need to plant that in a better pot. It's also finally warmed up enough to  start some other plants, but  not outside yet.

  And because it's T day, I need to share a drink photo. I mentioned that I went for a long beach walk last week. I hadn't seen my friend Jo in awhile so instead of taking beach photos we spent 4 .25 miles (6.8 km) catching up. Then we went to lunch at a place called the Airport Cafe. It's at a small airfield, and in the restaurant they have planes that move around the ceiling on a track. 

      If you have a window seat or sit outside, you can watch actual planes take off and land. On the day we went it was fairly windy so I didn't see any planes besides the ones on the track above me.

     This cafe is only open until 2 PM, and they serve breakfast all day. On that day's daily specials they had a pulled pork and cheddar cheese omelette which sounded tasty so we both ended up ordering it.

     That omelette was big enough for 2 meals, but somehow I managed to eat almost all of it. (But I couldn't finish the potatoes or toast.)  I was pretty full by then and since I'd spent a couple hours walking in the morning,  when I got home I took a long (and wonderful)  nap. 😏

    That's all for me. Have a happy T day and week ahead.