An Autumn Weekend

     Hi everyone. I hope you're having a lovely weekend. The temperatures in my area have warmed back up, so it kind of feels like summer again. Of course the shadows are so long at this time of year that it cools down fairly early and the nights aren't bad for sleeping. This past week one of the things on my agenda lately has been doing some deep cleaning both inside in a few places in the house (thanks to having a couple of mice who wormed their way upstairs from the basement-😩) and also in the gardens outside. 

   I'm also linking a up this post to Gillena's Sunday Smiles.

   The first thing I'm sharing in today's post is a journal page for Elle's Halloween, Steampunk or Halloween Steampunk challenge at Art Journal Journey. This year I am making a little journal for Halloween all about a Halloween party. (I love to make theme books that tell a story about the theme.)  The pages are only 4x6 inches (approximately 10x15 cm) in size, and the base pages are some off white, woven watercolor paper.

  The right edge of this page is connected to some polka dot paper that also forms the background of the adjacent page. The rest of the background was created  by inking the watercolor paper with black and green ink pads. Then I stamped the zombie image (Impression Obsession) one and a half times. I darkened the clothing so that it would give more contrast seeing this paper, although it took a stamped image well, didn't exactly highlight the black ink, making it look more grey.

   I used some of these little bead-like items (I think they are called Poms?) that I've had in my stash to make the moon. Once the glue dried I used some yellow watercolor paint around the moon to show that it was giving off light. Then I  drew and fussy cut some night clouds out of black paper. After I glued them down I used some grey and also some white paint to give them  depth. Finally I drew in the ground with some markers, added some washi tape along the edge of the polka-dot paper, and finally finished by stamping a quote (Picket Fence) on light green paper before cutting it  out and adding it to my page.

   This past week we have been getting some lovely leaf color, and last weekend we went to a local orchard/vegetable farm to get some fresh apple cider. I took a few photos to share.

    Unfortunately on our way home, my husband (he was driving and we were in his truck), decided to take a side road drive to check out the scenery, and when we came to a corner, we saw a motorcycle and its rider out of control and coming directly at us. We couldn't turn off the road because there was a guard rail, and we had a split second to decide whether to stay in our lane or to turn  into the other lane. I don't know if it mattered because the  motorcyclist was going too fast around the corner and was weaving between both lanes.

  Before we could actually predict what he would do next, he drove into the front corner of the truck, banging so hard it caused the truck's air bags to go off and the motorcyclist to fly off the bike. He had no helmet on, and he was wearing only a T-shirt and shorts. Luckily for him, he seemed not to have any head injuries, but when I saw him from across the street his whole side was extremely red. Come to find out he wasn't licensed to drive a motorcycle and didn't even own the bike he was on. 

   We really thought we were going to see his body parts all over the road, and thankfully for all of us involved, we didn't.

   He was going fast enough to mess up my husband's truck's suspension, blow his tire, bend his front wheel and cause all the front vehicle airbags to go off. The next day when we went to clean out the truck because our insurance company totaled it, we noticed that the whole driver's side was out of whack. 

   Thankfully we only had some bruises, and I had  some scrapes on one knee from the floor airbag. In those actual moments I didn’t notice everything, and it wasn't until we went to clean out the truck that we noticed there were even floor airbags. We also had the dogs with us, and luckily they were OK too.  👍 The good thing about being a dog in an accident is you don't understand or even watch oncoming traffic so they stayed relaxed, unlike the two of us who were in a panic before we were crashed into. Even though we were zero percent at fault, neither of us would want someone to die. Having to live with that would be horrible.

  Now we are in truck shopping mode which is not fun. My husband is mourning the loss of his truck, and even though he's constantly being told he can start retirement with a newer one, it's just a hassle he didn't want or need to deal with right now. And there is a bit of a time consideration here too since his boat needs to be pulled out of the marina by the end of next weekend (I think the son-in-law is going to come help with that) and we have 2 tons of biobricks that we burn to help heat the house in the winter and that we need to pick up to save the big delivery fee. I'm sure everything will work out however. We'll just have to cross these bridges as they come.

   That's all the news from my house. I hope yours is more boring in a good way than some of what I posted here. Enjoy the rest of your weekend!