Happy December 26

    Hi everyone. Happy Friday. I hope if you celebrated Christmas  (and aren't celebrating today) you had a lovely holiday. And whether you celebrate or not, I hope it was a great week. Today I'm linking up to Nicole's Friday Face Off and Gillena's Friday Lunch Break.

  I had a lovely and enjoyable holiday with my husband, daughter and son--in-law. They arrived Tuesday, and we had our family celebration on Christmas Eve Day.  We started out our holiday by  all climbing into the hubby's truck Tuesday night after dinner and driving through a bit of a snowstorm to go to see some holiday lights at a place in Maine called Sandy Hill Farm. The hubby and I have been there before, but not my daughter and son-in-law so this year we were able to share it with them. I've posted photos from our previous visits before also, but this year the snow made it even more magical.

   Here are a few festive views.

   Although these photos don't look like it, it was actually fairly crowded. The farm does a great job of spacing out people since you have to reserve a time online before you go. They don't sell tickets at the gate. With the snow it took us a bit longer to get there than usual, but  at the gate the girl told me that everyone was late with snow and it was better to be a little late and safe, especially since we seem to drive there when the snow was at its worse. The drive home was not even half as tricky.

    When he left the house there was barely a half an inch (like 1 cm) of snow on the ground, and when we got home 3.5 hours later we had 5 inches (almost 13 cm) of snow on the ground. The farm with the lights is close to the ocean and they did not get that much snow, maybe just a couple of inches, so it wasn't  bad walking around.

 And here's some faces for Friday Face Off. First of all a family portrait.

And then a great photo of everyone but me (because I was taking the photo).

   I have one more face to share today. My son-in-law is a pretty talented guy, and he made me a mini-Sasquatch out of a big chunk of log for Christmas. Big Cheeks also known as Wilbur stands about 24 inches (61 cm) tall.

And if you wonder why he's known as Big Cheeks just look at the back view.  😏

Grin!  I'll end with that view, so have a super weekend ahead! 

It's just about Christmas

    Hi everyone. Just a short post today since we're celebrating early at my house this year and we're having our Christmas festivities today rather than tomorrow on the actual Christmas.

  I know my 2 pups will be excited because they are getting a big treat in their stockings. Pete has already discovered them in the spare bedroom, and he has been going in to give them a sniff (and check they're still there) every day for the last couple of weeks. 😏 That's what inspired me to make this page. 

   I probably won't get around to linking this up to Art Journal Journey right away, but I will eventually  be linking  it up to Sharon's Winter challenge.

  Mostly I just want to wish everyone ( who celebrates or even if you don't ):

🎄A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS🎄

❤❤❤❤❤

T Stands for Some Pre-Christmas Activities

     Hi everyone. Happy new week to you.  I'm joining T Day over at Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's blog    , so happy T day to everyone who stops by.

    It's hard to believe it will be Christmas in just a few days. I'm celebrating a bit early with my family since my daughter is spending Christmas with her in-laws. My daughter and son-in-law arrive tomorrow (Tuesday) and then the 24th will be our Christmas festivities. I'm guessing the hubby and I will spend Christmas day watching a lot of movies (or the new episodes of Stranger Things), and we'll have a  holiday dinner with just the 2 of us.

      Last week I finished building a Christmas Lego.This was the most complicated one I've built, and it took me a few sittings to complete it. I wanted to make a building that fit with the first Lego  that I ever built last December. That Lego was a  Christmas train that I put out on display.

    One afternoon while I was working I had a blackberry ginger ale, so here's my drink for T this week.

    And here's the front of the finished Lego.

     It actually is one you can flip around and look into the back too. I wish there were Lego's like this when I was a kid, but then my mother probably would have said they weren't for girls and gotten one for my brother and not for me. So maybe it's a good thing there weren't Lego's like this way back  in my childhood. 😉

I especially like the cool shadow this Lego leaves on the wall when the morning sun streams in.

   I also made some holiday cookies last week.

    And the hubby and I took a trip to a local candy store one afternoon. I wanted to get some delicious handmade chocolate for the holiday.

   I'm including this (above) photo because CJ will recognize this place from some of her Two Old Ladies on the Road trips.

   I could have spent a fortune here and even bought some pre-Christmas chocolate for myself. It was tough to refrain. 😉I did splurge a little though, and I bought myself a little bag of peanut brittle. They also make it in house, and it was delicious.

   And ha ha, but I never met a Santa who looked like this. 😏  

   I don't know if he's sweet or rich because I didn't buy one, but it did make me smile.

  Wishing everyone a wonderful holiday week, even if you don't celebrate Christmas.  Happy T day, have a great week ahead  and most importantly, Merry Christmas to you. ❤ 🎄

Weekend Post

   Hi everyone. Happy weekend to you. I hope yours is going well. Today is the shortest day of the year or the longest day, depending on where you're at. And seeing it's the shortest for me, it doesn't seem super wintery. We actually had a warm up last  week which was sooooo nice. Now I should clarify that warm up doesn't mean it's really warm,  but at least the temperatures  weren't  many many degrees below freezing. 😏 The steps and the decks finally melted off and at least for a few days, that dangerous ice on the walkways, driveway, etc. ( in my area) is gone. (Although  our cold temperatures came back again so I suppose things will get dicey again  sooner rather than later.)

    Today I want to share another page for Sharon's Winter challenge at Art Journal Journey. I'll also be linking a up to Gillena's Sunday Smiles .  I know this isn't the first page this month at AJJ with ice skaters on it, but I finally  had a chance to use some relatively new dies, so here you go.

    The background was inked in light bright blue, and then I used a stencil and dark blue paint over it. I'm not crazy about how this stencil worked, which you can tell from the poor design on my page. However, it did make some nice texture. I don't know if the images  on the  stencil were too small or if the result was more of  user incompetence.

    The skaters are an Impression Obsession die that I'd been looking at for quite a long time (finally it went on sale 😏). The center snowy oval is an older die from my stash. I then added a couple of 49 and Market images from a winter set. To finish I stamped the quote ( a very old Technique Tuesday set) and added some gemstones from a winter gemstone collection that has also been in my stash for quite awhile. (And hopefully some year I will use up. 😏)

   One morning  last week I captured this great view of the sun from my back deck.

    The mama deer and her large fawn (but they're still together) were back a few times last week. I'm not exactly throwing food out for them, but if I throw some cracked corn in the far back of the yard the squirrels go for that and leave the bird feeders alone.  (I do have a baffle, but one of those squirrels has figured out how to get over the baffle.) I guess the deer like that food too.

Last week started with this much snow on the ground.

And it ended with this much. 

   If you wonder about the circular path around the yard, that's what my husband snow blows for the dogs.

   They say we should get a little bit of snow on Tuesday, and it's not going to get really warm, so I guess we'll have a white Christmas. 👍

   And these next photos are not very good, but when we were driving home from Portland, Maine last evening (we went to visit my mother-in-law and hit Costco) the sky was just on fire at sunset time. 

    I wish there's been a good spot to pull over and just watch the colors change.

   That's all for me. Have a wonderful rest of your weekend and start tot he new week. 

    

    

More Gingerbread Friday

  Hi everyone. It's another Friday, and for those who celebrate Christmas, it's now less than a week away. (Wasn't it just Thanksgiving?)  For me, my family will be celebrating  on the 23rd and 24th since this year my daughter is going to spend the actual holiday with her husband's family.

   Today I am joining Nicole for her Friday Face Off and also Gillena for her Friday Lunch Break. This past Monday I shared some cool gingerbread art I saw at a display put on by the Portsmouth Historical Society in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.   I thought I'd be festive and share a few more today. If you missed the ones from Monday you can find the link here: T Stands for Gingerbread.

   I saved the ones with lots of faces for Friday Face Off today. 😏

     This first one has no face as it's the ghost of Christmas future from Dicken's Christmas Carol.  Look at that fondant lace. It's pretty amazing.

   This next set of photos shows the business category winner. It's a rendition of Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Water (for those of you who may not be familiar with the architect or the building).

   This under the sea view may not be the most technical, but I thought it was a clever idea.

And for another ocean scene how about this giant squid and the submarine?

   And for the Dr. Who fans, here's a few daleks for you.

A few of the adult creations

  How about a mouse trying to pull Santa's sleigh on an airport runway?

   Or Godzilla...

  I think there were close to 100 gingerbread houses that people entered.  I'll finish with this one which has a local connection to the Celia Thaxter home out on one of the Isles of Shoals (a small group of islands 6 miles offshore from Portsmouth). Celia Thaxter was a famous poet in the late 1800's, and she is originally from the seacoast of New Hampshire.

I hope you enjoyed the gingerbread constructions. Have a great Friday and weekend ahead. And for those of you who celebrate Christmas but I only "see" on Friday's, I wish you a wonderful holiday.