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.