This and That Art for Thursday

    Hi everyone. Happy Thursday to you. I hope you're having a nice week so far. It's been chilly at my house, and it's going to get even  chillier  before too long. 😨

 

    A couple of weeks ago I was going through a drawer and came across this journal I had made and never used. Now why was it just sitting there, tucked away? I guess at some point I wanted a journal for something and then never got to using up? It was a fun find, but there was no sense putting it back into the drawer only so it would be forgotten about again. There's no time like the present right? Especially when  the Andy Warhol Queen paper it was covered in was calling me so now I'm filling it up. ❤ 

   On the back of a page I added this tag that I made.  Or maybe it's more of a bookmark. I'm linking this up to Brenda's Love and Romance challenge at Tag Along (and ATCs).

   Shortly after I found this journal, I also found some scraps of paper that were either tag or bookmark sized already. Since it's not worth wasting them, I used this turquoise colored one and lightly inked the background with  a green ink pad. Then I added this postage scrap from 49 and Market. The big flower is also from that same company. Then I stamped  the little xo series in 3 of the postage boxes. I used a very very old peg stamp from a Valentine's set by PSX. The big X and O comes from another old clear set by Memory Box. I colored them in. I also took another peg stamp from the same Valentine's PSX set and stamped 3 little black hearts, which I then used as a frame around some little card confetti hearts.  (I think they are from Sprinkletz.) Finally I added a bit of funky yarn to the top and bottom, and stamped the LOVE word at the bottom. (It is another very old stamp and doesn't have a maker mark on it. It might have been from the same PSX peg set, but I just don't remember.) I finished by outlining the edges with a Sharpie.

    I also have a page for my "What's Up?" challenge at Art Journal Journey.  "What's Up?" with me is that I've been working in my newly found journal and have been making nice weather inspired pages. 😏 Anything to forget about the cold, ice and snow. Grin.

     Some of the  pages in this journal are watercolor paper, and then inserted in between them  are some large pieces of other types of paper. This page is some music printed paper. I decided to not only continue my spring/nice weather theme but to tie in the music also.

   I actually used a lot of stickers on this page. The flowers are another John Derian sticker, but I did enhance this one with some markers and pens. The guitar was a sticker outline that I added and then colored it in. The trumpet and sax were both fully colored stickers.  The hummingbird is a 49 and Market laser cut image, and the chickadee was on a tag that was connected to the new mug I bought and shared this past Monday on T Day. I fussy cut him out.  I also added a few little metallic musical notes stickers.

    The "Sit a Bit" quote on the page is stamped, and the flower's Latin scientific information were part of the big sticker that I cut out and added in a different spot. Finally I finished by adding some washi tape to the top and bottom. 

    

    It's supposed to be the warmest day of the week today, and I hope to get out and walk or least get a little  change of scenery. That's it for me. Thanks for stopping by my blog. 

Time for a New Challenge

    Hi everyone. It's Tuesday so it's time for a new challenge over at Try It On Tuesday.. Thank you everyone who joined our It's Cold Outside challenge. That's always a good way to start the new year, even though I know for many people it wasn't cold outside at all. 😏

     For our new challenge, you need to Add Some Text.  Here's my journal page.

    After I sent this page off to Try It on Tuesday to get it added to  our main post, I then decided to ramp up the romance a little bit. Here's my page with some hearts added. I think the colorful hearts finish off the page a bit more without changing it too much. 

   My journal page is covered  with some pages from a small and very old dictionary.  I left them a bit "rough" to create some texture. Then, once I decided what I was going to do with this page, I used a green ink pad and added a bit of color to the background  to emphasize the texture.

   The giant rose is a sticker from a John Derrian sticker collection book. I was thinking spring and a bit of Valentine's Day too since when I cleaned up my work space I took out a small bin of Valentine inspired supplies.  I die cut the lace along along the bottom using black paper. I added a couple of "fake" postage stamps (49 and Market) and used some postal rubber stamps to cancel them and add the postmark.  I also stamped this cute little frog, colored and fussy cut him. I was originally thinking spring and  about the spring peepers who start chirping, but then when I added the cupid and the quote (both stamped on acetate), I got thinking that maybe if someone kissed the frog he would turn into a prince. 😉

   Be sure to check out the other design team members blog posts. I think this one should be easy as most people add text to their cards or journal pages. I am also linking  my journal page up to my "What's Up?" challenge at Art Journal Journey.  My Art Journal Journey challenge runs through the end of the month (art journaling only please) but our Try It On Tuesday challenge runs for 2 weeks into very early February. 

   Thanks for stopping by my blog, and I hope to see your creation(s)  at our Try It On Tuesday text challenge.

T Stands for My New Mug, Birds, and Some Baking

    Hi everyone. Happy new week to you. And hello to everyone who visits for T Day over at  Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's blog .

   I've had a fairly quiet week this past week. Over this past weekend we had some light snow on both Saturday and also later on Sunday.

    Besides watching some football playoff games and knitting while I watched, I also spent some time on our snowy Saturday watching the birds. Actually I was "playing" with them a bit because the flock of starlings that last year was only 2 birds big is now up to 31 birds.

   I had just put some fresh bird food out, and although I am not trying to starve the starlings, when they swoop in it is hard for the other birds to eat. (And those starlings eat all the food; in fact they'd eat me out of bird food if I let them. But if you feed birds and deal with starlings you know that.) But the starlings won't swoop in if I stand in the doorway. They sit in the tree and chatter, and then one or two will fly to another tree and chatter. I can tell they are trying to  not only scope out the food situation but to see if I am still standing in the doorway.

 

    The other birds don't mind if I stand in the doorway, so they came in to eat. It's fun to watch them, although when Pete came over to see what I was looking at, he was disappointed it was only birds and no squirrels. 😏

    However later he got to see some squirrels, including this guy in the snow digging up bird seed.

   Birds brings me to my ticket for T this week. I have a new mug.  A few weeks back I went to the bird store to get a new seed tube. They always have fun bird "gifty things" too, especially right around the holidays.  When I went in they had some items including some bird mugs marked down 75%, and since I needed to spend $2  to get a 20% off coupon to work, I bought myself a new mug. (Which came out to be even less costly when the 20% got added to the already 75% off. What a deal-grin. Or maybe an eye roll if you're like my husband. 😉 )

    I even remembered to take a photo of it one afternoon when I was making myself a cup of tea. 

  I chose the nuthatch mug because they are such interesting little birds. It was either that or the cardinal,  and not that I don't like cardinals, but I also like the little less showy birds.  I think they need a little love also. 

   I've also done a bit of baking lately, as you can see in my T day photo. A couple of weeks ago I made some chocolate chip cookies because they're my husband's favorites, and with his back, I thought he'd appreciate something special.  (Of course I had to have a couple too.)

   This past Saturday, while it was snowing and in between feeding/watching the birds, I made a pan of sour-dough discard brownies. I have a sour dough starter that I've been feeding  for almost 10 years now, and every week or so I need to remove some of the starter and feed the rest of it. (I keep it refrigerated. If it's not refrigerated you need to feed it much more frequently.) I've made these brownies before and they are a bit cakie (rather than chewy) so I decided to make some peanut butter frosting to put on them. 

   I added peanuts to the brownies instead of walnuts or pecans, The peanuts tasted good, but I think I added a few too many.  Oh well still, they are yummy.

   That's it for me this week. I hope everyone has a super T day and week ahead.

     

   

Sunday Art-The Redo

    Hi everyone. I hope you're having a nice weekend. This past week wasn't the most exciting for me since my husband was still home with his bad back. He's SORT OF feeling better (fingers crossed it continues to improve), just still in a lot of pain to sit.  The poor guy. If he's testing my patience, this is really testing his own too. 

 

    What's also made it tough at least for me right now is that there is so much ice on the ground (even with the melt because now it's cold again and the melt has frozen) that unless I head down to the beach or to a shopping mall, I'm feeling a little bit cooped up. Well, this too shall pass, as it always does.  

    I mention this not to complain but because it fits in with my art for today.

    Today I am joining Nicole for her Sunday in the Art Room and Gillena for her Sunday Smiles. I am also joining  Art Journal Journey where my challenge is"What's Up?".

    Since I wasn't doing all that much last week, I had quite a bit of art time. However, my muse wasn't exactly hovering over my shoulder inspiring me much. I think my muse has gone someplace  without back issues and ice on the ground. 😏 (Grin)

    To motivate myself to make new art, I have gone back to and slightly revised  a couple of journal pages that I made before but that I didn't really love. The great news is that I now really like these pages. Let me share one. The old view is on the left and the new view is on the right.

    The old view wasn't terrible, but it felt a little disconnected. The red ticket and the heart, no, that didn't belong. And everything just felt like it was floating on the page. There wasn't any focus on the old photo.

    On my new version I did some covering up with  1 inch wide washi tape, and I added this worn looking frame. Then I moved around the gold key (luckily it pulled off OK) and added a new quote. I actually like how less of the clock shows and the family now looks more anchored to the page. I also really like the white stamped words on the black paper.  I do miss that you can't see as much of the filmstrip on the left of the original, but I don't think the filmstrip was really all that strong an addition on the original.

     Last week I shared my work desk, and today I thought I would share a  wall unit I keep my small individual rubber stamps in.  And that I just love also.

       

   I love little cubby units, and several years ago I saw this one in an antique store. The best part was that I saw it right before my birthday, and it made a great gift from my husband. The bottom row is a bit cut off,  but it doesn't go down any further than the half row you can see in the edge of the photo. The writing on the unit  was on it when I found it. It used to be part of  the campus post office at the University of New Hampshire.

   Yes I have A  LOT of rubber stamps. ( I love rubber stamps.) 😸

   What I love about the top (as well as the smaller unit that came from IKEA years ago) is it gives me space to put out some of the little tchotchkes  that I've collected over the years. Some of them were gifts; some were even gifted to me  when I was a child. Some are little things I picked up on trips. Also, when I was a teenager my grandmother went to South Africa for several months. My uncle and his family were living there at the time (and I was so jealous I couldn't go with my grandmother). My grandmother brought back lots of African art and carved wooden animals, and you can see a few of those which were either given to me or that I collected from my parent's home when it was cleaned out.

    I had my post written and then I also noticed that Nicole was showing her African art. I also have a few pieces of African art, as I mentioned above. Here's some close ups of what I have; all it  came back in my Nana's suitcases.

  My parents received 2 masks from her. I don't know where the other one went to, but I took this one when we cleaned out my parent's house. I hang this face on the door into my art space (which is just the spare bedroom) since it obviously doesn't fit on  the top of my cubbies.

    My parents also received these 2 wooden giraffes. Although the mask was something it took me years to appreciate, I always loved these giraffes. I have one downstairs on my fireplace mantel, and one here with my tchotchkes. (And you can see a few of my other little knickknacks better too, but I was really just trying to get close up photos of  the giraffe and the water buffalo in this photo.)

   I'd apologize for the shadow in the photo, but I think the shadow looks interesting.  And here's 3 other items my Nana brought home to me on that trip.  

   I love having a personal space where I can put these items because they all hold memories and make me smile.

   That's all for me today. Wishing you a great rest of your weekend and start to the new week.

  

 

I've Been Knitting and Other Random Things

    Hi everyone. Happy Friday. I'm having a fairly quiet week,  but we've had some warmer temperatures (well winter warm,) so that has been a great break after all the cold we had so far this winter and that has now returned as of today. 

    Today I am joining Nicole for her Friday Face Off and I'm also joining Gillena for her Friday Face Off. Today I have some random photos to share, nothing too exciting since my week hasn't been wildly exciting either.

   Here's my face for Face Off. It's not the clearest photo. But you can see part of a hat I knitted, at least the part not covered by my hood.

   I've been back knitting my Icelandic sweater I started 2 winters ago. The first winter I managed to get through the 2 sleeves since I didn't start the sweater until February, and then by this fall I managed to get the plain part of the body done. Now I'm working on the  yoke, which I was hoping to finish by the new year, but since that hasn't happened, I hope to get it done soon. Icelandic yarn is pretty heavy so if I don't get it done soon, it will be sitting through the hot weather until next winter. 

   I counted wrong when reading the pattern to start to yoke, and by the time I realized it I would have had to rip out several rows. Nope, I didn't want to do that so I've been creating my own design as I go. But I have been following the pattern to know when to decrease stitches. I love creating my own pattern though and knitting with the multiple colors too.

   Since we had some warmer days this week, I took the dogs down to the beach one afternoon when it was low tide. I didn't get to walk as long as I wanted to because my husband wanted me to drop him off at his office so he could get his work laptop and bring it home, but I did manage to get a nice hour of fresh air. The beach was great that day because even though there was no sun, there was also no wind. 

    Miss Maddie enjoyed the walk but not as much as Mr. Pete did. Maddie (being blind) needs to stay on a leash, but Pete is great off leash and doesn't bother other people. Since the beach wasn't  crowded, he got to do a bit of running.

   That's all for me. Have a great rest of your Friday and start to your weekend.

A Celebration of 2025's Reading

    Hi everyone.  Happy Thursday to you. Today my post is for book lovers who like to read about books, or probably even more for me because I love to geek out and analyse what my reading was like for the previous year. Lucky for you I only get to do this once a year (😉 Smirk). But if you're a book post fan, as I am, then you may enjoy my  look back.

    FYI- This is a long post.

    First, here's my reading stats:

    TOTAL BOOKS-102- if I break those down into rough categories

     a) Fiction books (not including mysteries)-26 books

     b) Mysteries and thrillers- 52 books (my obvious favorite)

     c) Non-fiction books: 24 total:

         science/natural history: 10 books

         biographies: 6 books

         travel/living some place unique: 4 books

         other non-fiction titles: 4 books

         please note: Some of these non-fiction titles overlapped areas, so I placed them in these categories  based on what  the overall book theme was.       

📕🕮🕮🕮 📕

    I always have  fun looking back and grouping titles a bit. These topics don't always match up to my stats, but are based  more on where books fit. Some books may be put into more than one category below because many good books blend in several areas and therefore fit in several groupings.

1- I read some excellent  books last year.   Here's my most memorable or favorites,  including a couple of books that I didn't expect to like as much as I did. I'll get to mysteries in another list, so you won't see them in this list.   These books are in no particular order. It was hard to pick favorites this year, so there's a few books I left off this list that could have gone here, but  I'll mention those later in the post.

    These first 3 books are all nonfiction. The first is about this author's huge book collection, the second about how amazing plants are and how ignorant people have been about them,  and finally about finding English history under the ground.

         

     Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid has gotten on a lot of the best books of the year lists. It's a light read, but the depth of meaning to such a light read made it memorable to me. The Hanna Kent book was an interesting story not only about a teenage Australian girl going to live in Iceland, but also an interesting story about when Kent wrote her first novel.  I reread A Woman in White, and it's a well done Victorian classic.

 

   I love a good mystery, so I enjoyed reading about the genre in Lucy Worsley's book. Precipice is a historical thriller, not exactly a high adventure  thriller story but some fiction based on some actual people during the First World War in England. I haven't read any Mark Twain since college, but James by Percival Everett was a satisfying read and a interesting take on Twain's Huckleberry Finn. The Correspondent was one of those books that has grown on me and that I still think about.

      Monica Wood's How To Read a Book was a feel good story without being too gooey. You might remember the time it took me to get through Sarum, but it was worth sticking with it as it told a good story about Britain since the time the island formed. I finished the Century trilogy by Ken Follett with Edge of Eternity, and I love how the author took me through the period from the end of the second World War up into the 1980s.

  

     And finally, a couple of biographies and a long tale about the history of Hawaii. None of these were fast reads either, but I learned a lot about the end of the Egyptian pharaohs and Roman History in Cleopatra. Hawaii was fiction,  based on much of the islands history, and finally, a well written biography about Alexander Graham Bell as well as his wife Mabel.

2- My favorite genre is mysteries. I also enjoy a thriller or two also. Here are some of the most memorable or favorite reads OR series from last year.  I also read  a few different books by Peter Swanson, but they were not all series.  I'm only sharing one book per author   even if I read more than one by any of these  authors.  I also read a few other enjoyable mysteries that I didn't list here but that I'll list elsewhere in this post. 

   

   

  

  

  

  

3- I wanted to read more science/natural history/agricultural /nature books. Did I?   I read more than I thought I did. And before someone mentions it, I know some of these are not complete books on science/ natural history or even garden/farm books, but I included  everything that taught me something about the natural world, although it had to be at least more than a brief mention in the book*.

* This applies to the Olive Farm (which did have a few chapters about olive trees and growing them).  The Last Days of the Bus Club and Driving over Lemons (which in among the stories of living in Spain) did talk about farming quite a bit. However, each of these 3 books would probably be more listed as travel books. Just as I can say, the Oliver Sacks book, although really about genetic color-blindness, could also be listed as a travel book too.

4- Reading trends:  Every year I like to look at what types of books I read to see what I favored. This year I had a few reading trends.

a) LONG books-It was good to read a few books off my reading list and off my bookshelf. The three longest books I read were:

    

   I learned that I preferred to listen to most very long books. Sarum was the longest (a 54 hour listen), Hawaii was a 52 hour listen, and The Edge of Eternity was just under 37 hours. 

   I also read a couple other books that were on the longish side. I should mention that by long I mean over 20 hours of listening or reading. These included:

             

  just under 25 hours            just under 23 hours

b) vintage mysteries:   I enjoyed reading some golden age or other vintage mysteries.

       

I read 3 British Library vintage classics and also some other vintage mysteries,

 

 a few Agatha Christie's

 

 a classic Japanese mystery from the 1940's, the first in a series.

c) feel good stories: These books were all very enjoyable and not mushy. I even debated about adding Here One Moment  to my most memorable list. However I waited to mention it here.

       

d) Mysteries and  fiction set in COLD places:  Another reading trend I had was to read some books set in COLD places. This list included some Nordic mysteries.

  

Mysteries set above the Arctic circle in Sweden  

 

   

  

Fiction and mysteries set in Iceland

 A mystery set in Finland

  

 A couple of mysteries set in Greenland, and I'm even including this mystery set in the Shetland Islands since the White Nights title refers to the 24 hours of daylight in the summer which only happens in in far northern climes.

5- This past years classics: Besides the already mentioned Woman In White and the vintage mysteries , I also read 3 other classics. I don't think I could grade myself very high in this area of reading last year. 

  

7 -For the past few years I've been wanting to reread/read more of my Agatha Christie books that I've collected since high school. Besides the 3 actual Christie I listed above, here are 3 books that include Agatha Christie as a character or, in the Sophie Hannah books, include her detective Hercule Poiort. Plus I also read the Detection Club's first book in which Agatha Christie wrote a chapter.

    

     

8-Other rereads:  I actually reread several books this past year. One of my favorite mystery series has been Elly Griffith's Dr. Ruth Galloway series. There are 15 books in this series, and  I reread the first 5.  I also reread the Floating Admiral (see directly above), 2 of the 3 Agatha Christie mysteries (see above). The other reads on my list are books I originally read many years ago, except the Mill House Murders which I read 2 years ago.

   

And here's some classics I reread.

     

And finally, this book about cats and about starting a farm in the mountains of Spain.

 

9- Books I read a bit of and never finished: I'm not including false start books here. You know the books you read a little bit of and then decide it's not the right time to read them. There were 2 books that I read quite a bit of and then never continued. Both of these are titles I wouldn't mind getting back to.

  

10-Histories/biographies-non-fiction:  All of these books were very well done and interesting.

     

I mentioned the Alexander Graham Bell and the English Murder books above. The White House By The Sea is about the Kennedy family but through the eyes of the family summer home on Cape Cod.

   

Kingmaker was about Pamela Harriman who originally was married to Winston Churchill's only son. The other 2 are mentioned under my favorite books.I also mentioned The Accidental Tourist, which was not only about finding British history under the ground but also about discovering a new hobby. 

 11- historical and bibliographical fiction:

    

Glamorous Notions was about 1950's Hollywood, spies and bone records. I mentioned the other 2 above.

    

The Nightingale was an enjoyable World War 2 book about 2 sisters in France. I've mentioned Atmosphere above.  And I really enjoy Marie Benedict's books and this one about Hedy Lama didn't disappoint.

     

     City of Night Birds was a good book about being a ballerina in Russia.  Conclave was my first Robert Harris book and now I want to read more of his books.  The Ken Follett book was mentioned above.

    

   The Secret War of Julia Child took me a little bit to get into but I enjoyed it quite a bit once I did.  It was a fictional "maybe this happened" story about her  life during World War 2. I've mentioned Hawaii earlier in this post. The Vintage 1954 book was an interesting time travel fantasy set in Paris, and the Whatever Happened to Margo book was a fun  listen set in the late 1940's about one of the Durrell family running a boarding house.  I should mention both Hawaii and Whatever Happened to Margo are vintage fiction books too.

11- travel style non-fiction: I haven't seem to have read as much travel style fiction in the last couple of years as I used to. All of these books I've mentioned earlier in this post except Overland Before the Hippie Trail which was a fascinating account of a young couples world travels in the 1960s, rewritten from the author's journals that she kept at the time.

    

    

12- Fantasy books-   I'm not a huge Fantasy reader, although I don't mind a good  story. Fantasy seems to be trendy lately, but for some reason (?) I don't tend to read a lot of it.  This past year I read a few books that I would consider fantasy in some form or another.

     

     Japanese Ghost Stories is pretty self-explanatory. The Invisible Life of Addie Larue is an interesting story about trading your life for a different life with a Devil. And the Virgin Bride of Northcliffe Hall is a title that sounds like a romance but is not. It is about a fantasy writer and his connection to a ghost in the 1800's.

 

    I already mentioned the Vintage 1954, and the Labyrinth of Drakes is book 4  out of 5 in a fantasy series about a dragon scientist who gets herself into lots of "interesting" situations.

13- Literary Fiction that doesn't fit into any other category very well and that I haven't previously mentioned:

  

    Woman at 1,000 Degrees is an interesting read by an Icelandic writer, and finally Antelope Woman by Louise Erdich that has some rich Native American  "mythology" mixed with real life.

13- Most read authors  in 2025: Susan Hill (4), Agatha Christie(3) , Elly Griffiths (5) , Ragnar Jonasson(6)  and   Peter Swanson (4) . There were several authors I also read 2 books by: Asa Larson, Ann Cleeves, Sophie Hannah, Christoffer Petersen, Robert Harris, Marie Benedict, Taylor Jenkins Reid, Yukito Ayatsuji, and Chris Stewart.

14- Comparisons to last year:

                                            2024                                           2025

Total books                           113                                             102

Mysteries                                51                                               52

Fiction                                     32                                               26

non-fiction                              30                                               24

  biographies                            11                                                 6

  science/nat. history                  5                                               10

  histories                                   7                                                 not counted 

  travel                                       2                                                4

  other                                        5                                                4

15: What I want to read to 2026 and how I feel about last year's reading :

  2025 was a great reading year. You can tell I like a diversity of books, and one thing I'm usually not very good at is reading several books that are part of a series in a row.  In 2026 I hope to finish the one book I have left in Asa Larsson's Rebecka Martinsson mysteries and a few more books in Susan Hill's Simon Serrailler series. I also hope to read a few more Agatha Christies, more Robert Harris and Charlotte Gray books because I really enjoyed those 2 new to-me authors. Maybe I need to  diversify and read about places not quite so cold too, however I do enjoy those Nordic mysteries. Finally, I want to read more vintage mystery stories and other vintage books.

   I'll have to wait until next January to see how I do on any of these "goals". Usually what happens is I end up getting onto something completely different from what I think I want to read. 😏

   Whatever books you or I pick up, I hope our year is full of some good reading.