A New Challenge and Wrapping up a March Challenge

     Hi everyone. It's Tuesday, and time for another new challenge at Try It On Tuesday,

     Thank you everyone who joined our Spring challenge. Winter has been hanging around in my area this year (I don't know if it will ever end 😉), so seeing all the spring art linked up made me happy. If the weather can't be spring, at least I can see signs of it on my computer.  And also thank you Sarah for being our guest designer.

   Our new challenge should also be fun. This time we want you to Make It Cute.

   I made a journal page with some printed paper background as well as a paper frame that I thought worked with it.  Then I added that adorable little kitty. All those images are either from 49 and Market or Stamperia.  I die cut the butterfly from some printed paper, and I die cut the lilac on some white paper and used markers and ink pads to color it.  I also used some sparkle ribbon and some white cloth trim. Finally I stamped  the quote using one from a TH quote stamp set.

   There's so many ways to do cute, so be sure to check out the other design team members pieces.  And as always, you have 2 weeks to link up and join us for this challenge, no matter what type of art you create. 

   Today is also the last day for Chris's Spring Forward challenge at Art Journal Journey since tomorrow April begins along with a new challenge. I'll be linking  up to Chris' challenge with this page also. Thank you Chris for hosting. It's been a fun way to have some spring during a not so spring-like month.

    I'm looking forward to all the cute pieces over at Try It on Tuesday, and I hope to see you there.

T Stands for A Weekend Excursion

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

  This past weekend my husband, myself and even the 2 dogs-although they just went along for the ride- packed up the car and took a road trip down to coastal Connecticut, specifically the area around Niantic. I had a family event to attend, which I'll share a bit about later in the post.

  For those of you who live outside of the US and who are not  familiar with New England, here's a map.

    The upper red-orange state is New Hampshire (NH) where I live, and the lower red orange state is Connecticut (CT) where we traveled to.

  We decided since we were traveling 3+ hours away to a place we really hadn't been before, we might as well stay over night and see a few new things  at the same time. That worked out great except my husband wanted to visit the Submarine Museum (Submarine Force) in Groton  and for some reason it was closed until further notice. 

   I took this photo from a parking area above the museum, and although it's not a great photo, it's looking down onto part of the museum and the USS Nautilus, the first US nuclear sub which is now decommissioned and  part of the museum.

  Otherwise we had a great trip. Here's a few photos I snapped while we were out and about.

    The breakfast wasn't anything, but I do recommend this hotel if you're ever for any reason staying in the area. And if you won't ever be,  enjoy the sunset view in this photo.

    It's still too early for all the pleasure boats to be  in their boat slips. In fact, both days the wind was cold, and the temperature was only in the 40's (around 4-6 degrees C).

   Saturday night we went into New London to meet up with my brother, his wife, my niece and her husband for dinner.  We went to this fantastic restaurant called Tony D's. From the outside it wasn't much, but inside it was a cozy  place. (Sorry no photos.) My meal was amazing. I had lobster ravioli that was their special for the night and along with some water I had a glass of Merlot. 

     There was so much food as it came with some delicious focaccia and a dinner salad too.

    My niece and her husband live down in this area of Connecticut, but the funny thing is my brother now lives only 35 miles away from me over in Maine. I haven't seen him since he got married last March.  It's a shame  we don't visit more since we don't live all that far apart. (I used to drive 35 miles every work day each way when I was teaching so an occasional trip to his house would not be a big deal.) 

    While in  New London for dinner Saturday night we had to park in the street, and I noticed these 4 old buildings across the street. They caught my eye, and so I looked up what they were about. They were built in between the years 1835-1845, and this area was known as Whale Oil Row. They were once homes of the whaling upper class. That history also explains the mural that was next to where we parked.

    We also visited a nice beach  late afternoon on Saturday, but it was a bit too chilly to spend much time outside. 

    At dinner Saturday night I was told about this interesting used book store. Of course, Sunday,  I wanted to go. It's actually 4 stores but I only made it to 2 of them. I had a lot of fun browsing. This store (photo below) contained art, history, architecture, biography and teen books.

   The annex in the back of this lot was full of fiction. It was also very crowded. Here's one small section. The aisles weren't exactly straight  and there were also books tucked into every available corner. That is to say, there were a lot of books. 😉

    It was good to see people buying books though. Of course these were all used and reasonably priced. 

    This used book store was spread out in 4 locations. There were 2 shops where we stopped; there was another one  downtown and another one  further out of downtown. Sadly the downtown location, where I didn't get to, is where the mystery, gardening, nature, craft and cookbooks were. In another way, it was probably good for my wallet that I didn't get there because those are the genres I am most likely to buy. 😉

      However, I still managed to pick up a few books. 😏 (Plus one more that was not in pile because I had started reading it. Grin.)

    OK you've seen snippets of the trip except for the reason why we went.  That reason was this fun celebration Saturday afternoon.

    My niece is expecting, and we'll have a new member of our bigger family in May. 👍

    Here's my second drink for T Day. I'll be popping this cork once I hear the good news from my brother.

   And before I sign off,  if you ever stop by Mary's blog Dark Thoughts, her daughter's lupus is attacking her heart. She  has 40% heart failure. Someone has started a Go Fund Me page for her, so here's the link if you are interested: Go Fund Me Page.

   That's all for me today. Wishing everyone a happy T day and a great week ahead. 

I've Been on Another Owl Hunt

    Hi everyone. Happy Friday. Today I am joining Nicole at Friday Face Off and Gillena at her Friday Lunch Break.

   Last Monday I shared some photos of the Long Eared Owl I saw last week. (Link is here Going On Another Owl Hunt.) My friend Deb was hoping to see the Long Eared Owl after I shared my photos with her, so the other day she and I went off  on another  owl hunt. It was one of those days when all the birds seemed to be hiding, at least at the state reservation where the owls were to be found.

   We did see one owl, but as you can see in this next photo, he/she has great camouflage. The owl almost looks like the tree trunk. Thankfully there was a birder there with better spotting skills than either of us had and who pointed him out to us.

    But at least Deb, who had never seen a wild owl before, did spot him.  After the owl event we decided to head on down to the Parker River National Wildlife Preserve which is only about 15 minutes away from Salisbury State Reservation. The wildlife preserve is out on Plum Island, and you might remember  the very snowy photos I showed when Deb and I visited there earlier this year. (Here is that link if you're interested: Snowy Nature Reserve.)

    Being at the shore, the snow is all gone there, and we decided to stop at the main headquarters to see if there was anything special we should know about. There wasn't, but they did have this fun drawing out in front of the building. There are faces here for Friday Face Off.

   I can't say it was the best birding day, but even so it was really nice to be outside, see what we saw, and also get a little walk in too. Mostly we saw Canada geese and seagulls. It seemed like there were 1000’s of each (although not in my photos) species, but probably I am exaggerating abit.

    At the end of the road, we parked and went walking. 

    There were a couple of swans in the salt pan lake located near the tower. Unfortunately the path was chained off and had signs that said area closed. I couldn't get close enough to see the bills so whether these are Mute Swanson or Trumpeter swans I can't really tell. But I did learn the difference between the 2.

   Afterwards we walked a relatively short boardwalk trail. It was just over a mile (1.6 km) loop.

At one point the boardwalk was over a very wet area, probably wetter than normal with the spring melt. I thought the view through the water looked interesting.

   A side trail said it took us out to a marsh view. However, the view was blocked by some invasive growth.

  This Phragmites has taken over a lot of the wetlands in the overall general area. It forms these thick stands of tall reed grass which chokes out the native plants. It did make for some interesting photos, but that doesn't mean it's a great plant to have growing in the area.

    I don't know if these native cattails stand a chance.

   When we got back to the parking lot, there was a small group of people who had spotted a Woodcock .

   It was hard to photograph him because he was  nestled in some brush, plus there were some tall people who made it hard for this short person (me) to get a good view. This was the best photo I snapped, but he's there. Even if this photo has a lot to desire. 😐

  Afterwards we headed out as the afternoon was getting on.  I'll finish this post with one last photo.

  More geese. 😏

I'm away this weekend for a  family event, so have a great next few days and start to the new week.

Some March Views

    HI everyone. Happy Thursday. Today I have a spring themed art journal page as well as some photos of what spring has  been like in my area

    My art journal page is for Chris's Spring challenge at Art Journal Journey. I used images to build this page leaving the background the plain white paper, which with the way I work, didn't stay exactly pure white during the process. But it will do. 😏

   I started with a pink frame and the white background that came with the frame . I took the white background, and I splattered it with lots of pink watercolor paint. Then I layered the frame and added lots of images. Some of these images (including the frame) were from 49 and Market, Stamperia and Ciao Bella.  Also some of these images were stickers and some were not.

  I also used an old Martha Stewart bunny border punch  and added a short strip of bunnies, as well as a gold sticker in an upper corner from an old sticker set. The stamped quote is an old Technique Tuesday quote.

   I thought I'd share a few more photos from last week's owl hunt I went on. No birds today, just March views.

This next photo is a favorite. I just love how the color of the dried leaves pops against the unfocused  grey background.

   That's all for me today. Enjoy your day. 

A Little Chick

     Hi everyone. Happy Wednesday. I hope you're having a good week. 

    Today I have a journal page for Chris' Spring challenge over at Art Journal Journey. There's still another several days of March to go if you're inclined to join in. In another week it will be April, which I hope will bring a lot more spring-like (and a lot less winter-like) weather in my area. Thank you Chris for a spring themed challenge because it's the closest I've gotten to green leaves and spring flowers yet. 😏

    My background paper was white, and I gave it a bit of a splatter.  I had some wide map washi tape which I used on the top of the other side of this page. The tape was wide enough that I folded it over. On this side the image is upside down but that only makes me think how spring can be...not really spring but still back in winter.  😉 

  I took some printed paper and die cut what looks like a small sheet of paper ripped from a spiral bound notebook. I stamped the grid and the lines on the top. 

   After adding that to my page. I used  the frame and some leaves from a couple of different 49 and Market sets.  The chick is one image from an old Easter set from the former stamp company Cornish Heritage Farms. I didn't think my page, which I was trying to make look like spring, didn't actually look very much like spring. The chick did the trick. Then I added a button and also an orange paper clip. Both happened to be sitting on my work table. 

  I suppose a "hello" quote would work on this page, but I left the page quote-less mainly because at this point there wasn't much room for any words. 

   I'll end this post with a couple of photos from last Saturday when my husband, the dogs and myself took a trip up to check on my mother-in-law's house. The snow had finally melted enough that we could get in without snowshoes and since the road was surprisingly not really wet, the dogs and I could take a nice little walk.

Plus there's a slight bit of ice melt along the shore, but there's still a way to go before ice will be out.

Have a great day!