Summer Blooms Our New TIOT Challenge

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

   Thank you everyone who joined our Animals-Real or Imaginary challenge that ran for the last 2 weeks. It was fun seeing what people picked for animals.  For our new challenge, we're hitting the summer season that's going on in the Northern Hemisphere.  Our newest challenge is

Summer Blooms

   I have a journal page to share. It's in my ledger journal, and I started by putting down some rusty colored paint over the page. I was actually trying out the color for another page I was making so on the bottom the paint was thicker and as I worked my way to the top I watered it down some. But those of you who know me know I hate to waste a painted page, no matter what the condition of the paint. 😏

  I then used a small scrap of textured paper to emphasize the flowers. I also used a vase shaped piece of scrap die cut that was laying on my table. It was actually the inner remains of a window that I had die cut.

   I used a sheet of printed paper and fussy cut the 3 flowers. I chose them because they looked like sewn flowers. Then I added buttons with some thread woven through the holes to create the center of each flower.

   I used a grey paint pen to outline the vase and create the stems and leaves. Then I decided to add the little punch out bird. Because I decided to add a bit of pink to the bird's breast, I then decided to make this page really about summer blooms. I used the same paint and an old foam flower stamp to bloom up the background.

   I stamped the quote (TH). The page still needed something, so I used a few plastic number stickers I had to finish it off.

  I'm also linking this page up to Halle's Fabric, Lace and Trims, Oh My challenge at Art Journal Journey.

  I hope you're inspired by flowers and will join us at Try It on Tuesday in the next 2 weeks that this challenge runs. And don't forget to check out the other  design team's creations too.

T Stands for This and That

  Hi everyone. Happy  new week to you. And Happy T day those of you who stop by Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's blog.

   Last week I had a post written and scheduled, but then I realized I had forgotten it was T Day's 13th birthday. I wanted to do something special for T Day's 13th  so I decided to trash some of last week's post, but also save a part of it for today's post.

   Here's the part of the post that I saved and that I had originally scheduled for last week.

   One fun thing I did was meet up with a fellow blogger and her husband. Some of you may already know Dorothy and her husband Patrick. Their blog is The Frog and PeguINN. Dorothy blogs about many things, including their travels. This time they traveled from their home in Southern New Hampshire up to Lake Winnipesaukee which is in my part of the state. I had met them once before several years ago, but it was fun to meet up again for a lovely and long lunch.

  We met in Gilford, New Hampshire at another one of those old fashioned seasonal places called Sawyers.  It has been around since 1945, but this year it is under new ownership. However, out front they have these 2 cow statues so when you drive by if the cows are out you know their opening season has begun.

   Patrick is a funny guy, and he wanted to know who was going to sit on the cows. I wouldn't have climbed up on them, but luckily the restaurant had put out this sign. 😉  Ha ha.

    Thanks for a fun afternoon and some great conversation Dorothy and Patrick.   ❤

   Here's my drink for T day this week (and it was originally also going to be for last week). You can also see lots of drinks in the background, as well as the inside of Sawyers. 

    It's always a pleasure to meet up with people  you get to know through blogging.

   Since it was almost 2 weeks ago I met up with Dorothy and Patrick, lots of other things have happened.  For one I finally went to see an orthopedic because by right shoulder has been bothering me. Stupid me tried to pull a heavy box off a shelf over my head, and when I did I could feel something pull. I'd been icing and using heat on my shoulder  plus taking something to keep down  the swelling, but sadly that didn't take care of it. Now I'm waiting to schedule some physical therapy. And trying to use my left hand more. 

  Also this past weekend we spent a day visiting with my daughter and another  day finishing up a few chores at my Mother-in-law's home. This upcoming Saturday there is going to be a family reunion there. More about that event some other time. 

   Mid-July also means blueberry season here in New Hampshire. I don't mean cultivated ones, but the tiny little native ones. They are the best. ❤ ❤❤ One of my friends and her husband have acres of land covered in these low bush blueberries. Sometimes they hired out people to come in with their big equipment to get them, but they haven't done that for a few years. This year they decided just to invite anyone over who wanted some berries. When I got the invite to go berry picking, I replied that I would be over.

   Here's a tiny snapshot of the blueberry crop in the fields. Imagine this multiplied by 100 acres. 

   You could stoop, squat or sit and spend a lot of time picking these berries. Or you could use some old fashioned equipment.  My friends have the equipment so I learned all about the traditional way to get berries, which was actually quite easy and faster than picking by hand.

   First you have these blueberry rakes which you run through the bushes kind of  like combing your hair. Only instead of hair, the tines make the berries fall off and then you tip the rake back so the berries roll down into it.

Then you just empty the berries into the berry box. Each box holds 6 quarts of berries.

It wasn't hard and in less than an hour I just about filled all 6 of my quarts.

   My technique isn't that great yet so I got some green berries, but definitely far more blue ones. 

    

 When we got back to my friend's house (we took their truck up into  the fields), my friend's husband pulled out this old winnower. It doesn't clean out the green berries, but the winnower cleans out the leaves and stems that gets put in the mix. 

   I even got a lesson in running the winnower.

    The berries fall down over the left edges (where my friend's husband is checking that the berries are actually going into the bin and not all over the floor) and into the boxes.   Here's my berries pre-winnower

and here they are ready to go home with me.

   As I mentioned, my raking technique isn't well practiced so I had a few green ones to clean when I got home. 😏  These berries not only freeze great, but it  means there will be some delicious baking in my future. 👍

   That's all for me. Happy T day for those who stop by and have a great week ahead. 

   

   

Wrapping Up Another Week

  Hi everyone. Happy Friday. Hope you're having a good week. We were supposed to have a very hot week, but then all the Canadian wildfire smoke blew in, keeping the temperatures down quite a bit.  The cooler temperatures were great, but obviously, not the smoke. It's too bad there are wildfires again too.  

   One day the sky was yellow (that was weird), and then the other couple of days it just looked cloudy. However, it wasn't cloudy; it was  just smoke.

   And no, my photos are not as  dramatic as some I have seen on TV. I'm sure some of you have had far more smokey scenes. But one thing I noticed yesterday that I have never seen before is  a sun reflection on my deck. It had rained the night before so there were puddles, and the sun was leaving a light bright dot.

   I hope if you're also in the smoke it's not too terrible, and let's hope the fires stop too.

  Today I'm not here to talk about smoke but to join Halle for her Fabric, Trim and Lace challenge at Art Journal Journey. I'm also joining Nicole for Friday Face Off and also Gillena for Friday Lunch Break.

   Today I have another unfinished cloth journal page. I made these pages before my machine went off to be fixed, and it's just been either too hot or too busy so I haven't yet gotten back into sewing since my machine came home. 😏

   I have a package of these 1930's prints pre-cut into hexagons. It was a pack with some odd cuts, meaning many of them might have an edge that is a little longer than the other 5 edges.  Anyhow, that's an easy fix because I can just cut those to the correct shape. I took 3 and stitched them  down on my page. Then I also printed off the face using some cotton fabric that could go through my printer. (If you're curious and didn't see how to do that, you can see it here: Sewing in Progress.)

   I die cut the flower out of some scrap fabric, and before I sewed that and the face down I used some yellow ric-rac trim across the page.

   That's as far as I have gotten. For now.

   I'm not sure if I'll be joining Sunday in the Art Room and Sunday Smiles as I have a lot going on this weekend. I could schedule a post, but I'm not sure I will be able to get around to everyone's blogs to comment, so if I don't post, have a super weekend and start to the new week. If I post, I'll see you Sunday.   And if I haven't been by your blog recently, I will hopefully be by soon. 👍

  

A Thursday Art Post

    Hi everyone. Happy Thursday. Today I have some art to share for a couple of challenges. First I have a tag for Tag Along (and ATC's too). This month Brenda is hosting, and her theme is Favorite Colors. But you can also always post a tag, ATC or bookmark for anything goes too.

   I'm also linking this tag up to Creative Artiste Mixed Media challenge #128, where the theme is always Anything Goes.

   I love the blue and greens of summer, so that's the main colors of my tag today.

   I started with an old Impression Obsession cover a card seashell stamp, which I stamped in dark blue.  You can just see the images peeking lightly through the background. 

    Then I used some vivid turquoise and lime green liquid ink to color over my background. It was a bit too bold, so I lightly sponged some white gesso over it. Now my  background was ready for some images.

   I took out a very old Kin Hughes/ Cornish Heritage Farm stamp set full of fish and other sea creatures. I stamp the wave directly onto the bottom of the tag. I used a dark blue paint pen to color it in, added a bit of white paint pen, and then finished that with some very dark blue Stickles glitter glue.

  I then took some fish and stamped them on white paper. I colored them in with markers and fussy cut them. Once I added them to my tag I darken the stamp outline with a black pen, and I also gave them a little glitter glue sparkle too. Finally  I added some clear water drop style embellishments. I also stamped the quote which  came from the same stamp set and outlined it with the same blue paint pen I used for the water.

   Since it's any arty kind of day I also have a page for Halle's Fabric, Lace and Trim challenge at Art Journal Journey. Today my page is made in my ledger journal and except for some cloth trim, is a paper page.

   I started with some lavender colored ink and an old Hero Arts background stamp which I stamped several times around my page. I like how left a light random design and even the bare spots (thanks to what was on some of the pages before this one).  I then took some scrap paper and tore what was left a bit. I knew I wanted to use this old B Line stamp, which I stamped on white and had decided, after  I fussy cut it, to leave it uncolored. I wanted the black and white background paper to fill in around most of the image, and because it was black and white is why I left the stamp uncolored. 

  I then fussy cute both the flower and the banner out of a sheet of paper. I colored the banner to match some trim (since I thought I had purple ric-rac but didn't). I finished by adding the banner and the ric-rac. I also had the left over of a large word stamp on my work table, so I cut out the words and added them. They seemed to work perfectly with my images. Finally I added a few white beads to the banner  to tie into the white flower.

   That's all for me. I hope you're having a super week and maybe even finding a little creative time for whatever you enjoy making.

 

A Mid-Week Walk

   Hi everyone.  Happy middle of the week. 

   A few weeks ago I had an appointment down in Portsmouth. It was a beautiful day at the shore; one of those days where the breeze came in off the ocean and made the temperatures right along the coast a good 15 degrees (F) cooler than inland. I had thought about going to the state beach for a while after my appointment, but I figured by the time I was done with my appointment (since it was the perfect day for sand and surf), the beach would be really crowded. Instead I decided to head over to Odiorne State Park and go for a walk. It was really a lovely one too.

   The state's done a lot of upkeep there, so the trails were cleared and set for walking. I first headed down towards the beach area of this park. You do get people who come to this "beach" to enjoy the sand and water, but since the only way to get there is to walk in through the trails or boat in,  this beach doesn't get crowded like  the bigger beaches just a couple of miles down the coast.

   I would have walked out to the point along the beach as the tide was low enough to do that, but when I came around a corner, the beach was rather busy. Grin. Rather than disturbing the geese, I turned around and headed back into the woods. 

   The shade felt great anyhow.

I thought this tree  had an unusual shape.

     Out at the point there was this big bunch of tiger lilies. The state had also mowed the grass here. I wonder if at some point in the past, long before this was a state park, there was a house here. A friend who is an archaeologist told me that one clue she often has about the location of  no longer existing buildings  is where you find clumps of flowers that are not wildflowers.

    It's always fun to come out to this point since 1) the views are so pretty and 2) we boat through the water here. I like seeing the view from another perspective.

From there I went back into the woods along the trail.

     Some of the Second World War coastal defenses are still here. When I was newly retired and came here I wondered if the graffiti was from any of my former students. Now I've been retired long enough  my former students are (hopefully) no longer irresponsible teenagers and are responsible adults. 

    There used to be some actual art graffiti on some of these walls, well done butterflies and birds, but now the graffiti is just messy scribble and a waste of paint and viewing. I continued on.

   Pretty soon I was back to the parking lot.

   I hope you enjoyed taking a walk with me on a beautiful summer day. And hope you are having a beautiful summer day also.

 

T Stands for a Party

  Hi everyone. Happy new week to you, and a big hello to everyone who stops by Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's blog  for T day. Today we're celebrating a happy 13th anniversary for T day. 🫖🎂🍵❤  

  Last week was busy, and I kind of forgot about T Day's birthday. 😰 I had a  post written for this week about meeting up with a couple of bloggers (I'll save that for next week). Then I saw Elizabeth's post last night. I was too exhausted to switch things up since we had a memorial service for my  mother-in-law down in Massachusetts yesterday (Monday 7/13). We put some of her ashes into her  family's plot. Plus my mother-in-law's  94 year old sister  and her 90 year old sister-in-law who both live in that town could come and say goodbye. Many of my husband's cousins (almost all of the family still live in that town) also came. It was nice, but when I got home last night I wasn't up to doing much. 

   I searched my photos and found a few OLD birthday photos I thought would make my post more of a celebration. I haven't been joining  T Day for 13 years, but I have been joining in for quite a few. Now I need to look back and see how many years it's actually been.

   So, from the 603 (New Hampshire's telephone area code)

and from Miss Maddie who likes to party

   have a little Moxie

 and raise your drink glass to toast 13 years.

This goes without saying.

Happy 13 years Elizabeth. 

And maybe the even better part, is that when you're done

  if there's something dog appropriate in your glass, Mr. Pete will give it a good pre-wash. 😉 HA HA!

  Have a super T day and week ahead.