T Stands for The Start of My Trip-Part 1

   Hi everyone. Happy new week and T day to those of you who stop by with your drinks. You might have noticed I've missed T Day  over at  Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's blog  for the last couple of weeks. For those of you who don't know, my husband, the 2 dogs and myself took a giant roadtrip  to Nova Scotia. Neither my husband nor myself had ever been there, and it was as beautiful as we'd thought it would be.

    Here's a map for those of you who may not be familiar with the area I'm talking about. I added the red line and green circles which are a rough estimate of our trip.The green circles are in the general area of places we visited (and in some cases stayed) and the red lines are our general route.  The red dots are places we stayed.

   Before we went to Nova Scotia, we spent a couple of days in Maine. We did that because we took a ferry that went from Bar Harbor, Maine across the Gulf of Maine over to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. Originally we had planned to just go to Bar Harbor for a night so we wouldn't have to rush there on the day we were catching the ferry, but then I suggested we go up a day early and stop over in Belfast, Maine. I love Belfast because to me it is quintessential coastal Maine without being too crazy touristy.  I have been antsy to go back there for a visit for awhile now. (Belfast is the lower green circle and Bar Harbor is the upper one.)

    I'll fill you in on the ferry in another post, but  for T today I'm sharing a few views from Belfast.   The top photo is one I took while we were having dinner the evening we arrived. I'm sharing dinner further down in this post. The next photos are harbor views the next morning.

    If you wonder why I have so many harbor photos that's because one of my husband's favorite things are boats. When we go someplace where there is a harbor we are always taking a spin through. 😏

    As you probably have already guessed, one of my favorite things is art. There is a shop in Belfast that I love to visit when I'm there. 

     One side of the store is all about fabric. They had their Halloween fabric out, and I had to just walk by it, no looking, 😞. (OK, I did take a few peeks.) Otherwise I could have bought a bunch of material I don't really need. The other side of the store has art supplies. I only took one photo of that side because I was too busy looking at all the various media and materials.  I still had to remind myself that it was only day 1 of the trip and that the car was pretty full (we did have to keep room for the dogs to stretch out), so I settled for a few replacement markers, a new Staz On ink pad and a roll of book binding tape (because mine is almost gone). But I could have spent a lot of money in that store. 😁

  For breakfast on our morning in Belfast we went to this  cafe where we have eaten before. The walls have these fun murals on them. I might have shown photos of this cafe a couple of years ago for T day, but even if you don't remember them you can see the cup of coffee so this works as a T day drink.

     For my actual T day drink this week, I'm going to share where we had dinner.  It's another place we have been to before. It is called Marshal Wharf Brewing Company, and they have a really big and tasty beer menu. (Not that I had beer for dinner, but I had beer with my dinner. 😉)

    They are located right on the water so we had a great view of the sunset from our table.

  And they allow dogs to come in too. This is kind of a weird shot of Mr. Pete.

  Here's my T day drink photo. My husband decided on one beer, and I couldn't decide so I had a flight.

   For dinner we both had a grilled cheese sandwich, and instead of chips I substituted some clam chowder. It was a tasty dinner. 👍

   I think this post is long enough, so that's it for me. Wishing everyone a happy T Day and week ahead also. 

  

  

T Stands for Three Tickets for T

Hi everyone.  It's time for T again over at Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's blog.  For T day you just need to link up a drink in your post. In this post I have 3 links to drinks. 

Last Thursday my husband had to go to Belfast, Maine for a meeting. Belfast is a 3 hour drive from my house, part way up the Maine coast, and is a really charming little town. The hubby asked me if I wanted to come along for the ride, and I did.

We left just after 5:30 AM. Stop one was just before we got on the Maine turnpike, about an hour away, in Biddeford (Maine) for a quick  break and to grab some breakfast to go.

I rarely go to McDonald's  so I didn't know they had these fun little quotes on their drink cup lids. Here's my wake me up Diet Coke.

While my husband was at his meeting I took  a short walk and mostly read in the car. 

After my husband's meeting ended, he and I went downtown and had lunch. It was  a perfect summer day so we sat outside.

We had only a little bit of a water view from our table, but we did have a nice mural view.

I had unsweetened iced tea to drink, and this is my second ticket for T this week.

I was debating whether to have a lobster roll since I was in Maine (home of the Maine lobster, even though you can find them at the New Hampshire coast too), but they also had a grilled cheese crabmeat sandwich on special. I haven't had crabmeat for a long long time as you hardly ever see it on the menu at home, so I went with that. The hubby was surprised I didn't order the lobster roll, but since he was buying lunch, I bet he was happy I went with the special. 😉

After lunch the hubby had to catch up on some work calls from the car, so that gave me time to walk around downtown. I didn't take a lot of photos since I was busy browsing, but here's a few I did take.

I didn't check out the story behind this oldest shoe store in the US, but it makes a good photo.

This boating bear isn't a great photo, as I snapped it inside the restaurant as we walked out. 

It's also a good thing we didn't have the truck with us, as I would have wanted one of these cool metal arbors for my garden.

Do you need to sit a minute and relax? The car is an uphill walk. And I know, this post is rambling on a bit.

Here's one view of downtown Belfast. It's not a very big downtown, but there's some artsy stores in the mix. 

I loved these mugs in the kitchen shop, but they were way too pricey for my budget. These are ticket #3 for T this week.

When I got back to the car my husband said he saw a woman walking by with a huge bag stuffed with yarn. Had I found the yarn shop? 😉

My ears perked up like the dogs do when you say the word treat. Yarn shop? 

No I hadn't found it. He was done with the phone calls so he headed out with me. I didn't need any yarn, but I did actually need a 40 inch sized 10 1/2  knitting needle (for knitting in the round) to work on my Icelandic sweater.  

They had just what I needed, and even though they had some very nice yarn, I walked out with just my needles.👍

Since it was Thursday and my husband had to work on Friday, we headed home fairly early. We did have to make one more stop though.

It had been a few hours since lunch-grin.

What flavor would you choose? I had a cup with half mocha chip and half espresso anise swirl. And since espresso is usually a drink, I might be able to count that as ticket #4 for T. Smile. 

Thanks for reading this far and visiting my blog. And thank you Elizabeth for hosting.  Have a great T day and week ahead.

 

Happy Earth Day/Weekend Art

 Hi everyone. Happy weekend to you.

Before I get too far into this post, let me wish Elizabeth a very happy "bearthday".  And Happy Earth Day to everyone  else also.

Today I have another page to share for Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's Recycle, Reuse and Repurpose challenge at Art Journal Journey. My page is one that works for earth day as long as you stay away from all kinds of toxic chemicals, invasive plants , and you recycle all those plastic plant containers most spring plant purchases come in.

I've been trying to do a lot of garden prepping this past week, at least as much as the weather allows. Tomorrow the weather people predict  that we'll have a 100% chance of  rain, but actually it will be really nice to have a lazy day inside. However today I'm heading back out to try to get some more garden chores done. I just love spring and being able to get my hands dirty.  I am having lots of fun and getting lots of exercise so chores may not be the best word for what I'm doing.

Most of the images on this page come from an old kids gardening book. I die cut the flower pot and the flower I put in it (that I then painted). I also used an old trim punch to make the flowers along the bottom., as well as stickers and some scrabble letters (these were cut out of some old magazine pages) to make my quote. My page's background is made with the reading parts from a couple of old book pages, some gesso and some green paint as well as green spray ink. I sprayed that ink into the gesso while it was still wet.

I also have a tag today for the new challenge at Tag Tuesday This time Pinky is hosting and her challenge is Anything Goes.

I made much of my tag using up scraps on my work table. There's a bit of printed paper, some scraps of painted  deli paper, thin paper edging leftovers, and a quote that I had stamped and planned to cut out and use but never did.  I decided to  just add it on as it was.

The piggies and the pink quote are from a set of clear stamps  I recently bought. I just fell in love with the little piggies. Last winter I discovered an art store about 45 minutes away from my house. Luckily for my wallet it's in a direction I don't often go. However I did go by there back in early March when I actually needed something, and  that's when I saw this piggie set that I couldn't resist.

And speaking of art stores, when I was in Belfast last weekend, I discovered this store which was right across the street from the diner where we stopped for  breakfast Saturday morning.

Half the store was fabric and sewing supplies and the other half was art supplies. I told my husband I wanted to go in, and he said "Take your time."

The sun glare made it hard to get a window shot, but I actually really like this photo.

The store opened at 10 AM, and it was like 10:05 when I went in. There were at least 5 or 6 customers already inside. And I can see why. This store had a great collection of interesting supplies. I only snapped one photo because I got too busy browsing, and well, doing a bit  of shopping too.

 This store made the art supply store that is 45 minutes away from me  seem pretty empty.

The funny part of this story is how I mentioned that my husband told me to take my time inside. Ha ha. Take my time as long as it was quick. Around 10:20 he came inside, and I know that because I heard him say  to a clerk "Oh no, my wife is going to be in trouble in here." 

I must have made a face, that was noticed by a woman near me. At this point she turned to me and said, "I drive over an hour to get here. I hope you live close enough that you can back sometime by yourself."

Smile.

I was in heaven, but sadly heaven is a 3 hour drive away.

I did manage to treat myself to a few interesting supplies,  even if I never made it into the half that was the sewing store.

It's a good thing this store is 3 hours away because that is probably just as well for my wallet. Smile.

Enjoy  your weekend.

Some Views and Faces of Belfast, Maine

 Hi everyone. Happy Friday to you.

I'm here today with a post for Nicole's Friday Face Off and also for Gillena's Friday Lunch Break.

Some of you might have read back in my T Day post (this past Tuesday) that described how last week I took a more-or-less spontaneous but fun roadtrip up to Belfast, Maine. My husband had business there, and he invited me along for the ride. That ride turned into an overnight visit and a little bit of sightseeing.

We were having gorgeous weather too, so that made the trip even better.

Today let me share some views of Belfast, Maine. Let me start off with some "faces".

A clock face

and whale face

My dog Mr. Pete looking at something out of the car window

The face of a building that was painted in an interesting way

And this wall was being refaced

And here's some little faces in this anniversary poster that really stood out on this brick wall.

And here's a few other photos of Belfast to share. These don't really have faces, but I  thought you might enjoy them. I took these in the early evening while out walking in town along this fantastic rail trail that was there.

And I'm guessing this next building was the old train station along the trail.

I love this tug, but if you notice on the right hand side of the photo there are 2 bridges. The upper one is the main road-Route 1. The lower one is the old road and now part of the rail trail.

That's all for me today. I hope you have a fantastic start to your weekend.