T is a Million Calories Today

Hi everyone. It's Tuesday and T Day. And to all my blog friends and visitors who live in the US, Happy Independence Day as its also a big summer holiday here. We're in for some beautiful weather here in New Hampshire, and even better, its time for a cookout and some swimming up at my mother-in-laws. This is a bigger holiday in my husband's family than Christmas I think.

I made this page in my calendar journal. The stripes at the top of the page are really dark blue, although they look black here. I had the  USA and patriotic flag stickers, and I added in this cute little TH cut out girl. Fourth of July is a great summer holiday tradition in my life so I am joining up at Art Journal Journey as the latest theme is Summertime Love. Elizabeth is our hostess this month and I think she's pick a great theme.

And happy T day everyone. Time for a little vacation indulgence.

Back at the end of June my husband, daughter and myself went to Downeast Maine, way up on the Canadian border. We stayed in Eastport, which is a small city on an island called Moose Island. There is a causeway with a road onto the island, so you don't need to take a ferry to get there.

One day we walked around Eastport and checked out the shops and city itself. We discovered this bakery there.

 They had 2 cases of yummy looking goodies. It was so hard to pick.

 These cream puffs were calling to me though.

Even though it probably had a million calories.  Good thing we were going for a hike that afternoon.

The diet coke that is my drink was left over from my lunch, so I figured I would just sip on that, although I must say water would have tasted better.

So my cream puff was a killer with pastry cream and real whipped cream inside. the chocolate sauce on it was rich and pure heaven.

My husband and daughter each had an eclair, and in reality, we could have just split the cream puff. But we were on vacation and up for a little indulgence. 

Stop by Bleubeard and Elizabeth's blog to see what the T Gang has been up to.

Hope its a wonderful day everyone and thanks for stopping by!

July 1

Its July everyone. :)

Today it the 150th anniversary of Canada as a nation.  Happy Canada Day to those of you  from that great nation. 

And speaking of Canada, I thought I would show you some photos from my puffin boat trip this past Sunday.  This was the reason we headed to northeast Maine and New Brunswick.  (Even though I was still excited to visit the area and would definitely go back!) 

Warning: this is a long post with lots of photos!

When I went to Iceland last summer I had hoped to see some puffins, and I did see one, but it was so far off that I couldn't tell it was a puffin until I came home and enlarged the photo.

So I did some searching on the internet because I heard you could see puffins in Maine, and Maine is the state right to the east of New Hampshire. In fact, I only live a couple of towns from the Maine border, so traveling to Maine is not an issue. In my research, I discovered there is a puffin trip out of Cutler, Maine that travels to Machias Seal Island.

I booked back in January because this is a very popular trip. In fact, by the first of February the trip was totally sold out for the season.

Machias Seal Island is a disputed island. Both the US and Canada claim to own the island, and right now the lighthouse on the island is managed by Canada.

This boat trip has a license to land on Machias Seal Island. They are the only boat from the US that does. Because this is a sanctuary island, the trip can only take 15 passengers.

This is our sea traveling vessel tied up to the dock. It's a lobster boat although it hasn't been used for lobstering.  There are benches along the 3 back sides of the boat (at the opened end) so you have a real in the environment experience.

However, due to fairly rough seas, we couldn't land on Machias Seal Island. It was a little disappointing, BUT at least the sun was shining and we were able to go out on the water and see all the birds.

And boy were there birds. Thousands of them.

You can see how from the spray behind the rocks how rough it was.

Lots of birds are called Thick Billed Murres. They are distantly related to penguins and use their wings as flippers to swim like a penguin, but unlike penguins they can also fly.

the remind me of penguins on the rocks.

Can you see any puffins in the above photo?

But you can see these guy taking off from the water surface here.

Puffins are like murres and also use their wings to swim under water.

More murres.  I LOVE my new zoom lens.

We also saw some porpoises (didn't get any photos of).

And since we visited Machias Seal Island, you would expect us to see some seals.

The ducks behind the seals are eider ducks, which you might have heard of if you've heard of eider down which was used in blankets and jackets.

I love the fact that there is a red haired seal. They have as much hair variety as people do.

How about some more birds.

We also saw this large seabird called a Gannet.

A little blurry, but here is the male eider duck with 2 females.

It was actually hard to take photos because the boat kept rocking and rolling in the swells.

I took lots of photos and probably 75% of them didn't come out very well., but I did that in hopes of getting at least some good photos.  I think I got more good ones than I expected to.

The most disappointing photos were off the bald eagle we saw coming back into the harbor.  I thought we were done with bird photos so I locked my zoom lens (as my lens has a lock on it). Then when we saw the eagle I got excited, and without thinking hit the auto-focus button into the off position. So I got lots of photos like this.

Bald eagle way out of focus. :(

I would have had some excellent shots since the ocean wasn't as rough here and I could snap better photos. But it was really cool to see the eagle.

I did manage to get just 1 focused eagle photo.

Not even the best shot either.

Oh well.

That's how it goes I guess.

So hope you enjoyed this installment of my vacation stories and photos.  

Happy weekend!

All Over the Place

Happy Friday everyone. It looks like another grey and stormy day here in New Hampshire. What a week. We haven't seen much sun since Monday,and so far its been rather cool-not summery at all, but the humidity is on its way back. What weather! Its time for some more sunshine. 

Besides the weather, I've also been without my car as I blew a tire the other day. Finding a new match has been a pain, and I ended up back at the car dealer. I've only got 7,000 miles on these tires, and I guess their a rather new model, and most of the tire places around couldn't get them. But the dealer got one in so I have a 7:30 appointment to put it on. :) If the weather isn't too bad when I get out I'm going to go pick some strawberries (if you like strawberries-there's nothing better than fresh picked berries). We shall see.

So today I have a few sketch journal pages for you.

And a few random shots from last week when we went away on out extended weekend journey to Eastern Maine and New Brunswick.

We had some photogenic fog one evening.

And the lupines were blooming everywhere.

They were so gorgeous!

 And wild irises too.

And we saw lots of scenic harbors.

And we had this deer that keep showing up in the yard of our rental. I had a little zoom lens play.

Plus some crows that kept hanging around too.

I'm still working my way through my photos but having fun seeing what I managed to get.

So for some here in the US its a long 4 day Independence Day weekend. With July 4 on Tuesday, some people like my like hubby have Monday off too. Not my daughter though. I guess it depends where you work. Wow-time is just buzzing right by.

Hope this hasn't been too much babbling. Happy weekend! And thanks for visiting.

Good Morning

The sunrise was so pretty last Saturday morning that I decided I needed to get up and walk down to the point (in my pj's no less) and catch photos of it. It was my only chance since it would be my only morning in Maine during our 1 night mini trip Down East.

Too bad that jet had to leave a streaky exhaust line in this photo.

I couldn't decide which one I wanted to share!

Which one do you like best?