Two Days at the Shore Back in January

 Hi everyone. 

Today I have 2 pages to share for Chris' Where in the World challenge over at Art Journal Journey.  These pages go back to winter when I made them in my Florida journal. This journal was one I put together during February and March after the hubby and I came home for a week's trip to various parts of Florida in late January.

I haven't posted these pages yet however, so they should work for Art Journal Journey.

This first page has to do with a state park we visited outside of St. Petersburg. We had spent the first part of the day at the Salvador Dali Museum and also at the Sunken Gardens within the city of St. Petersburg. Both my husband and I wanted some out of the city time, and since we still had a few hours until it would be dark, we drove out to this park on the outskirts of the city.  

I sprayed some water on my page to wet it, and then I inked it. The background reminds me of the sky with some clouds and blue.

I die cut the big leaf and stamped the sunglasses. I added in the beach scene.

Fort Desoto State Park is a huge, beautiful oceanside park, and it has some fantastic walking trails. We walked this one along the shore and through the remains of the old fort that had been located here. That fort was what the park has been named after. 

My second spread is also from this same journal. This spread has to do with 2 museums we visited on the East Coast of Florida, about an hour south of the Kennedy Space Center.  One museum was the Mel Fisher Treasure Museum, and the other was the McLarty Treasure Museum.

All of the McLarty Museum and some of the Mel Fisher Museum had to do with the 1715 Fleet. The 1715 Fleet  was a group of 12 Spanish ships that were bringing (to Spain) a lot of looted gold and other treasures from  South America. Havanna (Cuba) was the biggest city in the New World, and it was also the location where all the precious materials arrived after being shipped out of the South American  colonies. From Havana, these commodities would be loaded onto ships to be taken  back to Spain. Some of those fleets sailed up along the coast of Florida.

These 12 ships in the 1715 Fleet were sailing to Spain. One ship's captain chose to sail further offshore, and his ship was able to make the entire journey. The other 11 ships stayed together and then ran into a hurricane when they reached the San Sebastian area of Florida. The ships sunk directly off the shore from where the MacLarty Museum is located. 

This journal page is made mostly with some old stickers. On the right I did stamp the water and the rays at the top. I also used a gold paper ship and a "fake" Spanish Pieces of Eight. These coins were called Pieces of Eight because to make change you would just cut the coin into sections. I have a little bag of these fake coins that I bought at the Mel Fisher Museum in Key West when we visited there several years ago. I thought I needed to add one because of all the treasure I saw in both museums, including many solid silver pieces of eight.

This photo (above)  is the spot where the 11 ships wrecked and where the survivors came ashore. And below, is yours truly in front of  a sign outside the MacLarty Museum.

That's all for me today. I hope your Thursday (or whatever day you are reading this) goes well!

Thursday

Hi everyone. Happy Thursday.

Today I am sharing a page from the junk journal I am working on. The journal is made with brown kraft paper that I simply hand stitched along the spine. For those of you who don't know what a junk journal is, you basically glue down items that you  want to clean up (but you don't have to be cleaning them up). There doesn't have to be a particular theme to your book or pages.

My spread contains some images that came out of a small stack of magazines I decided to recycle. I also used bits from a word find book that I'd bought  last fall , but the puzzles were way too easy.  I wonder if  this word find book was supposed to be for children and was accidentally put in the wrong place at the store.

I also added some items that were laying on my work table,  and I used a paint pen to make the white dots on the craft paper. The little girl is floating in the middle of the right hand page, but it is a junk journal. And the fun part of making a junk journal (besides recycling all those bits and pieces you'd probably throw away) is that you can make your page however you want.

This week Rain's Theme is complementary colors, and since my page is lots of blue and orange, that is a good example of complementary colors. There is also a bit of green and red, 2 other complementary colors. 

I am also linking my page up to Valerie's Anything Goes challenge at Art Journal Journey.

I also want to add a tag for the newest challenge at Tag Tuesday. Sandie's is hosting this time around, and her challenge is your favorite theme.

One of my favorite themes is nature and another one is travel. One place I love to visit is the American Southwest, which is the inspiration for this tag. Hopefully I haven't shared this one before because I'd made it awhile back. 

And speaking of travel and nature, let me end this already long post with some manatee photos from back when I went to Florida in January. I'd never seen wild manatees before, so it was exciting to see them and check them off of my wildlife/ animal bucket list.

They aren't the most exciting of photos because I wasn't swimming underwater with them.

Since they stay underwater, sometimes all you see is the bump as they swim close to the surface. 

And sometimes they pop their tail out of the water.

And if you enlarge this one, you might see the nose out of the water getting a breath.

This is the canal where we saw the manatees. It's part of the Cape Canaveral wildlife sanctuary.

OK, I'll end this post here. Thanks for making it this far, and have great end of your week.

 

Weekend Post

 Hi everyone. It's the weekend. I hope you have a nice one and do something you enjoy.

I have a fun little adventure planned for tomorrow/Sunday that I am looking forward to. I'm going to the theater with my daughter and a friend. I'll tell you more about it in another post.

I want to start today's post with another tag for Valerie's challenge at Tag Tuesday. Her theme is birds.

To make this tag I used lots of scraps off my work table as well as a tag I painted. I really like the 2 colors and my splash like effect of the paint, so you'll probably be seeing some more of that type of background in the future. To make it I just put a blob of paint down and used a dried up baby wipe to smush it around the tag. Then I repeated that process with the second darker color.

I also promised to share more photos from Edison's and Ford's Winter homes in Fort Meyers, Florida. Let me finish off this post with rest of those photos. 

This is the view down by the river which is the waterfront of these 2 homes. You can see that the pier was destroyed in the hurricane and all that is left is the base support pylons.

I love this wonderful old fashioned porch. I really liked these houses because they were 1) beautifully vintage and 2) they were really down to earth and not opulent in any way. This would be a great place to sit with a book and read.

And in the garage Ford had built near his home, there were a few antique cars. I bet you can guess what company made them. 

This is Henry Ford's house. It was not built by Ford, but he bought this property when it went on sale so he could be next door to his friend (Edison). You can see our tour guide off to the right in this photo too. He did a great job.

There were also a few of Ford's cars in the museum they had on the property which was across the street from the homes.

I didn't take many photos in the museum so I can't share more of that.

The pool area was closer to the river, and it sustained damage during Hurricane Ian last fall. We couldn't go into the area. Edison built the pool for his children. 

 

Here's another view of Ford's home. I think the other house in this view, way down the end, was either private property or museum administration offices.  

And this is from me standing on Ford's front walk looking back to the Edison house. I'd love to be planting my gardens in January, but I have no plans to move to Florida.

Here's a few views from inside both of the homes.

You couldn't go into the homes, but for 2 very wealthy men, these homes were (in my opinion) really lovely. I actually thought (before I visited) that these homes were going to be large and over the top like so many people build nowadays, so their simplicity surprised me.

 

I think ibises are very interesting looking bird, and they make me think of ancient Egypt.

The roots of a couple of trees that came down in the hurricane.

An artist had put up 3 sculptures. One was of Mrs. Edison in the garden center (which- for shame) -I didn't photograph. There was also one of Edison and his banyan tree.

And one of Ford by his house.

I'm not sure these statues really added anything, except you could see what these people looked like.

Something was also being filmed in Ford's garage by his house. They started filming right after we walked through, but the language was in Spanish so I don't know what it was about.

And last but not least for my British and Commonwealth friends, there was a large tree planted in memory of the Queen last summer. You can see the top of it in the second photo.

This post is long enough. Hope you enjoyed the photo tour of Edison's and Ford's winter homes.

Enjoy your weekend. 

More of the Edison and Ford Winter Homes-and a Snow Report

 Hi everyone. Happy middle of the week. 

 Yesterday we were dumped on with snow, but not as much as they got out in the western part of the state where my daughter lives. Some towns had 32 inches/81 cm of snow by late afternoon yesterday, and the snow wasn't done falling at that point. I wrote this post last night so I can't tell you what our final snow amounts are until I  get out of bed and check this morning. 

But here's what it looked like around 6 PM last night when I went out to do my last back deck shovel of the day.

The snowy fence next to the bird feeder is my entrance into my veggie garden. Who knows when I'll be able to get into my garden, but I bet it's not going to be gardening season too soon. 😕

FYI-today's post is rather long and photo heavy.

In my last post (yesterday's T Day), I wrote a brief introduction to the Edison and Ford winter estates in Fort Meyers Florida. Today let me share some photos as well as my Florida journal pages I made based on our visit back in January.

I had read a book in 2022 about Ford's and Edison's friendship called  The Vagabonds by Jeff Guinn. That book was about many road trips these men took together, along with Harvey Firestone (of Firestone Tires) and also John Burroughs (an environmentalist). Having been told about these historic homes and also having read that book had made me want to visit their estates in Fort Meyers.

One thing that I heard about before we visited the winter homes was the amazing banyan tree you see when you arrive.  This tree was planted by Thomas Edison about 100 years ago because one thing he was experimenting with was finding another source for the plant latex used to make rubber. (It turned out that rubber trees still have the best plant latex for rubber production.)

Banyan trees are related to fig trees, and they grow  all these prop roots down from their branches. As you can see in both of the above photos, it looks like you are in a forest of banyan trees, but this is actually just one tree with many many prop roots. It's huge.

I wasn't sure how to show this in my journal, but I really like this abstract style page I ended up making.

Edison and his wife were also both big into gardening. And of course Edison, being a prolific inventor, also had a very large well stocked lab to work on his experiments during the winter when he was away from his home lab in New Jersey. That inspired me to make this next page in my journal.

In honor of the Edison's love of plants and to also help raise money to maintain the estates, there is a great garden center where you can buy plants and other garden supplies. Good thing I was flying and  not driving home because I could have gone crazy otherwise.

And here's some garden photos from on the estate itself.

These next 2 photos are banana orchids which I found really fascinating.

And I love all the bamboo textures, colors and designs.

And let me include some of Edison's studio photos also, including this fun statue outside the entrance to his working space.

And I love this vintage lab.

And finally, here's my journal page I made about my lunch after we left the estate. I shared this restaurant with you yesterday.

I'll share more photos from my visit in this weekend's post.

I'm linking my trip journal pages up to Valerie's Anything Goes challenge at Art Journal Journey

Thanks for visiting.