T Stands for a Look Back and Wishes

Hi everyone. Happy first T for February. 

I must say January ended very cold, and now February has decided to make herself known by  starting off with a nice dumping of snow. I'm in the 10-18 inch area ( 25-46 cm). I hope that February mellows out a bit  after this storm though so I can get outside and walk as much as I did in January.

My T post today is a look back to February of 2017 when I was visiting friends in New Mexico.  I'll be joining Bleubeard and Elizbeth's blog for T and also for her Second on the Second post. 

Since I'm here for T and also wishing I had a winter trip planned, I picked this post to share. The original post was called T Time, and I posted it on February 28, 2017.

T Time

Happy T day everyone. I am here with my Tuesday post from New Mexico. Its cold, grey and windy today and between tonight and tomorrow we may get 5 inches of snow. At home it is spring like and warm. I guess I am in the wrong place for spring weather. Usually it is winter like at home and  more spring like here, but I must admit I am having a fantastic time anyhow and it would be fun to see snow here at my friend's house.

(You can see it on the mountains already though)

So yesterday we went to fantastic museum, the Millicent Rogers Museum in Taos. Millicent was an heiress who collected some fantastic southwestern items and also was a gal who loved jewelry. She even designed some herself. She lived only into her early 50's and died in in 1953.

Here are a few photos from the museum. Lots more to show you in posts to come.

 Above is some of her jewelry and here is the sketches for some she designed.

 This necklace was huge and looks heavy and the spike pin, it was at least 9 inches long-or more. Not really my personal style but still cool to see.

They also had one of her childhood journals on display.

 And here's one from some of her colored pencil sketches for her version of Hans Christian Andersen's story Little Mermaid. She did these for her sons.

 And how about some clothing she designed with some southwestern jewelry and buttons.  I don't know if this jewelry is her designs or not.

And here is a portrait of her  done by artist Dorothy Berg.

I bet if you are like me, after that little tour you are ready for some T.

Stop by Elizabeth's blog-Altered Book Lover to see what people have been sipping (and eating) lately.

 Look at these artful mugs my friend has. I have been using the quail mug. I really love those guys.

A little hot coco by the fire.

And maybe a small piece of brownie too-though I didn't take a photo of that.

Thanks for visiting. As I am away I might not  get to my computer as regular as usual. so please be patient with me. I will get to everyone's blog to leave comments and to post comments.

Happy end of the month. (Can you believe it is just about March?)

Have a wonderful new month and T day!

Petroglyphs

Hi everyone. Now that we have all become more or less homebodies and changed some of our habits, it is hard to believe that it was just three weeks ago my husband and I traveled to New Mexico. Boy things have changed so quickly. Now I wouldn't want to go anywhere, but 4 weeks ago when we left it was a different world.  I suppose at some point in the future we'll be back to normal again. Or maybe it will be a new normal.

Anyhow, back on our trip we did several National Monuments and Parks. Last week I took you to Bandelier, and today I will take you to Petroglyph National Monument, which is right in Albuquerque, the state's biggest city.

This park was formed because as the city was growing so quickly in the past in 30 years, miles of rocks covered with petroglyphs were found. Luckily  smart people got involved and had this place turned into a national monument before all the petroglyphs were lost.
This park is unusual as there are 3 different places were you can see these ancient rock drawings. All are hikes/walks of various lengths. As the day promised some rain, we chose the shortest trail, which should have been about a 2 mile round trip. Of course we did have some rain, and in order not to get all wet and having to sit in those wet clothes, we ended up not completing the entire trail. But we did probably make about a mile and half.
The petroglyphs were great though.

These are just a few. No one knows exactly what these mean. Perhaps directions along a trail, perhaps a story. They do think they belonged to the ancient Pueblo people, perhaps the same people who lived at Bandelier that I showed you last week.
I also saw a couple of cool birds while we walked.

 How about this roadrunner? He stood there and did several poses for me.

 And we saw this hawk.

You can see the rain off on the other side of the city and in the mountains.

I made a spread in my travel journal to remember this.

That's all for me today.
Be smart and safe and stay healthy!
Thanks for visiting.

The Rest of My Travel Journal

Showing you the last of my New Mexico travel journal today. If you missed the first posts about it and you are curious, you can link up here:  Part 1 of Taos travel journal and Part 2 of Taos travel journal.
Can't believe I was there a whole month ago.

My cover. You might have seen this before. It got a bit scuffed up during the tip which only made it better.

My inner cover. 

Then I took these blank tags, envelopes and pages and tried to catch the feel of my trip on them.

These are before photos. (Obviously.) I wanted to show you have the before looked .

There's a little glare here as the paper tag I made (using scrap paper and a piece I cut out of a travel magazine) are in the clear plastic envelope I recycled.

More magazine cut outs. And a piece from a clothing tag in my stash.

I really like my journals to feel like the place I visited, not just record my trip events.

If you've followed closely you've noticed I've done some rearranging of pages. That's one thing I love about using a ringed binder for my journal.

I've also used a few postcards and some stamped and cut out images.

And then I added a few pockets. Pockets are good things in my mind. I can fill them with receipts and business cards and other little things I may want to keep.

Got to love the addition of a little map or two.

Some of my pages are made from heavy board (like card board) and some are on sheets of paper. Here and there I've added in some journaling. And sometimes just all the collected ephemera works.

And then I've added things from my stash at home.
I think I finished it just in time since vacation  is feeling like it was long ago. Oh well, spring is here and it will be my April break before I know it.  I am going to take a 4 day level 2 baking class that week to build upon the level 1 class I took last summer. I'm excited and it should be a lot of fun.

So that's my journal views and all for me today. Hope you enjoyed them!

More Travel Journal Pages

 I finished my travel journal last week.  This is post 2 of showing you my finished journal. Part 1 can be found here. Some Travel Journal Views.

 I bought this little burro stamp at this rubber stamp store I went into in Santa Fe called Guadalupe's Rubber Stamps, which is also home of the Stampa Fe line of rubber stamps. I guess I needed a stamp/craft store visit. When I left I felt so good.  Scary how supply shopping can become such an addiction that when you don't have stores left around you and you can't shop,  how good it feels to go back into one.
I also really like the fact that I could buy some  things you can't easily find on line.
I was a little naughty and bought myself a few stamps, but I don't feel even a little bit guilty about it.

Burros were the animal of my trip. This stamped burro is one cute little guy.

 I made this tea page when I came home from the trip, and I picked up the jewelry postcard on the trip. I love this jewelry store in Arroyo Seco.  Wish I could go in and buy a whole bunch of her pieces. After the rubber stamps I had to limit myself to a little trinket piece, but I am really OK with that. Sometimes the little trinket pieces get a lot more wear than a more expensive piece that doesn't go with everything. Plus its a good memory piece (like those stamps)!

 This post card is the Rio Grande Gorge bridge. It is really high (565 feet) above the river and is the 7th highest bridge in the US.

 We went out for a little walk along the trail that leads out along the top of the Gorge and I took these photos looking back to the bridge.  Not as dramatic as the post card I put in my album, but it was such a beautiful day and when we walked out it was really quiet with no wind.  Back by the bridge there was someone or some people pounding on a Native drum and chanting. It was really really a magical moment.
Even better that we didn't meet a soul on our walk so we could soak up the sun and the view and the chanting without anyone else ruining the moment.

 We also visited these Earthships as they were not very far from the bridge. Earthships are built from recycled materials and are  off the grid but livable homes.. Although they look kind of like buildings in Star Wars, inside the model home was actually really nice. I especially liked the green house they had.

This one was still under construction.

I have one more travel journal post for you another day.
So the hubby ended up back in the emergency room Monday night with another round of erratic heart beats that started while he was at dialysis. Luckily his heart reset itself, but we didn't get home until 2 AM. Yawn. I took yesterday off, and he was able to consult with a cardiologist who thought it was  happening  because of the stress on his system due to dialysis and thinks once my hubby gets the kidney transplant, it should go away. That's the good news for us, even though it doesn't really fix the problem ASAP. So the hubby is going to try some meds right now to hopefully control it and we shall see.
So one thing we did yesterday after sleeping in late (it rained all day so it was a good day to sleep in and be lazy) was watch Spotlight. If you haven't heard of it (and I didn't until it was nominated and won the Oscar for best picture)it is a movie all about the Catholic Church priest scandal  and how the Boston Globe newspaper broke the story here in the US. Wow- it is a good story, a well made movie and did they really catch Boston. The characters sound like Boston and look like Boston. And I'm sure this is true for people where ever they live, but nothing worst than hearing characters trying to do that Boston accent and doing it so poorly it isn't a Boston accent at all. We watched In The Heart of the Sea the other day, and though not a bad movie, but Chris Hemsworth did such a lousy accent that he shouldn't have even tried.
Anyhow, enough about that, but I do recommend this movie - its a great investigative  story.

Make today a good day everyone.