Hats

 Hi everyone. Happy Thursday. 

I'm posting today for Rain's Art and Dinner Date .  Her theme this week is hats, so let me share a few with you.

First  I have this page out of my junk journal where this dancing lady is wearing a  traditional sombrero cordobes. 

I put the quotes too close to the left hand edge, and since this journal doesn't lay very flat, my photo is crooked so you could read the quotes. 

This page has a lot of flowers, so I am also linking up to Aimeslee's flower challenge at Art Journal Journey. 

I also have another tag for  Tag Tuesday  and Michelle's Hats challenge.

This lady was way too big for my tag, so I glued her down and then cut her to size. I've been wanting to use her in some art though, and this challenge has finally let me do that. 👍 She comes from one of those art paper pages you find inside Somerset Studio magazine, and I ripped her out while cleaning a small stack of magazines a while back.

I also have some interesting food to share this week for the dinner date part of Rain's challenge. It might look very familiar to some of you.  I tried a recipe that Jeanie at  The Marmalade Gypsy shared somewhat recently. She wrote a post on  making preserved lemons, and I thought they sounded really interesting.  I've never tried one before, and since I had  bought a big bag of lemons to make my lemon cake a few weeks back  I figured I might as well use what's left of  them. Plus I managed to  have some fun kitchen play.

I only made 2 jars because that's all I had for lemons.

I stirred them the other day, but they still need to sit for 3 more weeks. I'll let you know what I think once they're ready to taste. 

And thanks Jeanie for sharing this recipe.

That's all for me today. I hope everyone is having a super week.

Cool Colors

 Hi everyone. Happy Thursday. 

Another week is flying by, and this one, although I didn't think it was going to be busy, has turned out to be quite busy. Being busy isn't a bad thing except it seems to make the time go faster, but as long as you're having fun, that's OK by me.

Last week I was looking at a pile of ripped out  pages from a recent magazine stack I'd gone through. I decided rather than having these pages sit the same way the pile of old magazines had, the best thing to do would be to put them to use right away. I  put together a quick junk journal with some brown kraft paper and a simple stitched binding.

Here's the first spread.  It's  a combination of images and  backgrounds from some old Flow magazines, as well as lots of bits and pieces that were left overs on my work table. 

Ignore the slightly ratty edge of the inner left side. I left a few papers just a little too long so when I turn the page they crinkled up a bit.

 I'm  having a blast making these pages. I'm not sure if it's because there's "no rules" to how I  arrange the materials (and that is very freeing) or if I am just glad to make use of more materials and not have them end up sitting or tossed in the  recycle trash can.

I'm linking these up to Valerie's Anything Goes challenge at  Art Journal Journey. I am also linking up to Rain's  Thursday Art and Dinner Date.  This week the theme is cool colors, and there's a fair amount of cool colors on my spread.

This past Tuesday I went to visit my brother at his new house. Last spring he moved from Massachusetts to Ogunquit, Maine and moved in with his new partner. (My brother's wife died 4 years ago from breast cancer.) OK, this move isn't really recent but I hadn't been by his new home. He's on his college's teaching break this week, and  he happened to have some free time so he invited me over for a walk and a belated birthday lunch. Many of you know I love to walk, especially on the beach, so saying yes to this invite was a no brainer.

I didn't get a lot of photos on my walk because my brother is the athlete of the family. I was just thrilled I could keep up with him 😀. I did snap a few photos which I'll share because these are certainly cool colors which work for Rain's Art and Dinner Date .

I've been to Ogunquit but never walked the Marginal Way, and now I can say I've done it. Plus it was fun to spend the day with my brother and get to know his new partner better. I'd met her several times but those meetings were always at functions so I'd never had a lot of time to get to know her. We hit it off big time.😀

This is where we went to eat. Of course, I'd planned to photograph my lunch, but I got busy chatting and never did. Instead, I'll share this photo and just mentioned I had a yummy fish sandwich along with a pint of peanut butter stout. Both were delicious. This is  the closest you'll get to my food for the dinner date part of Rain's Art and Dinner Date today. Smile.

That's all for me today. I hope everyone has a great rest of your week and weekend ahead. 

Drinks and Outside Time in Florida

 Hi everyone. Happy Thursday.

I'm back with a  new page from my trip journal that I recently made. I like to make travel journals, and this one is from when I went to Florida in January.   I also have a couple photos from the trip that go along with the journal to share today.

Since  Rain's Art and Dinner Date theme this week is drinks, let me share this tropical cocktail.

I can't even remember what it was called, but it was made with orange and pineapple juices and was delicious. 😀

I enjoyed mine even more because we could sit outside on the treehouse deck of the restaurant.

This is a great post for today since we're  getting  snow at home.  I'd have to bundle up to enjoy a drink outside today, but at least the ice in the drink wouldn't melt very fast. Smile

And here's the page in my travel journal about this drink too.

The little wooden hearts were the skewers that came in both my husband's and my drinks. The smiley fruit are some fun stickers from my stash, and I added the burger sticker because that's what we had to eat with our tropical cocktails.

And the other day I had some bananas to use up, so I made this new muffin recipe.

These muffins have bananas, peanut butter, chopped dried dates and a few chocolate chips I decided to toss in  because chocolate makes almost everything better. They're a yummy mid-morning snack. The recipe is in an old cookbook I have, but if anyone wants it let me know and I'll dig out the book and post how to make them.

That's all for me today.  I hope everyone is having a great week and has a nice weekend ahead also.

Beach and Bread

 Hi everyone. Happy Thursday. 

The other day for T Day I was unloading about my February slump and mentioning that this week low tide at the beach worked for walking. Hurrah for that. I took the dogs down on Monday morning, and  even if the wind off the ocean wasn't exactly warm I pulled  my scarf up over my face and pulled my hat all the way down over my ears and walked on. The dogs didn't care if it was windy. They love walking at the beach as much as I do.

Monday the beach was really empty (probably because the wind was so cold), and I could even give the dogs a bit of off leash time.  This next photo  looks like layers in a dessert to me but it's actually looking up to some rocks along the seawall (from where I was standing) and including the sand  by my feet.

A huge tree stump had been washed ashore during one of the recent storms, and in the process it also gathered a little sand on it.   I think it looks more like a rock than a tree stump.

But maybe you'd just prefer to see the beach. (This is Long Sands Beach in York, Maine.) See what I mean about it being empty?

I also drove over to Nubble Lighthouse which is very close to the beach.  I never took a photo of the lighthouse (mainly because I seem to have a lot of them), but I did get a couple of interesting photos of this couple down on the rocks.

The ocean was pretty rough at that point because the tide was coming in. I caught some nice wave sprays when those waves crashed into the rocks.

And  today  Rain's Art and Dinner Date has a theme of bread.

Tuesday I tried one of my bucket list recipes, Japanese Milk Bread. 

This bread starts with a warm flour and water mixture called the tangzhong. The tangzhong is what (so I read) gives the bread small air holes and a light and springing texture.  If you're looking for a light white bread, this is definitely one to make. It was delicious.

Here's a recipe for it from KIng Arthur Flour. I didn't use this recipe, but the one I used was almost identical. In the recipe I used, the tangzhong only contained water (1/2 cup) instead of water and milk. My recipe also explained you could make the tagzhong in a microwave, which I did. The recipe I had also didn't use any powdered milk in the dough, and instead of the 1/4 cup of sugar I only used 2 Tablespoons. I found my recipe in America's Test Kitchen  Bread Illustrated cookbook.

I think next time I might try making smaller pieces and baking them in a square pan because this bread would make delicious dinner rolls. And thanks Rain for this theme this week because I've spent too much time procrastinating making this bread.  

OK, that's all for me. Have a great rest of your week and weekend too. 

Holiday Journal

 Hello everyone. Happy Thursday to you.

One thing I like to do between Thanksgiving and New Years is keep a little holiday inspired journal. I used to keep it more of a written journal with some art thrown in, but now it's more of just an art journal with a tiny bit of writing thrown in. I  number my pages with the date, and my "rule" is what I put on each page just needs to be something to do with that particular day. 

For example, on the 4th I finally got around to putting away my very summery clothes and took out my heavy winter clothes. And in the process I made a huge mess.  So here's my page for that day.

 I'm really trying  to be a little less specific and a little more abstract (in a broad sense) about what I am trying to show on my page. That's hard for me because my art brain doesn't really think abstract art, so when I look at my clothes change-over page I want to add something more specific to it. Like maybe an image of clothing.  But I am resisting as it's part of the learning and art growth process.

This journal is small, and since I am working on it on an almost daily basis, I haven't had time to flatten the pages out very well. You'll have to excuse some of my photos. In this next photo please excuse the tiny tip of my finger that was holding the page flat and the slight angle everything is at since  with the  major page curl going on it was really hard to photograph.

Rain's Art and Dinner Date theme this week is gift wrap. You're in luck (ha-ha) because I spent one afternoon wrapping my Christmas gifts and that was the theme of my journal page that day.

I took bits of the paper scraps and made a border, used a red and green pen to create the stripes, and I cut a Santa  out of a paper scrap. I also used some thin foil tape to make ribbon and outline my page. Finally I added some stamped and cut out postage images. It's a pretty bright page for my taste, and it's a little messy even for me, but it works.

And I have one more page with some gift wrap on it, only the gift wrap this time was the ready made  image and not my actual paper scraps.

There's no food for me this week since I've forgotten to take any photos. With snow arriving tonight and lasting into  tomorrow (and maybe even a bit of Saturday), I'm hoping it will  be a good time to start my cookie baking bonanza, so hopefully next week I'll have something interesting to share.

Thanks for visiting.

December

 Hi everyone. Didn't I just write a post that welcomed November? Well, as you know November has come and gone, and now it is already December 1. And already it is the last month of 2022.

Thank you Bleubeard and Elizabeth for hosting last month at Art Journal Journey. And thank you to everyone who shared their collages and their food related posts. I must say I picked up a few collage ideas that I hadn't thought of before, and it was a fun month.

December should also be a fun month at Art Journal Journey. This month I want to welcome Jo, who you might also know as Let's Art Journal. Jo's theme for December is:

Snowy Winter

Here's my first journal page for the month.

You might possibly recognize the tag in the center. I recently made it for Tag Tuesday. Since I liked it and  it worked  for a snowy winter theme, I decided to recycle it into the centerpiece of my page.

My background started as watercolor paper that I used a musical note stencil and some light molding paste on. When that dried, I added some turquoise blue paint spray. I wanted to leave some white spots to represent the snow for Jo's theme.

Both the swirls on the upper left corner and the tree in the bottom right were stamped onto a sheet of acetate. I then cut them out and glued them down onto my page. I used a bit of Dr. Ph. Martin's bleedproof white ink on the tree to give it a freshly fallen snow feel.

To finish off my page I added a vintage Victorian white owl to the tree and added the silver bells to the upper left corner of the tag centerpiece.  

And here's a reminder of the dreaded rules at Art Journal Journey. We accept only art journaling. Cards, tags (unless they are part of a journal page), ATC's and other forms of art are not accepted. However, any form of art journaling is accepted. It could be collage art, drawn, painted, sewed, digitally made; I am sure I have forgotten something, but just make it a journal page.

This challenge runs for the whole month of December.

Thanks for stopping by our challenge, and I know you'll have some fun making some snowy winter art journal pages, especially since snowy winter and Christmas do go together well. 

I am also linking up this post to Rain's Art and Dinner Date as her challenge is bells, and I just happen to have some on this page.

And thanks for stopping by my blog also.