Tea for the Road

 Hi everyone.  Yesterday was one of those days that wasn't exactly a bad day but a day where nothing went as planned. I just gave into that early before the day sent my frustration levels over the top.  We also had some storms, and our humidity, which has been really tropical all week, finally, supposedly has broken. As I haven't yet been outside today (as when this post went live), I'm keeping my fingers crossed that that is true. 

The other weather talk going on in my area is the hurricane (Hurricane Lee). They're still not sure of the final track and where within the cone  it will hit land ; right now they're saying anywhere between Downeast Maine and the Canadian Maritimes. Any which way, there will be rain, wind and some tropical storm effects at my house, but we'll have to see what happens. (And wherever it hits, let's hope people stay safe.)

Today. I'm sharing another spread from my Iceland journal as well as some more Iceland photos. 

My spread is made by first using a writing designed stencil and some paint. Then I used a black Sharpie and a number stencil to add the numbers on the inner parts of both pages.  Once I finished my background, I attached the labels from 2 to-go sandwich wrappers. I also attached 3 (what we in the US would call) Coke Zero bottle labels.  I pulled all of these labels  off the bottles and with the 2 sandwich labels I cut away the rest of the wrappers.

I then added some stickers  that had something to do with other foods we had while on our Ring Road Drive.  There were a couple of donuts that made it into my belly, and the cookie represents some other sweets we tried. And finally, my cup of tea with a big smile on it.

That  tea cup makes my page eligible for Elle's Books, Cat and Tea challenge at Art Journal Journey.

And let me share a few more photos that go along with the scenery I shared this past Sunday. If you're interested  where we were in these photos (besides the obvious Iceland), we are on the northwest side of the island, south of the Western Fjords, and on the north side of the Snaefellsnes Peninsula. We were heading towards Snaefellsnes National Park which is off of the Ring Road. 

I'll start off with this traffic jam, Iceland style. It also shows some cars and trucks which is the theme this week at Rain's Art and Dinner Date. 

This bus had gone off the side of the road. into the little ditch you find along most Icelandic roads. And yes, the road is gravel, but this is not considered a back road. Many of the roads in Iceland are not paved. Everyone who was stuck in this backup, maybe 15 cars, got out and went up to watch what was going on. We were stopped maybe for an hour, and some people turned around and left, but, as we were told, to backtrack around would take close to 2 hours, so it was better off to wait.

Plus this was real life and interesting to watch. At a few points it even looked like the bus might flip on its side, but luckily, it didn't.

These next 2 photos are a little dark (sorry), but we also had to stop so my husband (who's a civil engineer) could stop and inspect how they were building this new bridge. As he said they were building it with pre-cast parts, whereas at home, they are built piece by piece on site.

Although I appreciate bridges, I much more enjoyed watching the Icelandic horses in the meadows.

I love finding all the little churches in seemingly the middle of nowhere although obviously there are people living in the area who use them.

And an afternoon snack for the road is never a bad idea.

And as you drive through town, it's good to not speed.

As we moved closer to the park, the cloudier and wetter it became. Clouds and fog make cool photos, but they also let you not see as much either.

That's all for today. I'm slowly making my way through my trip photos, even though it is now September and we traveled back in (mostly) June.  Next time I share photos from the trip I'll show you some wet and cloudy views from the park.

Have a great day.

A Bee or Two

Hi everyone   Today I’m going share a few things, but let me start with a note I received from Iris in my snail mail awhile back.  😀

This envelope is not the envelope Iris' letter came in, but it is an envelope I added to my bee journal.  I had added the striped tab to it. I thought the wax seal that was on Iris’ envelope would work  as a perfect decoration  on my envelope. Luckily I was able to peel it off and not rip it 

And I love your bee drawing Iris. This little lady is even winking which is really cute. I’m trying to figure out how to add the letter to my journal.  Iris' letter is a great bee story about a bee she was watching. Thanks again for the note Iris. I loved reading it. ❤

And speaking of my bee journal, here's a page I recently made.

The background is painted with various watercolor paints. Then I added a paint card for a color called beehive. I also add a bit of honeycomb that I cut out of a bee supply catalogue, a stamped and colored bee keeper image, as well as a small chipboard beehive.  The sun is a gold metallic paper image from my stash, and the larger words are stenciled. Finally I used my ancient label maker to make a couple of words, and I also added some small flower shaped sequins. 

And this month at Art Journal Journey, Chris' theme is Where in the World. Give me a garden and some bees buzzing around in it, and I can be happy.  And I don't have to travel anywhere except out my backdoor for that. Smile.

And let me share a few more honey bee photos.

There are a lot of eggs

and a lot of honey. It's getting so each frame is almost too heavy to easily pull out of the hive during an inspection. 

This year with all the rain and humidity we had in July the flowers have been spectacular.

Here's some of the pots on my deck and my overgrown hydrangea on the side of the steps up to the deck.

I bring out most of my houseplants for the summer. Above you can see the petunias growing into my banana plant (which was mostly dead and is coming back nicely). And below, my asparagus fern has gotten gigantic.

I love zinnias. You throw a few seeds in a pot, keep them wet, give them a splash of fertilizer and they look amazing all summer.

Here's a few rocks I painted.

And how about some of my overgrown hydrangea.

And although I have no  dining room furniture to share, I am linking up to  Rain's Art and Dinner Date.

Sorry for the long post. 😉

Have a great Thursday everyone.

Tea Party

 Hi everyone.Another week is flying by, isn't it? 

This week seems to be the week for T parties,. Not only was this week's T day a big 10 year party (T Day 10 Year Celebration) but it is also the theme at Rain's Art and Dinner Date . 

Here's a couple of pages from my Charleston (South Carolina) travel journal. I just love cutting up brochures and figuring out ways to make pages that bring back memories of the things/events/places I want to remember. These trip journals I make aren't exactly scrap books, maybe more junk journals. But then, they aren't exactly a junk journal either. 😏

This first page even explains how to make the perfect cup of tea for the tea party. Of course being summer maybe you prefer yours iced.

I am also going to link this page to Alison's Come Fly With Me challenge at Art Journal Journey. The bald eagle works for that. You may wonder why there is a bald eagle on my page.

When we were driving out of the tea plantation (that my pages are about), we noticed a large number of large birds on the ground right next to the road.  Most of them were turkey vultures, but in the mix was one bald eagle.  We both said "There's a bald eagle." at the same time, and then my friend turned her car around to head back to the birds. Just as we arrived another car came in the opposite directions with their windows open and their music blasting, so we only were able to watch the bald eagle fly off. But I had to add the eagle in to remember this mini-adventure of the trip.

I made my page using strips of leafy washi tape and then some green ink to blend it all together. Then I added some brochure  and tourist booklet cut outs along with my die cut and colored eagle.

And let me pour you a cup of tea for the T party. Some of you who were also by my blog for Tuesday’s T day post mentioned how many infusion “tea" boxes that I had. The reason I have so many is that it was cheaper to buy a set (on Amazon) than to get individual boxes. 

Here are my 2 favorites.  These infusions are made with herbs and fruit. They do a great job flavoring water, and they have been my go to drinks for the past month.

I'll end my post with my big insulated thermos which is filled with some flavored water, and I know, you can't see it. You'll just have to take my word for it-smile.  The stickers on my jug came on it and are part of the design.

That's all for me. I'm thinking I might try to do some gardening before the day heats up. I hope you're week is going well.

Butterflies and Icelandic Picnic Food.

Hi everyone. I hope you're having a lovely week so far.

I'm going to start my post with a journal page for Alison's Come Fly with Me challenge at Art Journal Journey.

You can see the 2 butterflies that I cut out of a sheet of paper that apply to Alison's theme.

My background is made with some bright yellow watercolor paints and a stencil, as well as the same stencil and some gesso.  I also used a brown ink pad on the background.

The very first thing I did on my page was to stamp the Lynne Perrella image in blue ink, and then I worked the background around it.

I still had some left over bits and pieces on my desk from June's AJJ Numbers challenge, so I added those to my page. I also drew in the hanging chains and added some metallic paper hearts. The woman in the stamp is holding part of the sun, which I replaced with a complete gold paper sun. I also added some blue foam stars, silver metallic paper pen nib, as well as my sticker quotes. 

This week Rain's  Art and Dinner Date has a theme of picnic, so I decided I would show a couple of our to go lunches when we were driving the loop around Iceland.

These sandwiches could be picked up at most grocery and quick stop stores. They weren't bad. Besides this lamb and bean salad one I also had a memorable shrimp salad sandwich. They worked because there were days we drove for hours without passing any place to get food. And don't forget to fill your tank in the town you were sleeping in because there might not be any gas stops for a long way also.

And junk food is always a fun staple on any roadtrip, so to go with our sandwiches we bought a bag of Doritos. I haven't had a Dorito in a very very long time.

The only place we saw and stopped at a food truck was when we were at the iceberg lagoon. ( See this post if you're curious about the iceberg lagoon.) I was torn between having an Icelandic lobster roll and a hotdog.

And you might be surprised I  decided on the hot dog-Icelandic style. (This past Monday's post talked about Icelandic hot dogs.) First of all it was much cheaper. You could buy 4 hot dogs for the price of a lobster roll. Secondly, the lobster (langostinos) were small deep fried pieces. I was curious, and probably should have gotten one since I never saw them on the menu anywhere else. I did have lobster stew later on during the trip though, and although it was quite tasty, I am pretty biased about our local Maine lobster as you might know if you've seen my lobster rolls posts in the past. I can say the langostino lobster was good but  because  that type of lobster is much smaller than what we have here in New England, you don't get as much lobster taste in a bite.

And I know hot dogs aren't a popular food with many of you, but to me, these were definitely worth a second taste.

And with my hotdog  I had an orange soda, which like the Doritos, is something I haven't had in a very long time. It tasted good, and I had a couple more of these during the trip.

And lastly, I wanted to try one of these packaged donuts.

Donuts are one of my weaknesses, and I rarely buy them because it's hard to eat just one. This one was a filled donut, and it was pretty tasty junk food.  I must admit one of the best things about a roadtrip is that it's a good excuse to eat junk food (which I don't often do otherwise).

That's all for me today.  Have a great end of your week and weekend.

Water Creatures=Some Birds of Iceland

 Hi everyone. 

Last week I shared some 4 legged land creatures I saw in Iceland.

Today Rain's Art and Dinner Date challenge is water creatures, and I am going to sort of stick to the prompt. Let me show you some of the birds I saw in Iceland. At least some of the ones who have something to do with water-smile.

I didn't go to Iceland for birding, but I did learn that Iceland is a huge birding spot. I love seeing new birds, but sadly not my hubby. Ever since I once took him on a puffin tour with a group of birders off the coast of New Brunswick (Canada) he is always leary about any birding situation, including the feeders I have up in the backyard-😜- smile. Of course we had to stop and take photos of lots of bridges and other engineering feats because that's his thing, so he does put up with me on the bird watch. Smile.

Speaking of puffins, when I visited Iceland with friends in 2016, I really wanted to see  a puffin. I didn't think I did. When I came home and went through my photos, I discovered I had a photo of one. The same thing happened this trip. We were supposed to take a ferry out to an island so I could see the puffin colony and so I/we could officially venture north of the arctic circle. The ferry had been under refurbishing; it was supposed to have been open for service again in early June when I booked tickets. Sadly, a few days before we left I received an email that said they had to push back  the  open for service date, and  so we couldn't go to the island. Sadly that meant no puffin colony and no arctic circle.

This trip I also came home thinking we hadn't seen any puffins. And low and behold, once again, when I went through my photos, look what I found.

Not just one but 4 puffins.

They were a bit off shore for my zoom lens to get a super close up so you might have to enlarge the photo, but they are definitely puffins. 😀 I guess I should have been paying better attention. 

And maybe I should have brought my big zoom lens with me, although the one on my camera zoomed to 400.

One of the other types of birds I saw a lot of were these common eiders.

We occasionally get them down on the ocean in my area during the winter, but not anything like I saw in Iceland.

And  here are some photos from one of the  nesting bird  cliffs I came across. It was lightly raining  when we visited Snaefellsjokull National Park where I saw these birds, so the photos are not as sharp as I would have liked. It didn't help that I had to zoom all the way to 400 in the weather for these photos. ( The rain later got heavy and the fog rolled in also.)  If you zoom on this and if I am correct there are a lot of  common murres in these next few photos. On the top left I think there are a couple of razorbills too.

I think this one is the sharpest.

I'll share more from the park in another post, including more bird cliffs.

And when we visited Pingvellir National Park (pronounced Thingvellir), there were several pairs of Greylag Geese nesting near one of the trails. It wasn't raining nor foggy, and I was at a nice distance for my zoom to get some super photos. 

I read that these geese are the ancestors of all domesticated geese, and that they are pretty common in Europe. Here in New Hampshire, we don't have them nesting wild, and so I've included them here.

And finally for this post, as we were walking back to the car from a short glacier viewing hike, I noticed this bird swimming. It had the loon (or as I learned also called a diver) shape. This particular loon is a new species for me, the red throated loon (or diver). 

I have more birds and a lot more photos to share, but they'll have to wait for another post.

Have a super end of your week and weekend ahead.