T Stands for a Change of Plans

Its Tuesday and you know what that means. It is T Day.

Time to share drink related posts-and you can have food and other activities too.

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

So for my T day post I am sharing an adventure my husband and I had last Friday evening.

This is a painting of Lake Winnipesaukee which is also known as the Big Lake. There are 8 towns located on the Big Lake. The Big Lake is about 15-20 minutes away from my house and is also a HUGE tourist destination, especially people from Massachusetts, and other states. We often go boating on the lake, but this year we haven't yet done so. We talked about going out Friday afternoon since my husband gets out of work at noon on Friday's in the summer.  But because of the threat of thunderstorms we decided not to go.

Of course the storms never came so later in the afternoon we decided to drive over to Meredith Bay and go to a restaurant we enjoy. Our house is south of Alton Bay which is on the right bottom side of this photo. 

 This is about the closest you will get to a tropical beach restaurant in New Hampshire.

There's lots of outdoor seating on the sand covered patio. If you come by boat there are docks to tie up to, and if you drive, like we did, there's a parking lot for your car.

 The restaurant is right on the lake, and you can see it was a nice late afternoon.

So we got a table and looked through the menu. The Town Docks has some pretty wild drinks, including one of my favorites which is this Watermelon Bowl for 2. This one looks like the bartender had a few too many of these before they made ours.

And  we also ordered fried pineapple for an appetizer while we decided what to order for dinner.

And while we were slurping and chatting and deciding what to have for dinner, I looked up and noticed some dark clouds coming from the northwest. So I checked the radar on my phone.

Ut oh. I think we were going to be in trouble.

And within a minute the rain started, rather lightly at first, and then within the next minute, it got heavier, and then heavier still. Then there was a rumble of thunder, and everyone grabbed their meals and dashed for the covered areas.  

We managed to get a corner on a covered bar so we could finish our watermelon bowl.

I think the only the ducks liked it.

They took advantage of the empty area to search for scraps before slipping back into the lake. :)

Of course the shower lasted about  10 minutes, and then the sky started to lighten. But by then the deck was empty, the tables were all wet  and the mood had changed. 

So my husband and I decided to skip dinner and head on out.

Sometimes the best made plans just aren't meant to be I guess.

Have a Happy T day everyone.

A Toast for T

More lazy summer days out in the boat for T today. 

If you stopped by my blog a couple of days ago you read the boating story and saw a few photos from last Saturday's boating adventure to the Isles of Shoals. If you missed the post and if you are curious about the Isles of Shoals you can read a little about them here:  A Day on the Water. 

Here we are looking out onto Star Island with some sailboat action to make it a more interesting photo.

We were anchored in the harbor  called Gosport and took the launch, a little shuttle, from our boat over to the island.

 The big white building is the Oceanic Hotel. It was built in the late 1800's when people came north from places like Boston and New York to escape the heat. The hotel is still very primitive and now a way to escape some of the trappings of modern life.

Thought you might find the hotel interesting. I do.

The outside has a huge wrap around porch filled with rocking chairs.

And fantastic views too.

You can see there's something going on on the dock. Since it was Saturday it was change over of guest day. I imagine almost all guests come by the Thomas Laighton, a large ferry. (photo below)

But there are other smaller boats that bring luggage and boxes of food and supplies, plus take away the trash.

The two islands you can see in the photo above are Smuttynose (on the right)  and Appledore (on the left).

In our ramble around the island, we went to the back of the hotel. Here they are unloading some luggage which gets carried up to the guest's room by the summer staff, known as Pelicans.

 It was really interesting to watch them, almost as if they were putting on a show.

 The first floor of the hotel has a couple of rooms they must use for meetings or maybe are quiet places for guests to be. They are very much old fashioned rooms.

 The bathrooms are on the upper floors, which even the day guests can use. None of the bedrooms have their own baths either. So when we went up to use the potty it gave us a little peak into the hotel rooms.

 A view out of a second floor window on the landing by the bathroom.

 The second floor hallway and below, a second floor bedroom.

When the Pelicans put in the luggage they don't close the doors and in fact, I  don't believe there are locks on any of the doors.

And a few more photos.

 The landing outside the bathroom

 Another view out the back of the hotel

 The huge line of departing guests waiting to board the ferry back to the mailand

The  hotel garden

Ok, so what does this have to do with T day?

So before we went ashore we sat in our little boat and had lunch and chatted. And for dessert we each had a little margarita in the tiny little red paper cups my daughter packed. (Not the big red party cups we thought she said she had.) Of course she didn't have a margarita because she doesn't like them. Instead she had a little can of sangria.

Cheers to a sunny Saturday afternoon on the water.

(And truth be told, the little cup was all I needed)

Stop by Bleubeard and Elizabeth's blog to join in to the T party. We all shared something we drank and often food too. Its a lot of fun and we'd love you to join us.

Thanks for visiting

and happy T day!

T Stands for July 4

Happy T Day everyone. Today I want to share some snippets from last week's July 4th celebration . I can't believe the 4th of July has come and gone. A week ago. 

So my first share is the strawberry cake I made for the holiday. 

We say my dog Maddie's birthday is July 4, even though we don't know for sure when she was born. Its a good excuse for me to make a wild cake and have it not sit there tempting me because most everyone eats some.

I don't know why my pink strawberry batter turned light brown when I baked it, unless maybe I slightly overbaked it. It certainly wasn't burnt. But it was layered with strawberry puree and some strawberry Swiss meringue buttercream.

Here's the birthday girl looking awfully cute.

And here's her cute dog cousin Sophie.

These were taken while we had dinner. It was a pretty quiet holiday overall since a few people were missing. But there was still 12 of us. So what we traditionally do for our meal is everyone brings a side and then each family brings their own kabobs. There were fish kabobs, veggie kabobs and we brought steak tip kabobs.

You can see my kabobs along with a bit of pasta salad on my plate and also my diet coke.

Earlier in the day we enjoyed the sun down on the deck.

A margarita tasted good after my swim. 

Only one of these is mine. The other is my husbands.

Hardly anyone swam but I did. Not  the most flattering photo. :)  The dogs love to get up on the swim raft with me. 

Everyone else spent more time enjoying the dock and the sun.

No fireworks to wrap up the holiday this year. Since the hubby had to go to work the next morning we made it a fairly early evening and headed home. I did miss them though.

Stop by Bleubeard and Elizabeth's blog to see what the rest of the T gang has been up to. T Day is a great time to share some drink and food photos and stories, so you should join us.

And have great Tuesday!

T This Week is Formal

Hi everyone. I'm glad to be back in blogland after our extended weekend vacation. We went to the most eastern city in the US, Eastport. Maine.  We rented a little cottage on the ocean and it looked out onto Passamaquoddy Bay and across the bay into New Brunswick, Canada. 

This is sunset but sunrises were also quite pretty too.

We even went over to Canada 2 of our 4 days, as well as doing a bit of hiking, beach walking, and some other adventures which I will share with you in the days to come, once I get my photos organized.

One place we visited was Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt's summer home on Campobello Island in New Brunswick. Too bad they had that piece of equipment in front of it to intrude into taking a good photo, but they were putting on a new roof.

Franklin Roosevelt was the US president from 1933-1945. Last summer you might remember I visited both his and then his wife's homes (Eleanor lived her own home after Franklin died in 1945 as his family home was left to the US Government/National Park Service) in Hyde Park, New York. 

 If you are interested in those buildings and info you can check out my posts from last August, Eleanor Roosevelt and also Franklin Roosevelt. 

Many wealthy people from Boston and New York had homes on Campobello so they could escape the summer heat. This house was considered a rustic retreat since it has no central heating and no electricity. 

You can see that it overlooks the ocean. In fact the city on the opposite side of this Island is Eastport where we stayed. The cottage we rented was about 1/1000th the size of this house.

I will show you more of the home another day  ( as I still have photos to go through).

But I wanted to tell you about this because it is Tuesday which means its T day. T Day is time to share a drink and some food if you want to include that. I am going to share some tea today, in fact, tea with Eleanor Roosevelt.

The Canadian Park Service runs an hour long program called Tea with Eleanor. You go to a cottage on the park grounds to have formal tea, eat cookies and hear stories about Eleanor Roosevelt. I thought it looked like an interesting and unique thing to do, so we went and had tea.

The day we went they served ginger cookies, which is funny because I baked a huge batch of ginger cookies so we could have some snacks on the trip.

You can see the cookies we were served above, and here is my cookies.

We heard some wonderful stories about this woman who was truly ahead of her time. One story was about how at age 72 (or around then) Eleanor took shooting lessons because she had been asked to go speak in an area where she had threats on her life. Did she shy away and stay home?  No, she drove herself there and went and spoke, carrying her gun in her purse. If you don't know, Eleanor Roosevelt died in 1962 at age 78 and I'm not sure how many women in the 1950's or in their 70's at that time period would do that. 

Serving tea on Campobello was something Eleanor would have done when she summered on the island.

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

I'm working on catching up since I only had my phone when I was away, so be patient and I will be by to visit your blog.

Happy T Day everyone.

Lunch at the Museum

Hi everyone.  Its been a couple of hot and humid days here in New Hampshire. In fact this morning (Monday) we had to leave at 4:30 AM for my husband's appointment back at the hospital in Boston, and it was already 71 degrees F (about 22 degrees C). Its hardly ever that hot so early in the morning here. And that weather brings storms, which is what we've got going on tonight.
But the good news is the hubby now doesn't need to go back to Boston for a month, which means he is doing well after his kidney transplant. :) He was going back every week and then every two weeks.
 I'm writing Monday evening to celebrate  Tuesday which is T day. Time to stop by Bleubeard and Elizabeth's  blog and to share a drink and maybe some food. We T Gang regulars would love for you to join us too.

For T Day today I have some more photos from the Museum of Art in Portland, Maine which I visited last Tuesday.

Part of the museum is an historic mansion- the McLellan House. It is only recently been refinished and opened up as one area of the  museum. If you look at this photo of the house, you can see the brick building behind it which is the museum proper. You enter the home from the actual museum, not the front door.

The art of architecture- the walls, trim, windows, stairs and other design elements of the house are the art they are showing here.

(Whole house photo is from Wikipedia.)

The front door and main stairs made quite a statement.

And looked cool from underneath too. Pretty interesting how they are free floating.

There were a few pieces of art in the house. I wonder what was in the original framed white space to start with?

I love these antique plates.

 I think this wallpaper is stunning, but I don't think I could live looking at it every day. But it would make cool fabric for a quilt.

The federal style details are wonderful. I liked the few additions they added, like this mirror that could be lighted with candles for evening viewing since this house was built pre-electricity. The Federal style (roughly 1780-1840) grew out of the US now being a new nation and the European style of the time (that went by names like Georgian, Empire,Regency and  Biedermeier) . 

And for T Day, how about this statue?  I see a coffee pot, milk, pancakes, a donut, and a few other yummies?

A view of the neighboring mansion out one of the windows.

And a view out a different window on the opposite side of the building into some of the homes and business in downtown Portland.

And lastly, I needed a drink and  some lunch-especially with a 1:30 appointment. I had to go talk financial planning for retirement.  Eeks. Sounds a little daunting to me still. So I went down to the museum cafe and had a little lunch.
So I had this chicken salad wrap with chips  (I believe they are crisps in Britain? If not, please let me know)  and a ice tea/lemonade 1/2 and 1/2 drink. Perfect for a very hot day even in an air conditioned art museum.

Got my body and brain in perfect mode to go  to my meeting. :)

Hope you stop by Elizabeth's blog to see what the T Gang has been up too.

Thanks for visiting.