More Weekend Chatter

Another weekend is biting the dust for me. I know some people here in the US have tomorrow off for the President's Day holiday, but since next week is our winter school break, we don't have a long weekend this weekend. 4 days and counting!

So today was another gorgeous spring like day. We had all kinds of melt.

I love the reflection of the trees in this little mud puddle in the driveway.

My road is just a GIANT mud puddle. The snow looks sooooo dirty and yuk! Hopefully with the whole week being on the warm side we'll get a lot of melt.

I won't miss all this snow. :)

So I had a long list of things I wanted to do today, one of which was packing for my trip. I had this vision in my mind of my suitcase getting basically organized and together, and I did start working on it, but right now my suitcase is buried under a pile of "things", and its more like a disaster mound on my bedroom floor. :) That's about all that got done on my list, but I did enjoy the nice weather and did a bit of reading of my latest book too.

I've been biology brain geeking out lately.  Awhile back I got my own DNA ethnicity results back. I had some doubts about submitting my DNA, but my curiosity got the better of me, so my hubby gave me the test kit for Christmas.

I had a couple of friends who did theirs and had some real big surprises. 

What I find  amazing is that Ancestry (the test company I used), who really knew nothing about me, sent me these DNA results that matched what I knew about my heritage, with just a couple of surprises. Any doubts I had about how much my DNA could really tell me about my family tree and history were definitely erased. 

What amazed me even more is the list of people they connected me to who have also had their DNA tested and with whom I might be related. Now I haven't really started any genealogical research (but that will be coming), and I haven't contacted these people, but some of the names matched that of my maternal great-grandmother's family. They said a few of these people might be 3rd-4th cousins, and I do plan on finding that out once I get some time to sit down and do the research. There is also someone who they said could be my second cousin-hmmm, that has really peaked my curiosity. There were also a few people with my maiden name that they said were 5th-6th cousins, and even one listed with my married name. I would laugh if one reason I am a kidney match to my husband is that we are distant distant cousins. The scary part, is we both have distant relatives from the same general area in Finland going back past our great grandparents.

I'm sure I'll have more to share with you once I get more into my search.

Now my ethnicity does make sense but has left me with some surprises. I came back almost 60% Scandinavian, which is no surprise since 3 of my grandparents were Swedish immigrants here to the US. And I came back over 30% Eastern European, which also makes biological  sense because my maternal grandmother's family was/is Polish. And then I came back 4% Finnish/Northern Russian which also makes sense because one of my Swedish grandparents family still does live in an area of Finland with lots of Swedish heritaged people. Then there was my 2 % British, which did surprise me, but makes sense because of all the travel that took place between the British Isles, Iceland, and Scandinavia over the last 1000 years. And finally, I came back 2% Eastern European Jewish. Again makes sense with part of the family coming from Poland. But who knew? 

Its really fascinating stuff.

OK, and I'm finally getting to my art for today. Its the inside cover of my travel journal

I'm linking it up to Try It on Tuesday. The  challenge is  Messy, and I think my background collaging could be called that. 

I made it with some images stamped on tissue paper, some die cut sun symbols and a little bit of collaging to finish it off.

Hope you have a great new week. 

How Long Does The Ice Stay Before It Melts

Happy Year 3 Celebration to T for Tuesday! Stop by Bluebeard and Elizabeth's blog for the party! 

So today I have a new insulated mug to show you for T Day. 

My brother-in-law was telling me about his Yeti tumbler on the 4th of July. He said it keeps his drink cold all day at work, and then the next morning, it is still cool. My hubby has a Yeti can/bottle holder that I got him for Christmas which works as well keeping a bottle or can cold for a long time.

So I keep myself hydrated this summer by filling a pitcher with water, a couple of tea bags and ice. I then fill a glass with ice and add some of this tea. I drink off the pitcher all day. Of course the ice in my glass melts down and the sides of the glass get covered in condensation, which then drips down onto my work table and drips onto my artwork...  :)

   Well I was sick of the warm watered down tea and all the condensation drips, so I happened to be in a store last weekend during my road trip north and saw these Yeti tumblers. So I decided to splurge on one for myself. Last week I was experimenting to see if it worked as well as Yeti advertised and  as my brother-in-law said.

(My brother-in-law is a smart man. His is a genuine physicist , with  PhD, so if he says it stays cold for so long, I would suspect it does.)

Here's my first cup of tea for the day. You can see the time I poured it.

Time for another refill. But this is the same ice as in the morning. A little melted, but still there.

And I need more tea. Still, the same ice. A little more melted, but keep in mind we were having a hot day!

And no condensation. (Big smile)

And I made a fun little journal page with some ice, but it must not be in my Yeti mug because it is melting.   

I'm linking up to Try It On Tuesday. The new challenge is Make Us Smile. I used these fun stamped angry penguins from Katzelkraft. They're not happy their ice is melting.  Ha-ha.
Best thing to do when its hot is sip my COLD tea and read.  Makes me happier than those penguins.
And here's a book I read that was only so-so. It had good parts that I enjoyed and then all of a sudden it would drone on. Then it would pick up again.  But I did learn a little bit about rare wines, and a bit about the fake wine market.

So when that was finished I moved onto these 2 books.

 I read this Vampire book years ago and pulled it out of my stash.  Its a fun read. I wanted a light and fun read after the wine book. This is the book that initially inspired the HBO show True Blood, and is the first of the whole set of Sookie Stackhouse novels.
 And this is an interesting book about Iceland.  I buzzed through a lot of the saga info, for although interesting, not what I was up to reading. But I finished the book in a night. The photos are pretty cool too. I'm getting excited, can you tell?

OK, I've babbled on quite  bit today. 

Stop by and join up with the T gang on this celebration Tuesday.  And hope your Tuesday is a great day too.

Sweet Cherries

So the new challenge at Art Journal Journey started on Monday and this month's theme is "If  music is the food of love, then play on." Hazel is hosting and  here's my first post to this challenge at AJJ.

So one Friday evening recently I went to play in my happy place but after a week of work, I was tired, so I spent my evening  drawing with a black Sharpie and then painting in those drawings. That's where these cherries came from.

It was a fun and relaxing  way to spend the evening, a little out of my usual routine, and all of those are good reasons (in my book) to play with a Sharpie and paint.

Later on I sprayed inked the page, but I didn't like it very much, so I stenciled the white paint dots and then repainted my cherries and after that I worked OK for me. It felt very Valentine's to me- where the cherries and Valentines connect I don't know, but for some reason it did. So I die cut a lacy heart, which you can see around the edges of the other die cut heart made from plaid paper. I outlined it all in white, stamped and cut out the cupid (a TH, Stamper's Anonymous image), and stamped the love you words. Finally I doodled the border and called it done.

Then Monday I saw the new challenge for AJJ and decided I could doodle in a few musical notes  (though not 100% necessary) and now I really am done with this page. Not my most favorite page,  and I do like the heart and the cherries, but the background is still bugging me. Oh well, it is bright, cheery and a little different so time to move forward.

A new challenge also started this week  on Try It on Tuesday. The new theme is romance, so I think this also works for that too. I am  linking up this post to the TIOT page.

That's about all there is going on in my world. Warmer winter temperatures, work, new kids at school I am really enjoying so far, some evening reading, a little art time, and all the typical chores of life. Oh yes, I am also really enjoying the new episodes of the X-Files on Fox. I enjoy that show so much I actually bought the entire series box set a few years back and I sometimes sit down and watch a bunch of episodes. When I am feeling like a couch potato, So now its going to be hard to stop after just 6 new shows.

I'm glad you visited!

Hope to see you again soon!