Road Trip to Vermont

 Hi everyone. 

Today it is time for a road trip post. This past Tuesday my husband had to head to northeastern Vermont (known as the Northeast Kingdom) for work. His meeting was suppose to last only a couple of hours, and he was driving alone, so I decided to ride along with him. 

We left the house before 7 AM. It was like getting up for work back before covid-19 and teaching from home began. And it was a chilly morning, our first for the season.

We had to drive by the big lake on our way  to  get the highway north. This is the view across from Pop's which you might remember I have written about for many T days.  I think if anyone wants to go swimming they are going to find the water a little bit colder than before this morning.

It's a pretty drive. On our way to Vermont we have to head through Franconia Notch. A notch is a deep and narrow mountain pass. We have several in our state.  Unfortunately we  didn't have time to stop  because my husband had to get  to his meeting so my photos are as we drove through.

And the same fog along the lake was also in the hollows of the mountains. 

And although the foliage hadn't really started to turn, there were a few spots where there was some fall color.

The hubby's meeting was closer to the Canadian border than it was to St. Johnsbury.

And a visit to Vermont is not complete without seeing barns and cows.

And in mid-September there are also corn fields. Not people corn but cow corn.

While my husband was in his meeting, I was able to take a little walk. And take a few photos too.

And I ended my Vermont trip by meeting someone at my husband's meeting who had some bees. This was pleasant surprise. 

He was very enthused to give me a short course on keeping bees. I really enjoyed it too. And came home with a jar of some fresh honey from this hive.

It was a nice day out. A lot of driving too, but since I don't feel like I've been anywhere out of my locale since Covid hit back in March, it was really nice to see some new scenery.

Hope you enjoyed the photos!

Look Who's Coming and T Stands for a Journey North, Part 2

Hi everyone. It is Tuesday already! Not only is it T Day but I am also honored to announce I am the guest designer over at the latest and last of 2018 challenge at Try It On Tuesday The new challenge is Guess Who's Coming-It's Santa!!

I painted some cardboard with green and gold paint. Then I stenciled the stars in silver paint.

This jolly old guy was on the cover of a Vermont Country Store catalogue that arrived in the mail, and when I saw this I knew it was the image for this page. I fussy cut him out and carefully attached him to the page with some matte medium. 

I stamped the sentiment with this old stamp I had in my stash. I added a bit of trim along the bottom, as well as the little hey Santa button. And finally I finished off the page with some little gold and silver gem stars.

Thanks so much to the fantastic ladies who host for inviting me to join them for this fun holiday challenge.

I hope you'll join us too.

I am also going to link this page up with the latest Tis the Season/My Favorite Season challenge over at  Art Journal Journey.

I am also back this Tuesday for T Day with the rest of my journey north to Vermont.  Last Tuesday  I shared the beginning of my weekend away when my husband and I went north to Burlington, Vermont for a hockey game along with both of my sister-in-laws and their husbands. Today I want to share some fun I had Sunday on the way back home.

Tuesday is also T day and it is time to share our drink related posts over at Bleubeard and Elizabeth's blog. Here's my breakfast before we drove home. We found a bakery/restaurant near our hotel and I figured it was best to have something substantial  to  start my day.

Cold drink selection was fairly limited so I went for a bottle of cranberry juice. These sausage were very very good and had a taste of Vermont maple syrup. After eating  this I was ready to hit the road.
Well, almost ready to hit the road. I mentioned that breakfast was at a bakery/restaurant, and I had to drool over this bakery case for a couple of minutes.

But I did decide  my husband and I needed a cookie for the road.

And these holiday fruitcakes looked yummy too, but I stuck with the cookies.

Once again our drive was under grey skies.  As we made our way south we hit a lot of rain, and in some parts it was heavy.

Also on the way home. I wanted to make a little stop at the King Arthur Flour baking store. I love this place. It is in Vermont but right on the border with New Hampshire. For those you who may not be familiar with King Arthur,  they produce all kinds of flour. They have a nice little baking store where you can buy not only flour but some baking supplies.
And when we visited this Sunday they had  some creative ideas for holiday cookie art.

Like these snowflake cookie trees.

And these Hanukkah candles, dreidels and this cookie wreath.

And they also had lots of cookies out for sampling. Between the cookie I bought after breakfast and all the samples I  ate, it was a cookie Sunday for sure!

The store also had this fun Christmas tree with some mini holiday baking molds and some gingerbread decorations. (As well as a few other things as you can see.)

And outside they had a tree also. It looked quite festive with the snow on the ground.

Other than a few baking ingredients, I didn't buy much during my visit to King Arthur, but

I was inspired  to dig out some of my holiday baking equipment and bake some cookies this past Saturday.

It is that time of year!

Thanks for visiting my blog.

And hope you have a happy T day.

T Stands for a Journey North Part I

This weekend my husband and I put the dogs in the car and headed north to Burlington, Vermont. We left our house with the sun shining but drove into a grey but pretty winter wonderland. 

Burlington is about 3 1/2 hours northwest of where we live  and is  great city.  It sits on the shore on Lake Champlain, and for once, it wasn't either really hot or really windy and cold. Lake Champlain is a very large lake and is connected somehow to the St. Lawrence River in Canada, and when it gets cold and windy in Burlington it is always worse than many other places in Vermont because the damp cold blows off the lake.

We actually went up for a hockey game because the University of Vermont is in Burlington and they were playing our alma mater team. We wouldn't have gone except that my sister-in-law's husband works for the Marriott Hotel chain and he was able to get us a dog friendly room for  $33 a night (they also went up). We learned about this on Wednesday and made a last minute decision to go and have a little change of scenery.

We had fun at the game, but I think the main theme of the weekend turned into food and drink.

I better not eat all week now!

It began with breakfast on the road.

 We stopped at this classic New Hampshire old farm that is now a place to stop for snack

or a half dozen apple cider donuts. That was 3 for each of us! I will admit I only planned on eating one but as we didn't have lunch until very very late I somehow managed to eat my 3.

(And they were very delicious too!)

We met up with my in-laws at a rum distillery since they were able to go up on Friday and we chose not take the day off from work. When we arrived my sister-in-law was trying this mini drink. It looked really tempting. So I had to try one too.

 This glass was actually smaller than it looks. (It was only about 4 sips.) The distillery wasn't a place to go seriously drink but  a place to taste their products. The winter daiquiri was made of rum, lime juice, and a spicy seasonal mixer. 

 I loved the drink but we didn't buy any rum from their store. I loved their store decor too.

And even though we could have brought the dogs in, they were sitting in the car watching the world walk by. Or else taking a nice nap and getting my car very hairy!  They actually like to ride in the car, and it was only around freezing temperature wise, so it wasn't too cold or too hot for them to wait in the car. Had the temperatures been either much colder or  much warmer we wouldn't have gone since we didn't have a dog sitter this past weekend.

After our drink, it was time for lunch, so we went next door to a local pizza place.

I just loved the door of the pizza place.

The pizza was delicious, and the beer was good although I wish this brewery had made something a little bit darker in color.

This was my husband's beer which I actually liked a bit better. I had a pint with my lunch and at that point I had had plenty of alcohol.

After lunch we went to check out our hotel and take the dogs for a nice afternoon stroll before the hockey game began.

And since it is Tuesday,  it is time to share this  drink related post over at Bleubeard and Elizabeth's blog. 

Next week I will share the rest of our road trip, which was mostly about Christmas cookies.

Have a great T day and thanks for visiting.

A Few More Photos from Vermont and ETC.

Saturday!!! Kind of a busy weekend for me- I have a lot of holiday decorating to do-including getting and putting up our tree. Seems like that takes a bit, by the time you chop it, get it home and then decorate. Plus, can't forget the cleaning up of the all needles that fall when you move it and the boxes  of ornaments that need to get moved. We have a holiday get together with some friends tonight and tomorrow people coming by for a tv hockey game...busy busy fun.

So today, a few more of my photos from our trip last weekend to Vermont. They're not very exciting, it was very cold while we were there and so I was more bundled up rather than snapping away. Also, I would have loved to gone out driving around looking for some Vermonty pretty photos, but we were with my sister-in-law and her husband  and that kind of changes (not in a bad way) what you end up doing. And, I was dragging with this nasty little cold, so I wasn't really at my highest energy level.

So above photo is looking back onto downtown Burlington from a cove on Lake Champlain.  Can't believe we saw a couple of kayakers out there- it was like 20 degrees with a windchill that made it feel closer to probably 10 degrees.

BRRRR.

And I picked up a new craft book- I don't buy many but this one I do like.

It's Julie Fei-Fan Balzar's new book

I have a couple of carving blocks that I bought years ago when I made my last foray into stamp carving, and I was hoping to make a couple to play with this weekend- but not sure that's going to happen with everything else on the agenda.

Hopefully soon.

I love Julie's style-lots of bold colors and designs.

Always inspiring.

So I am signing off, things to do, places to go, fun to be had.

Enjoy your day!