T Stands for Celebrating with Drinks

     Hi everyone. Happy new week to you. It is also T day over at Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's blog, so I also want to send a hello to everyone who joins in there also.

      Last week was my birthday. It was kind of a weird birthday because it fell on a work day, so my family and I didn't celebrate until this past weekend. However, the good part about that was that my birthday wasn't  a single day event but a birthday week-grin-😏 And just a warning, if you are hungry when you read this, there's cake at the end of my post.

   On my actual birthday I didn't want to sit home, so the dogs and I took a little road trip and drove out to King Arthur Flour in Norwich, Vermont.  If you're not familiar with King Arthur flour, they are producers of various baking and cooking flours. They also have a very nice store especially for bakers full of not only flour, but other baking ingredients and also baking supplies.

    Not that I really needed much of anything, but I did manage to pick up a few things. And I discovered I had $25 in baker's points which was a really nice way to make my total even less.👍 I also drove around and took a few photos, and I had lots of time to listen to my audio book. It was a good birthday.

     My first drink photo for T this week is this large tea chai latte I bought at King Arthur's bakery to drink while I was out exploring and also on the drive home.

    For my birthday dinner we had hot fudge sundaes, no meal first.  If we ate dinner first then we wouldn't be hungry for the sundaes. Right?  And since it was my birthday we just went for the sundaes. Grin.  I even  picked up a couple of brownies along with my chai latte at the King Arthur bakery so we could make our hot fudge sundaes brownie hot fudge sundaes. 

    It was a delicious birthday dinner.

     You can see my husband's Coke Zero on the table among the sundae making supplies. That's drink #2.

     I also went out to eat a couple of times last week. Friday some friends and I met up for an early dinner to celebrate both my birthday and one of my friend's birthdays. Friday fell right in the middle of our 2 celebrations. However, I got so busy chatting I forgot to take any photos.  😏 Then this past weekend  my daughter and her husband visited, and  we went out for some Mexican food. The birthday person gets to pick what's for dinner, and I've been craving some Mexican.

     While we waited for dinner we all had a margarita except my son-in-law who had a beer. You can see  my daughter's  and my margarita in the photo. I just had a glass of water with my burrito.

     And of course when we came home we had to have a birthday cake.

      I like to make my own birthday cake so I can get exactly what I want. Plus as many of you know, I like to bake. Since I needed to make the cake on Friday so it would be ready for Saturday and  because I had plans for Friday afternoon, I decided to buy a chocolate cake mix and a white frosting mix at the King Arthur store when I went there. Their mixes are a little bit pricey but taste like homemade. The cake was definitely quicker to make than an actual homemade cake, but I'm not convinced the frosting is. I still needed to add 2 1/2 sticks of butter and a bit of liquid to the mix. However, I didn't have to measure out the sugar, and their mix makes a really nice frosting.

    I also bought some actual chocolate sprinkles/jimmies at King Arthur to decorate the cake with.  In this photo you can see someone had a bottle of water on the table. I can't tell if it was my husband or my son-in-law from the angle of this photo.

    It was a great birthday week for me. Sorry if I made you hungry. Wishing everyone a happy T day and week ahead. 

Wednesday Post

 Hi everyone. Happy Wednesday.

Today I have a couple of things to share with you. I'll start with a feminine page for Valerie's spring challenge at Art Journal Journey.

In my scrap bin I had a couple of pieces of wallpaper, but neither was big enough to cover my whole page.

I decided to layer them because the spring flowers on both pieces of wallpaper worked together.  Then I used this paper doily I had and a square of Dina Wakely printed tissue paper I also found in my scrap bin.

To finish off my page, I had a printed vintage photo of this woman. I cut away a lot of the background behind her so not as much of the doily would be covered. I finished off my page with a couple of vintage style dogs surrounding the lady.  The dog on the left is even in a very spring looking bucket. 

It was actually a pretty simple page to make, and it was fun to work a little bit out of my usual style because I usually don't go quite so feminine. I should have posted this page  yesterday for International Woman's Day, but better a day late than never I guess. 

For Kathy's  Food Wednesday  this week, I am going to share my birthday dinner. In our house the birthday person gets to pick out dinner, and as I hadn't had Mexican food for a very long time, that was my pick.

We did take out, because Friday night the restaurants are just too crowded, especially with my husband who (as many of you know) is immune suppressed. I had a steak chimichanga with rice and beans. The hubby called in and picked up the order though, and it was great not to cook on my birthday, nor to even have to go and pick it up. We also made home made margaritas to celebrate.

I did make my birthday cake though, which was a fun thing to do as I enjoy baking. I made a modified Victoria Sponge.  

Don't you love how my daughter decided to put on the candles? Last year she put 61 individual ones on the cake, but this year she didn't, only because of  the whipped cream and how she didn't want it to melt.

I made an easy vanilla cake (not a sponge) that requires no sifting or special ingredients. (Here's the recipe: Golden Vanilla Cake.)  I baked two 9 inch layers. Then I sliced those 2 layers in half, which only went well on one of the layers because I tried to slice the other one while talking on the phone. (Lesson learned, I can't slice and talk at the same time-smile.) I put strawberry jam in the sliced layers, and then I made whipped cream to fill the center layer. I was still on the phone when I put some powdered sugar on the top, which didn't go so well either.  I ended up with too much so that when I blew out my candles powdered sugar went all over the table. Oh well, it may not have been the prettiest cake, but it tasted yummy.

I hope everyone is having a wonderful week. 

Thanks for visiting. 

T Stands for Happy and Sad

 Hi everyone.  

Another week of T has rolled around. My post today is both happy and sad. And also (warning you), pretty long.

You may know the sad news already.  A few weeks back on T Day,  Eileen  of The Artful Crafter told us  she was going in for open heart surgery.  Sadly, she passed from complications due to that surgery. I'll miss her art desk photos with her glass of wine or other drinks that she almost always included in her T Day posts. I will also miss her photos of Mexico where she was living.   Eileen  participated  over  at Art Journal Journey as well as T day. I know she expected to be back to join more challenges. 

I received this ATC from Eileen back in 2018 for T day's anniversary party. I thought I would share it again in her memory.

RIP Eileen.

I had some celebration baking scheduled for this week, but it seemed a bit too fun after writing about a loss. I thought about whether I should end this post here, or whether I should include something else. 

I am a happy person by nature, and when I get sad,  I am just one of those people who plows onward.

This week for T I will share photos from another road trip. Hope you don't mind as I've done that a lot lately.

Last week was my birthday. Since I was going to have the day to myself   (the hubby had to work), I decided I would  go do something . Right now New Hampshire is in the early spring  mud, icy patches  and still  snow covered state  called called mud season. That meant I needed to find something to do that was not outside. 

I like to visit the King Arthur Baking Company Store in Norwich, Vermont, but with covid and the 2 hour trip each way, I hadn't been there since the summer of 2019. Even though visiting would mean a bit of driving, the change of scenery would be great, and Vermont is pretty covid strict. 

In fact, I was a little worried that the store wouldn't even be open. (Looking on the internet proved it was in fact open with some strict protocols.) 

 I decided to head out early, so I set the alarm. I got up just as the hubby was getting ready to leave for work. It was a bit strange  that he looked a little too casual, but in my morning grogginess I didn't think too much about it.

"Do you want your first birthday present now?" He asked me right after I had rolled out of bed.

I know I looked at him utterly confused. He's a jokester, and I was expecting a silly comment. Plus I wasn't quite 100% with it yet.

"I'm coming with you today. I've taken the day off so I can spend your birthday with you."

That was a really nice surprise and birthday gift. Let me take you on our adventure.

We had watched a show about donuts a couple of weeks earlier. At that time I had said how I hadn't had a donut in well over a year. Our first stop was at a local grocery chain that makes donuts we like, and he ran in (he's all vaccinated plus done his 2 weeks) and got us some donuts. He got way more than we needed, but smart man that he is,  figured I would want a choice.

It was a beautiful day as you can see. Then we arrived at King Arthur, which is actually only about 2-3 miles over the New Hampshire border into Vermont.

Those feet on the right are the women's who took your temperature to let you inside.  There was a 30 person limit inside. It felt OK.

I managed to pick up some baking supplies I needed. I have occasionally ordered from them in the past 2 years, but it seemed whenever I did order, there was always something I wanted that was out of stock. No problems with that in the store.

After I finished shopping, we decided to take a little drive and check out a few of the covered bridges in the area. One I had never seen but wanted to was the Cornish-Windsor Bridge. It spans the Connecticut River which divides New Hampshire and Vermont. It wasn't much of a drive to get there from King Arthur either.

We entered on the Vermont side and drove back to New Hampshire through the bridge.

The hubby took the photos since I was driving. 

The Cornish-Windsor Bridge is the longest covered bridge in the US and the longest 2 span covered bridge in the world. 

It is also still in use as a way to cross the river.

In this next photo you can see the hubby enjoyed his day off when I stopped to take a photo of the bridge.

We were going to visit one other covered bridge, but the road in to it was fully involved in mud-season. I turned right around and decided I'd check that one out some other time. There were a few others we could have driven to find, but it was now lunch time, and we were hungry. I had decided what I wanted for my birthday lunch, and that included a bit of driving to get there.

We drove part way back home and stopped in Concord, New Hampshire for lunch. One of the local coastal seafood places had opened a restaurant in Concord, and that's where I wanted to eat. We ordered over the phone, and they brought our lunch out to us in the car. 

I ordered one of my favorite sandwiches, even if it wasn't yet summer. Some of you can probably guess what this was without me showing you.

And if you could hear me, I would say this in my local, dry, and  even a little sarcastic tone, "I'm just supporting local seacoast lobstermen." Smile.

Funny it was on a hamburger roll not in a hotdog roll. 

The scenery overlooked the parking lot. Not exciting but the sandwich and chips  tasted yummy.

It might have taken me forever to get here, but finally,  my T day drink.  Don't forget to stop by  Bleubeard and Elizabeth's blog    for this week's drink related post.

My birthday present to myself to remember my fun birthday. It's filled with some of Trader Joe's Spiced chai tea latte mix.

Thanks so much for visiting and reading all the way through this post. Happy T day.

.

Blogger's Challenge

The topic is celebrate, and even though I made this card a little while back for my Mom's birthday, I think fits the topic quite nicely. It's a pretty obvious card...but I think the colors are reason to celebrate enough-especially in the dark of winter.

To make this card I used an embossing folder by Darcie's on some pink paper, which I then rubbed some an orange ink pad over. I mounted this on white cardstock and added some assorted flowers in pink and orange by Prima and Hero Arts. Finally, I added some dabs of pink Stickles into the center of each flower and let it dry.

This is one of the few cards I've made that hasn't used any stamp images at all- when I made this for Mom I was in a hurry. I like the fact that this embossing folder lets you put together a card so easily.

Thanks for visiting!

Birthday #2 For the Weekend...plus...

Here's the birthday girl-20 years old today!!!!! The photo is back from warmer and greener times...before we had a late October nor-easter...I can't believe my baby is going to be 20...no longer a teenager, into a new decade of her life. Wow.

Well the snow seems to have stopped coming down. Dave took a measurement and got 16 inches on our deck! And luckily, we have power since there's like 300,000 people in the state without power. Lets hope it stays on but if not we'll fire up the woodstove and make do. We do have a generator we can run a few things on, so we are not helpless. It is strangely pretty-my oak tress with white on their leaves, the colors tempered with white, but also a little too wintery for late October. Later this week I will put up photos....I don't hate winter, but our northern winters are long enough as it is and I am just not ready for winter to start yet.( Call me a short winter gal- 2 months is about all I like then it needs to go away!It is not even the cold, but I feel stuck with snow. Stuck inside...having to give up my gardens and easy walking...having the extra snow removal work...driving in the snow-we picked up Katie at work last night at 10:30 and the roads were NASTY...but  having a snow day and hanging around inside isn't bad...it just seems it goes on and on and there's SO many days like that) One more month of fall...but you just don't know about the weather in New England. (and I saw on the Weather Channel if was snowing as far south as Washington DC too...wow...this is quite the BIG storm).

So instead of wintery photos, I will show you some beautiful oceany photos from back a few weeks ago on our last trek onto the water for the season. It was a summery day for sure then-well into the 80's and sunny.

terns....

and a fishing boat

part of the fleet (here below) in Portsmouth Harbor

This is kind of an interesting little building on the wharf

The birthday girl a few weeks ago.

Lobster traps on a floating dock

Not so great shot of the current going into Little Bay under the General Sullivan Bridge.

And here's one of the bridges from Portsmouth, NH into Kittery, Maine along the Piscataqua River between Great Bay and the Atlantic.

Ok, that's a lot of photos, but I feel so much better showing them and being reminded they were only a couple of weeks back shows how quickly things can change. So this snow will melt and we'll go back to fall and cool.  BUT, at least it is Sunday and I can stay home and at least we don't have to have a snow day at school already. And at least it should melt since we'll be back in the 50's as the week progresses, which is a GREAT thought to keep in your head. And, it is a good day to go hide in the studio for awhile or to read on the couch all afternoon...and we are having a big birthday dinner later this afternoon before Katie goes back to school...and of course, birthday cake(s) (well cupcakes and pie) for both Dave and Katie!

Thanks for stopping by.

It's Birthday #1 This Weekend

This handsome guy is celebrating his birthday today!!!!!

He's catching up to me...51 years old!!

Love you big guy!

***

Ok, and this weather is TOO confused this year. The other night we had a lovely dusting of snow...but at least the roads stayed only wet and not white. I do remember other Octobers when we'd get a little dusting, and I do remember COLD snaps like this one we are having now. Here's a few photos I snapped yesterday morning.

Flowers on my deck snowed over.

Dave's truck and the leaves STILL on the trees.

Harley and my garden.

My yard. The leaves are actually prettier colors now than they were back when they were suppose to be at peak color. Seems our warm fall has pushed everything back.

And that might be a problem

Because today they are forcasting a nor-easter to come in...starting as heavy wind and rain and changing to snow.

5-10 inches of snow!!!

I never remember a BIG winter storm in October, and I have lived in New England for all 51 years of my life. I've even lived much further north in New England, in North-Central Maine, up into the spruce-fur forests, and we never had a nor-easter in October.

Plus if a lot the leaves come down and mix with the snow.

This morning we need to get out and clean out the yard and I need to bake Dave some cupcakes for his birthday celebration...especially since Katie needs to work tonight and we'll be driving her since the truck has 4 wheel drive and her car doesn't.

Dave gets to have snowstorm on his birthday!

Happy Birthday, this will be one to remember!!!

Time Change

Its going to be DARK SO EARLY today. I love having an extra hour but now we're into the DARK TIME of the year. Hibernation mode, BIG TIME, here I come.

So here's another birthday card I made, though not for anyone in particular. Its just plain old CHEERY!  Cheery is GOOD. That's good. Cake is from Impression Obsession, as are the background dots, the triangle banner is from MSE. not sure who made the Happy Birthday stamp or the blooming birthday circle/postmark.

So my studio is SLOWLY getting clean, yesterday I made 8 Christmas cards...yeah, I have started...and we took a trip to Nashua to hit Costco and Trader Joes. It was fun, except when I got home and Mr. harley had gotten locked into the bathroom-AGAIN_-and ate more of the door.  I just got my bathroom where I wanted it a few months ago...ERRR...but poor puppy dog at the same time.

Today, I'm dragging but want to go back up to the studio for awhile.  I got up and walked this morning-the sun was out then and it felt GREAT. Then I made cream cheese brownies and 2 loafs of pumpkin bread with a recipe I'm trying...Dave is putting the boat into storage up in his mom's driveway...its that TIME of the year. Tomorrow is the last day with my first quarter classes...and we're off Thursday for Veteran's day...I am hanging low that day and playing in the studio...bookclub is Wednesday and I have so much of the book to read... I'm bad.

Happy new week...this one will fly as does November, doesn't it?

Always Dark

Its been a rainy last few days, today is no exception to that, and its a dark morning, but a GREAT morning to sleep in which is where I'm at right now. Definately enjoyed that!!! Today I want to get in the studio soon too, as most of my week I either didn't make it in OR I've been working on cleaning it up a bit...pulling out the holiday stamp boxes off the top shelf...the change over PLUS I couldn't stand the mess. But today, I want some craft time!!!! (and some clean time too most likely!)

Here's the card I made Katie for her birthday...just something quick and easy...and these Stampington birthday people are HILARIOUS. The balloons are Hero Arts only I covered them with Stickles so you can't see the words and designs but the sparkles really make the card on a birthday.

So yesterday I was in Barnes and Nobles looking for and buying the new Nigella Larson cookbook, (Love her recipes-they're easy, tasty, varied and some unique) when I discovered the British publication Craft Stamper. That's a really good magazine...I've seen it on people's blogs but never checked it out for myself. I like how they teach you actual techniques more than some magazines do. (Of course I love most craft magazines equally...you could go broke buying them all).

This week I also receieved some stamps I bought off of Artistic Outpost during they're anniversary sale...got the new Wizard of Oz stamps...this is a childhood favorite of mine...plus the Peter Pan and the Christmas woods set that I've been wanting...now I need to find time to cut them out...but I LOVE the newest Wizard of Oz set a lot!!!

Happy Saturday-off to start my day!