Sunday Art

   Hi everyone. I hope you are having a lovely weekend.

   Today I want to share my last journal page for Mia's  Background challenge at Art Journal Journey.  I'll also be linking  up to Gillena's Sunday Smiles.

  Thank you Mia for hosting again this year. You know we really appreciate it. ❤And thank you everyone who joined in. ❤ This past month I focused on making my backgrounds more of a part of my page rather than just making a background to put my page on. It was a nice challenge to change up my thinking and approach a  page a little bit differently.

  I found a page in my ledger journal where I had glued down 3 cloth hexagon pieces and then had done nothing else to the page. I decided to finish off this page.

   I started with an orange ink pad and a smaller design image rubber stamp. I decided to go grungy and do some overlapping in spots.  Then I took a piece of felt cut like lace  that's been sitting in my stash for way too long. I cut it to fill in the edge by the book's binding where my mounted rubber stamp wouldn't fit. I also cut the felt to work around the edges of my cloth hexagons. Once I glued it down and that was dry I used an orange Sharpie to color in the flowers that were in the lace.

   To finish the page I wanted to add something that wouldn't interfere with the background. I took 3 black and white stem/leaf images that I also had in my stash. I went with no color because I wanted to keep the orange on my background the focal color. I went with leaves also because there's a few flowers on the page in the felt lace and also in a couple of the  hexagons so the leaves felt appropriate. To finish the page I used a sticker quote.

  The orange in my journal page reminds me of autumn, which really has started to take on some color in my area. Here's a few photos from a walk I took Friday morning.

   That's all for me today. We're having a bit of a warm up this weekend, which is nice.  Have a super rest of your weekend.

 

Thursday Art

 Hi everyone. 

I'm back today with some more assorted art starting with a tag for Michele's Back to School  challenge at Tag Tuesday. Today's tag is a little different as I took the view of a teacher looking at their students, rather than student looking at back to school.

I stamped the quote, die cut the apple, and stamped as well as fussy cut the little bookworm with the mortar board on their head.

I also have a journal page for Aimeslee's Anything Goes challenge at Art Journal Journey. 

     Back in 2017 (or so) I made a journal about the night sky. I should say I started that journal, but when it was put on the shelf, it wasn't quite finished. I decided to finish it this fall, and this is one of the new spreads I recently made.

     The left hand side of the background is a page I pulled out of a very old calendar I had (as you can see from the fringe at the edge of the image). I kept this calendar because it has fascinating very old style illustrated pages.  Since my journal has narrower pages than the calendar was, I cut the illustration.  Most of the page is on the left, and there's a little bit of it on the right. I stamped, colored and fussy cut the rocket and Saturn before adding them to my page.

     On the right hand side I added a strip of black polka dot paper (the darkness and stars) as well as a couple pieces of gold diamond trim. After staining up the remaining uncovered background I stamped this old quote that I had in my stash.

    We've been having such gorgeous weather this week I have been making a lot of effort to get out and enjoy it. Yesterday Mr. Pete and I took a lovely long walk. Maddie spent the day at the vet's getting a day long blood glucose curve done, and finally, for the first time since January when she went on insulin, her blood sugar was down to normal. ❤   

      Here's a few photos from my walk.

That's all for me today.  Hope you're having a great day. 

T Stands for Signs of Early Fall

 Hi everyone. Happy new week to you. Today it's time for T again over at  Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's blog. This is a longer post today, but mostly photos.

         Last week I finished up my summer lake job (was that only last week?), had a day out with friends and had some  time to do a few things that have been on my list.

Like going apple picking. The Macs and Cortland (2 of my favorites) were ready for picking.

I bought some artificial fall blooms to put on my fireplace mantel. They were moved there after I finished arranging them and taking this photo. 

I made some pickle relish with some of the cucumbers from my garden.

And I also made chocolate zucchini bread with some garden zucchini.

The bread came out delicious, but even more precious is the fact that my mom sent me this recipe years ago. It was good to see her handwritten note on the paper. ❤

We have some early signs of autumn right now, including some cooler temperatures (which are not supposed to  last).

Here's a left over sunflower head and also the last of my wild blackberries finally ripening.

It's mushroom season.

And seed head season too, along with wild asters being in bloom.

My roses are having a second bloom and look beautiful.

Some of my dahlias are blooming now too.

The remains of summer flowers are looking interesting, although past their peak.

My garden is in no-man's land time right now. It's a bit too early to pull things and transplant, and  it's late enough most of the blooms have gone past. In my wild-flower bee garden there is still goldenrod blooming and some tall phlox too.

After all this activity, I need a cup of warm tea and a photo for T day. Here's some green tea in  my NH mug.

       Just an FYI that if you join tomorrow I won't be able to visit your blog until evening because I'm off on a sculpture walk early tomorrow morning (I need to leave at 7:15 AM) and then I have to vote in our state offices primary.  Have a great T day and week ahead. 

Sunday Art

 Hi everyone. Happy second half of the weekend to you. 

Yesterday my post was about apples, and I mentioned wanting to go apple picking. Well I did.

There's nothing better. 😏

    Today I have another spread in my harvest journal that I've been working on.  I also have a tag too. First I'll show you each side of the spread and then the final spread together. My 2 page journal spread  is being linked up to Aimeslee's Anything Goes challenge at Art Journal Journey.

     This right side started with some red ink and a background stamp. I then added the flap of a red envelope on the right. The centerpiece of the page is a label, and the farm girl is cut out of a sheet of printed paper. The word farmhouse and the printed canning jar are both stickers.

        And here's the left side to this spread.

       I used a page out of an old seed catalog as background paper.  The golden brown label holder is a die cut, and all the red labels were cut out of a sheet of paper. I also cut all the canning jars from another sheet of paper. Finally I added some punch out geraniums, leaves and the twine looking bows. Unlike yesterday when I added apples to bow's centers, today I used a small confetti flower 

      To tie both pages together I added (to the right) some fussy cut canning jars from a the same sheet of paper as the ones that on the left.  And finally I used some red ric-rac trim along the bottom. 

      I also have a tag today for Michele's School Days tag challenge at Tag Tuesday I used to love back to school, but the little one on my tag doesn't look very happy. 😏 (perhaps it’s because his (or maybe her) left leg has a fold on it- oh no!)

I wanted a bit of contrast between the outdoors of summer and being inside at school during the fall, so even though I covered my page with some vintage style alphabet paper, I added the green grass for this little angel to stand on.  I also stamped some numbers, outlined my tag and added a bit of bright pink ink at the bottom to represent the summer outside that still hadn't quite ended when school started. 

I'm also linking up my post to Gillena's Sunday Smiles.

That's all for me today. Enjoy the rest of your weekend and start of the new week!

Friday Face Off

Hi everyone. Happy Friday.

It's time once again for Nicole's  Friday Face Off and Gillena's Friday Lunch Break .  I guess you could say today's Friday Face Off is the a somewhat faceless face-off. Smile.

My husband has started his first art project. He  needed a bit of help from me in a couple of spots.

Tracing big patterns was not something he'd ever done before.  He also wasn't quite sure about using carbon paper and tracing a pattern.

He's a pro with a jigsaw already though. 

And he's a pro at sanding too.

This bigfoot is actually the rest of his last year's Christmas gift for me. I received the pattern for Christmas, but it was  too hard to work on (for lack of space in the garage) during the winter with the cold and snow. I know it's September, but with everything else going on, the hubby has only gotten around to starting it.  This guy is going in the woods just next to the yard so he'll look like he's walking out of the forest. 😀

Or he will once he's painted with primer and some finish paint.

The bigfoot story in my house goes back to 2014 when we had gone to Oregon. My husband's paternal grandfather came from Astoria, Oregon (It's a very romantic story; he met my husband's grandmother when she was traveling there and followed her east because she wouldn't live in Oregon.) In 2014 we took a summer trip out to see the area, and one day during our trip, while visiting Mount St. Helens, we came across this giant yard decoration.

Here's a face for Nicole's challenge.

The hubby likes to claim it's me with the Big Foot fascination, but I think he's a bit interested in Bigfoot too. Grin!

For those of you who have been following along with my dog's accident (she fell out of our boat and slammed the dock with her belly, which popped a hole in her bladder), sadly Maddie didn't make it home yesterday.They were leary to pull out her catheter because that process could cause any potential remaining bladder hole to open up. Today they will hopefully do one more dye injection and x-ray. My husband visited her after work, and she is definitely acting like herself again-which is the good news.  But I am more than ready to have her come home. 

Have a great weekend.

T Stands for Tea and a Snack

Hi everyone. 

I hope everyone here for T has had a wonderful last week, as did everyone else who visits my blog and reads this post. We're in the last few days of September, (which is hard to believe), and here in New Hampshire the weather has been pretty mild so far. Our leaves are just getting a slight tinge of color (except for the swamp maples). They say our peak foliage season is running a week or so later than usual, but should be good as we've had so much rain. 

Last week I had a much needed  low key week. I had lots of time do some fun things like art, reading and walking. I also did do a few small chores.

Saturday I cleaned up most of the veggie garden, except where there are a few plants  that are still growing. You might remember my overgrown weed problem, choking out my garden plants, and since we had some landscape fabric from putting in the beehive, I laid that down after cleaning up the unwanted growth. When the leaves fall my garden fills up with them, and hopefully that will keep the growth down come spring. Next year I want to finish putting in some raised beds, as I only added 2 this year.

For an update on the deck project, the engineering  is now done. Hurrah. This next photo might look weird but you should  look at the front where there is a white post; the right side is lots of short term scaffolding for holding boards. That is a mock up of what my husband plans to do, and next weekend, weather dependent, he should be ready to start laying boards. Hurrah for that. 

A few of you mentioned it would be easier to hire someone to do the job, but it's good to see my husband excited about a home project.  Right now finding anyone to do anything isn't easy, and my husband is insanely picky. He would probably go redo some of it anyhow. I would say he is  probably a contractor's worse nightmare. He is still complaining when we hired someone to put siding on the new house  almost 20 years ago that they didn't do it right. Meaning, they didn't do it his way. Smile.

It's also been time to start more fall clean ups. Last Thursday my husband took the day off, and I was "volunteered" to go help him clean up some things at his Mom's home on the lake. Luckily it was a warm and humid day because the 2 projects meant someone had to go into the lake and get wet.

First the swim raft was brought in.

Maddie and Pete enjoyed a ride. I got to help lift and pull it onto the dock in the forefront of the photo. (This dock is on land, so  it can stay in place through the winter. The rest of the dock will need to be pulled out sometime in the next few weeks because everything usually freezes solid.)

Then we had to get the little boat out of the water. Yes, my husband has a boat collection, all bought used. He has a good eye for finding bargain boats that are in great shape. I think it is comparable to me finding crafting bargains. If you love something you always have your eyes open and looking. Smile.

We call this one "My Boat" ( meaning me, Erika's boat) because he asked me to register it when he first bought it, even gave me a check from his account to do it. I was told at the town hall that if I registered it, it had to be in my name.  So it is technically my boat. We never even used it last year, but this year my husband decided to put it in the water at his Mom's.  Because of his mom's health issues, we've been at her house a lot this summer. He also wanted to take her (his Mom) for a few rides. Getting her into the boat has not been easy, but if this ends up being her last summer at her home, then at least it was a good one.

This angle of the photo makes the front of the boat look really big. It is not, as the boat is only 16 feet long total. And if you aren't familiar with boats, it seems that most people think bigger, like well over 22 feet, is better.

My MIL will be moving back in with one of my husband's sisters sometime in October. 

Hopefully these minor to dos haven't bored you. I know, after reading this you must be ready for a cup of tea or coffee. Or something to drink. And maybe a snack.

I baked a couple of things in the past week.

First I made a pumpkin cake with cinnamon frosting. I had to adjust the frosting recipe because it called for 7 1/2 cups of powdered sugar, which is crazy since it only called for 1 cup or 2 sticks of butter. I cut the powdered sugar down to 2 cups, and I added a bit less of the cinnamon. Now it was just sweet enough.  If anyone is interested in the recipe let me know, and I will include it for T next week.

This cake recipe came out of an older Taste of Home special fall edition. It was delicious (especially with my fixed frosting, but if you like it sweet, then maybe you'd like the original). And I know some of you might wonder what happened to the apple pie with a cheddar crust that I mentioned last week. Once I made this cake, we didn't need to pie, so that is still on my list of things to make this fall.

Then I also made a recipe that Kathy posted this past week in her cast iron cooking post. It is for a marbled sourdough loaf, half pumpkin and half chocolate.

When I remake this bread (it was delicious!) I will add more chocolate to that part, as it could have been a little more chocolaty.

Here is the recipe for that: Pumpkin and Chocolate Sourdough bread. It is written for cast iron loaf pans (Lodge Cast Iron sponsored this), but since I don't own any I just used regular loaf pans.

Which would you like a slice of? I can certainly share both as I don't need all the calories.

It's not any day I would invite you for a fancy cup of tea or coffee, but this lady makes it look like she does it everyday, doesn't she?

My ticket to T this week is is this page for Wendy's vintage challenge at Art Journal Journey. This challenge wraps up at the end of this month, later this week.

My page has a background to look like a vintage doily, and this lady comes from an old 1950's LIFE magazine in my stash.  I stitched a bit, die cut and colored the spoons, and stamped the quote on a little patch of gesso. I also added a few silver sequins for some sparkle.

Don't forget to stop by  Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's blog  to see what the T gang has been up to.

That's it for me. I've got a busy week this week, with new challenges starting and things going on in real life.  

Thanks so much for visiting my blog, and have a super T day and week ahead.