An Autumn Weekend

     Hi everyone. I hope you're having a lovely weekend. The temperatures in my area have warmed back up, so it kind of feels like summer again. Of course the shadows are so long at this time of year that it cools down fairly early and the nights aren't bad for sleeping. This past week one of the things on my agenda lately has been doing some deep cleaning both inside in a few places in the house (thanks to having a couple of mice who wormed their way upstairs from the basement-😩) and also in the gardens outside. 

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

   The first thing I'm sharing in today's post is a journal page for Elle's Halloween, Steampunk or Halloween Steampunk challenge at Art Journal Journey. This year I am making a little journal for Halloween all about a Halloween party. (I love to make theme books that tell a story about the theme.)  The pages are only 4x6 inches (approximately 10x15 cm) in size, and the base pages are some off white, woven watercolor paper.

  The right edge of this page is connected to some polka dot paper that also forms the background of the adjacent page. The rest of the background was created  by inking the watercolor paper with black and green ink pads. Then I stamped the zombie image (Impression Obsession) one and a half times. I darkened the clothing so that it would give more contrast seeing this paper, although it took a stamped image well, didn't exactly highlight the black ink, making it look more grey.

   I used some of these little bead-like items (I think they are called Poms?) that I've had in my stash to make the moon. Once the glue dried I used some yellow watercolor paint around the moon to show that it was giving off light. Then I  drew and fussy cut some night clouds out of black paper. After I glued them down I used some grey and also some white paint to give them  depth. Finally I drew in the ground with some markers, added some washi tape along the edge of the polka-dot paper, and finally finished by stamping a quote (Picket Fence) on light green paper before cutting it  out and adding it to my page.

   This past week we have been getting some lovely leaf color, and last weekend we went to a local orchard/vegetable farm to get some fresh apple cider. I took a few photos to share.

    Unfortunately on our way home, my husband (he was driving and we were in his truck), decided to take a side road drive to check out the scenery, and when we came to a corner, we saw a motorcycle and its rider out of control and coming directly at us. We couldn't turn off the road because there was a guard rail, and we had a split second to decide whether to stay in our lane or to turn  into the other lane. I don't know if it mattered because the  motorcyclist was going too fast around the corner and was weaving between both lanes.

  Before we could actually predict what he would do next, he drove into the front corner of the truck, banging so hard it caused the truck's air bags to go off and the motorcyclist to fly off the bike. He had no helmet on, and he was wearing only a T-shirt and shorts. Luckily for him, he seemed not to have any head injuries, but when I saw him from across the street his whole side was extremely red. Come to find out he wasn't licensed to drive a motorcycle and didn't even own the bike he was on. 

   We really thought we were going to see his body parts all over the road, and thankfully for all of us involved, we didn't.

   He was going fast enough to mess up my husband's truck's suspension, blow his tire, bend his front wheel and cause all the front vehicle airbags to go off. The next day when we went to clean out the truck because our insurance company totaled it, we noticed that the whole driver's side was out of whack. 

   Thankfully we only had some bruises, and I had  some scrapes on one knee from the floor airbag. In those actual moments I didn’t notice everything, and it wasn't until we went to clean out the truck that we noticed there were even floor airbags. We also had the dogs with us, and luckily they were OK too.  👍 The good thing about being a dog in an accident is you don't understand or even watch oncoming traffic so they stayed relaxed, unlike the two of us who were in a panic before we were crashed into. Even though we were zero percent at fault, neither of us would want someone to die. Having to live with that would be horrible.

  Now we are in truck shopping mode which is not fun. My husband is mourning the loss of his truck, and even though he's constantly being told he can start retirement with a newer one, it's just a hassle he didn't want or need to deal with right now. And there is a bit of a time consideration here too since his boat needs to be pulled out of the marina by the end of next weekend (I think the son-in-law is going to come help with that) and we have 2 tons of biobricks that we burn to help heat the house in the winter and that we need to pick up to save the big delivery fee. I'm sure everything will work out however. We'll just have to cross these bridges as they come.

   That's all the news from my house. I hope yours is more boring in a good way than some of what I posted here. Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

   

   

 

T Stands for an Anniversary and Trains

 Hi everyone. It's T time again. This week for T over at Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's blog I'll share a couple of snippets about an adventure from this past weekend. Sunday was my husband's and my 35th wedding anniversary, and we celebrated a day early on Saturday. One thing we've both  wanted to do for a while now was to take the scenic train trip from North Conway (New Hampshire) up through Crawford Notch. This year, instead of just saying we should  go,  we remembered  to book seats before they sold out and off we went for a train ride.

We made our train trip reservations back at the end of July. Right now is our local peak foliage season, and that means this is a huge tourist time. Leaf peepers especially like the mountains where there are lots of trees. All the trains on Saturday were sold out, so I'm glad we reserved when we did. Even back in July when we booked our day trip, a lot of the seats were already taken.

Notches are  mountain passes or gaps. The name notch comes from cutting down trees, which early European settlers did to build their cabins. To cut down a tree you first make a notch, which, if you aren't familiar with chopping trees, is a V shape cut made into the tree in the direction you hope the tree will fall. Since these mountain passes reminded these people of those notches in trees, all our mountain passes here in New Hampshire go by that name. 

Yes I learned that on our train trip, but it was a question I had had for a long time.  😀

 Crawford Notch is  one of my favorite mountain spots here in my state, mainly because it seems so wild to me. That wildness reminds me of what New Hampshire probably was like back before modern times.

 Crawford Notch is  a state park, and also part of the White Mountain National forest. It's good these designations were put in place because back in the early 1900's when the status was changed, this area was practically logged bare. Making this area both part of a National Forest and a State Park this protected  the lands  in this area.  

There is one main road going through the notch. The beauty of the train is that the tracks are further up on the mountain sides, not down in the valley like the road is. You can see that you get a big notch view from the train.

Here's our train. It made one stop at the Crawford Notch station, which is on the north side of the actual notch. Back in the day there were train stations all along this route where travellers would get off and go to their summer hotels. This area attracted lots of people from New York City, Boston and other points south. People would come up to the mountains to escape the summer city heat.

One of the few remaining grand old hotels is the Mount Washington Hotel. It is now run by a big hotel conglomerate and is known as the Omni Mount Washington Hotel. However, at least they preserve the beauty of this historic building.

This hotel is also famous because in 1944, this is where the World Bank and International Monetary Fund was first established. Forty-four nations met here and set the gold standard. 

Just past the Mount Washington Hotel, the train switched its engine, and we headed back south. They also had us all switch sides of the train, so everyone could have the best scenic views. That meant our ride back didn't have quite the panoramic views, but that was OK. One thing about a train trip is that it is really relaxing. We spent most of the trip back talking with the couple (who we didn't know) that sat opposite of us instead of looking out the window.

And I need a drink to share for T this week. Here is one drink.

They didn't allow you to bring food or drink onto the train, which was OK. However, we didn't know they only took cash purchases. Since we were on the train for over 5 hours, we needed something, and neither of us had a lot of cash in our wallets. Between my husband and myself we scraped together $10. The woman in the food area was nice, so when  we told her we only had $10, she sold us a bag of cider donuts and 2 waters. I'm not sure it came to only $10, but it's what we ended up with.  The donuts at least  took the edge off since we didn't have any lunch. (And our breakfast had been quite early since we needed to drive north to catch the train. Plus this area is  always crowded with visitors, and we had to leave early to deal with the weekend traffic so we wouldn't arrive late.)

When the train returned back to North Conway it was just before 5 PM, and we were really hungry. It was way too crowded in town, and we figured we would have a long wait  for a table at any restaurant.   Since we also had  over an hour's drive home,  we skipped out of North Conway and headed south. We stopped in a town about halfway home called Ossipee where there's  a brewery we like.  At the brewery we had a burger and a beer.  

This is my second drink for T day. I was so hungry I ate everything except about 2 bites of the burger. But I brought that home so the dogs could each have a taste, since they had been waiting for us all day. It's definitely good to be my dogs since I do like to spoil them. 😏

And that was our romantic anniversary dinner. Cheers to 35 years and a very nice day out.

Have a great T day and week ahead. And of course, thanks for stopping by.

The End of October

 Hi everyone. 

With the month quickly winding down, today I want to share my last journal page for Tracey's My Favorite Colour is October challenge at Art Journal Journey.

Thank you Tracey for hosting. You were a fantastic host, and I loved your theme this month.

And thanks to all of you who joined us for this challenge. I'm a little sad October is just about over for many reasons, one of them being I will miss all this beautiful autumn art and inspiration you've all shared.

My page is a bit bottom heavy. Mostly I let the Gelli print speak for itself. 

And let me share a few more colours of October photos with you from recent my walks. So many leaves are dropping off the trees right now, we'll be down to bare branches in no time.

Leaves on the water, and below, on the ground.

And this sweet little shrine I found while walking a couple of weeks ago at the Urban Forestry Center.

And a few more fungi. It's fungi on fungi too.

Fall berries.

And more fungi.

These dark berries were not only colorful, but I like the little flowers that formed before the berries grew.  

I haven't seen a lot of milkweed these year, but I did come across these seeds waiting to be blown away.

And if you look at this tree photo, what do you see?

I see a screaming snail head. Smile.

Today my daughter turns 30. I can't believe that. She's off on a grand celebration adventure with her beau hiking in some of the National Parks of Utah. I'm still thinking about how she was a tiny baby in my arms.

And even if I'm not sure I want October to end, I'm looking forward to November. They'll be another fun challenge at AJJ, and I have some fun adventures planned for the new month too.

Thanks for visiting.

So Much Fungi

Hi everyone.  Is your week going by as quickly as mine is? We're already at Wednesday!

This fall the mushrooms have been insane. There are so many different ones everywhere I look. I know it was because of all the rain we've had, starting back in July. 

My page today for  Art Journal Journey has to do with all those mushrooms, but  also a few crows that seem to be out and about in a big way lately.

This month the talented Tracey is hosting, and her theme is My Favorite Colour is October. 

My background is made from several old fashioned identification book pages. Well they aren't actually pages, but stickers. I thought they were great. I covered the background with them, and then I stamped the crows flying across the page. I also stamped the quote, a few little plastic orange dots, and added some orange paper foil trim.

And here's some examples of those mushroom I've across. The variety is astonishing, and these are only the ones I snapped photos of.

I can't tell you what any of these are, since I'm not a forager. In fact, I don't really like a lot of mushrooms in my food as I don't like their texture when I eat them. A few are OK. Just not a lot.

Yet they are really fascinating to find and see. And they do a great job decomposing all the dead/dying material out there in nature.

Hope you are having/had a great day.

Thanks for visiting. It is always appreciated.