T Stands for Last Week's Chores

    Hi everyone. Happy new week to you. And hello to everyone who stops by  Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's blog for T.

    Last week I had a much needed "quiet" week without any planned outings. Besides some art and reading time (❤), I had some "chores" I've been wanting or needing to get done. Some of them I'd been putting off for awhile too. 

     I haven't really decorated for Christmas, but I did put up my winter tree in the dining room.  It's in a rather dark corner  and with these short days, the tree really adds some light. I keep this tree up until late January or early February until the days start seeming longer so I don't really think of it as a Christmas tree.

This second photo makes it look like there's no light on the bottom, but there is.

    I also managed to do some more cleaning out. I had donated 3 bags of art supplies earlier this month when I did an art supply pick up and clean. This past week I organized my closet  and switched over from my summer to my winter clothes. While doing that I cleaned out another 2 bags of clothes to donate.  😀 

      

   And after a windy start to last week, it finally was still enough that I could do some fall leaf cleaning. I don't really care if I get all the leaves cleaned up, but living in an area surrounded by oak trees means I'd be knee deep in leaves come spring if I just left them.  Plus in some places (if we don't clear them) they clog the snowblower and get really slippery to walk on. I'd rather not fall if at all possible. 

   I usually rake them out for the garden and then take the leaf blower to get them off into the woods. The problem with the leaf blower is that the battery is heavy and by the time I get done (and go through a few batteries) my dominant arm is pretty sore for awhile.

    It seems to me like I do a lot of leaf cleaning, but on most of my property I don't clean them. Mainly it's just in  a couple of my gardens, the decks and along the driveway. The wind (luckily) blows most of them off of the lawn, and the rest of the property is just left natural so the leaves can remain.

    Luckily that chore was finished on Sunday afternoon because that evening we had a dusting of snow. 

     I've almost completed my November chore list. Not that I made an actual list, but the list I had in my head. I'll have this same list come April (minus the winter tree) when it's time to switch the clothes from winter to summer and when the snow melts and the leaves need to be raked once again. 😏

   Before the Sunday evening flurries we had our first hard frosts last week. My roses that were still in bloom (on my climbing rose bush) a couple of weeks ago went from looking like this

to looking like this.

    I need a photo for T also. I did a bit of baking last week. I made some cranberry orange muffins which ended up tasting more like  cranberry orange scones (not the super hard kind of scones, but real scones). I guess these would be called scuffins. I'm not sure that's an actual word, but if not, it is now. 😏

    I also made some peanut butter chocolate chip cookies. I had one for a snack the day I made them and I included my Diet Coke with it in the photo for T this week.

   That's it for me. If you're in the US, I wish you a happy Thanksgiving this Thursday, and to everyone, now matter where you live, have a great T day and week ahead too. 

Happy Weekend

     Hi everyone. Happy Sunday. I'm having a much quieter weekend than last weekend (my post about it here T Stands for A Busy Weekend), however it is just as exciting since my husband finally got his new truck. You may have read about the accident we had in his old one back in September when an out of control motorcycle slammed into the front of that truck. Who would think that a motorcycle could total a pick up truck? Well it did, and finally he's got a new one. He's a happy guy now, except  I know it won't take him long to start complaining about car payments. 😏  That's especially true since his old truck had low mileage, was fully paid for and was still running great. He  hadn't even been thinking about a new truck until he accident happened. 

    Life does throw curve balls at you, doesn't it?

   Today I have a journal page for Wendy's A Moment in Time challenge at Art Journal Journey. I am also linking  up to Gillena's Sunday Smiles.

    There is something about morning that I love, even when it takes me a bit to get moving like these cold days.  My page celebrates those moments when I wake up,  look out the window and the sun is out. 

     I used my ledger journal, and this time I covered the page with a Gelli printed piece of deli paper. I then added the fussy cut window. The shutters/flower box were already blue, but I darkened them with a marker,  as well as making the curtains darker and adding the yellow watercolored background to show the rising sun in the window opening. 

    I hand drew, colored and fussy cut the clouds,  and I used acrylic paint for the area around the sun sticker. Below the window I also added a die cut key and the quote, which was my inspiration for the page in general. It's an old Stamper's Anonymous quote from well before the days when they only made stamps from the Ranger designers.

   And how about a few sunny morning (but not early morning) photos from the walk I took the other day. I was chilly, but I hadn't gone for a walk for a few days so I enjoyed it.

You can see I had my most reliable walking buddies with me for it too. 😏

  I was especially happy with Pete who I left unleashed. A doe/female deer ran right out of the woods in front of us. I told Pete to stay with me, and he did. It's never a good time to let your dog run deer, but right now it is hunting season, and I wouldn't want him to be shot.  I'm sure that's one reason why the deer was up near the homes along the lake and not in the woods. They definitely know where the hunters are and where they aren't. 

    That's all for me. Have a super rest of your weekend and also  start to the new week ahead. 

Weekend Chatter

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

     Let me start today's post with a journal page for Wendy's On, In or By the Sea challenge at Art Journal Journey.

     I started my page with a stencil and some white paint. Once the paint dried I rubbed 2 shades of blue ink over the stenciled image. Then I did some layering. I save a lot of packaging, and I had a piece that had some seashells around the edge. I glued  that piece down on my stenciled page. However, there was some writing  in the middle of that recycled seashell page that I didn't want. To cover that up I used the same stencil, white paint and a cut to size piece of blue paper. Once that dried I added that to my page to cover up the unwanted area.

     I now had too much dark blue for the seashell recycled piece to stand out, so on my painted and inked parts I rubbed a light coat of gesso over them using a scrunched up paper towel. 

     Once that dried, I outlined the sheets of paper. I added a blank postcard and stamped a couple of quotes on that postcard using an old set of Technique Tuesday clear stamps. On some green paper I drew and fussy cut some seaweed. Then I added an assortment of pre-printed punch out images as well as adding an old postage stamp from my stash.

     I also have some photos starting with my pretty decent brussel sprout crop that I harvested last week. This first photo is the top of the plant which is just a giant blossomed sprout.

      You might have seen the photos I posted a couple of Fridays ago of a huge flock of turkeys in my yard. They've been back again several times last week. And this time my windows don't have doggy nose slime all over them because on the day I took these photos, the dogs were in afternoon nap mode. 😏

     My project last week (that I'm finally doing even though I bought the paint months ago) is painting some shelves in my bathroom that needed a little freshening up.

       I also took a road trip one day out to King Arthur flour's home in Norwich, Vermont. At their baker's store I picked up a few items for some holiday baking and was very excited when I got to the cash register and the cashier told me they were having 15% off your total order. ❤

     And finally I had a load of stone delivered for an on-going outdoor project which I'll share another time.  Bet you can guess what I've been doing this weekend (at least for a little bit).

I am also linking this post up to GIllena's Sunday Smiles. Enjoy the rest of your weekend and start to the new week.

A Tag for Thursday

 Hi everyone. Happy Thursday. Today I want to share a tag I made for Valerie's Anything Goes challenge over at Tag Tuesday.

     The other day I was going through my stencil bin and came across a few of the old brass stencils. I don't know if you remember them, but they were meant to be used under a light box with a probe like tool or a needle, depending if you wanted an embossed design or a punched design.

      I decided to see if I could get any design from my brass stencils, and if not, I was going to pass them along to someone who may want them. First I tried using one in my die cutting machine to see if I could get an embossed image, but the minute embossing that happened basically meant that wasn't going to work. Then I decided to try some stencil paste, and guess what? That worked.  I was able to get even the smaller openings to show up. I then stenciled this quilt look design a few times on some colored background papers.

     And if you try this for the first time, I just recommend you was your brass stencils under the faucet because if the stencil paste dries in any of the little openings, your stencil won't work next time.

     The images have since dried, and Valerie asked for tags with the theme of anything goes, so I decided to use one of my stenciled pieces on a tag. 

     I stamped this small alphabet image several times in light pink ink; then I took my stenciled image and cut it out of the part of the sheet of paper where I had stenciled it. I wanted to amp up the color a bit (since the stencil paste was pale pink), so I rubbed some brighter pink pigment ink over it and dried it.

    I outlined the edge of my tag with black ink, outlined parts of the stenciled image with a Sharpie, and stamped my quote in black ink. Then I also added a small half pearl to my tag. I also added some white paper lace trim along the bottom.

   And yesterday I shared the ring around the moon, today I'll show you last night's moon and a view in my backyard just before it was pitch dark.

Have a great day or rest of your day.

    

     

Dreaming and a Walk

 HI everyone. It's the middle of another week already. I think 2024 is going to be here in a blink of an eye.

After Monday's rain storm, we finally got our power back (mid-day Tuesday), and luckily all my piles of towels contained the water in the basement to just one area. The driveway held up; the rain stopped, the sun came out on Tuesday, and the only thing left is for the wet part of the basement floor to dry. 

Today I have another page for Wendy's Above Us Only Sky challenge at Art Journal Journey.

I first used some grey ink to color my sky background. I wanted it to be night, but not so dark I couldn't add anything else. I used a Hero Arts northern lights stamp with purple-pink and aqua inks. I saw the northern lights once way back when I was in college. I was sitting on some rocks in Acadia National Park on a cold night in March, and they appeared out over the bay.  I would love to see them again. They are  also kind of  a surreal and dreamy thing, so I like how they worked with the theme of my page. 

The moon and the face are from  a die cut set. I used the actual die cut moon, but I used the face scraps as a stencil to get a more dream-like appearance. The moon is painted and colored with markers and ink, and I also added some small dots of glitter glue to it. The washi tape is along the edge because my inking was irregular and messy, and the quote is stamped and fussy cut from a Paper Artsy/Alison Bomber stamp set.

Although not at all dreamy, last week I went for another walk at the Urban Forestry Center, this time with both dogs and a lot of mud. Oh boy.

OK, I guess we just had to go through it. 

I was just happy I didn't slip and go down into it. 

Walking with my 2 dogs is always tough because one wants to surge ahead and one wants to stop and smell everything.  

There isn't much color left by now, other than brown and grey.

Unless you look carefully.

Someone has started more forts in the woods.

And the flowers are gone for the next few months.

It was still a lovely walk, even with the mud. Luckily there is a small stream and Miss Maddie, the one who likes mud and being wet the best, was able to rinse off her feet. Pete, on the other hand, caused me to have to do a bit of car cleaning, but Pete's mud was just an excuse  because my car already needed some cleaning. 

Have a great day.

Friday Again

 Hi everyone. Happy almost weekend to you. 

I'm here today for Nicole's Friday Face Off  and Gillena's Friday Lunch Break.

In this post I have some photos to share from a late November walk I took last Thursday at the Urban Forestry Center in Portsmouth, NH. It's a very convenient place to walk after I get my allergy shots, especially since the tides at the beach haven't seemed to work in my favor lately.

Even though it was just noontime, the position of the sun really made some fantastic shadows.

This small patch with some dead  but still standing pine trees captured my attention because the wood seemed so white. This first view had some interesting grooves (I'm guessing from some type of insect).

This next photo is a favorite. I think the composition, light and muted colors all work together. And you can see what I mean by the white wood of the bark-less pine tree.

These  berries seemed so red.

And these apples in their various states of decay were interesting.

For these next 3 photos, I played around using the vignette feature on my laptop. They were half in the shadow anyhow. 

And to wrap up this post, I took a selfie of myself. This is for Friday Face Off where I need to show a face,

That's it for me this week. Have a great start to your weekend. 

It's Wednesday Again

Hi everyone. Happy middle of the week to you. 

This week, although it really isn't shorter than other weeks, always feels like it is shorter than other weeks since the long Thanksgiving weekend starts tomorrow. I should  also clarify it's a long weekend for my husband.  I know some of you who live in other countries where they don't  celebrate Thanksgiving (or don't celebrate it now) and others of you here in the US might still have to work. I'll just explain that when my husband has a long weekend, my usual weekly routine switches up and I get a  long weekend too. 😏

My journal page today is made from some salvaged items that I pulled out of some bins. You might remember me recently mentioning that I had 4 bins of craft supplies that I packed up a couple of years earlier. I finally got around to going through them. Since I didn't miss anything in the bins, I'm not keeping most of the items. But, I did find a few things that I gave a second look and decided to hang onto.

The salvaged items that I used on this journal page include the background paper, a giant sticker and also a flourish die.

One of the bins had some older pads of paper in them, including  a 12x12 inch pad of autumn paper. Not that I need anymore paper, but since it was autumn themed paper ( and had great designs too) and it is autumn,  this pad was speaking to me. I used a part of a sheet for my background on this page.

One of the bins had a lot of stickers in it. Most of the stickers went into a postal box that I'll try selling them online. If any of you know someone who could use a lot of random assorted stickers (both new and partially full sheets), let me know as I wouldn't  mind just charging for shipping if I can find the stickers a new home. 

 I did pull out a few sheets of stickers out of the pile that I thought would actually get used. One of those saved stickers is on this page. It's a big sticker on the right side that looks like ripped paper with leaves on it. 

And finally, I had some dies that I found in a bin. I went through them and put a couple away in my die drawer. One of these salvaged dies was an oldie with a big flourish on it.  I used it to cut some orange paper. You can see it on top of the big sticker on the right hand side of my page. The sun is on part of it.

I finished off my page with some stamping and adding some metal paper elements as well as a few little crafting gemstones. 

My journal is very full at this point, so please excuse the slight dip to the right in my photo. I can't get the pages on the left side to lay flat anymore, but other than for photos, it isn't an issue as it says my journal is used and loved. 👍

And I am linking this page up to Jo's Nature challenge at Art Journal Journey

And speaking of autumn and nature, it's been very chilly at my house, especially in the mornings. Yesterday it was 18 degrees F/ around -8 degrees C. The frost fairies have definitely been busy.

And in this one hydrangea bloom, there is still just a touch of blue.

It's  been cold enough that last night we had our third little winter tease. ❄😞

I have lots to do today, so that's all for me. Thanks for visiting. It is always appreciated.