T Stands for A Walk and a Lobster Roll

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

   So what's new with me? Last week I was trying to rest my sprained shoulder/rotator cuff. It's in my dominant arm which is not making it very easy for me to do. But I am trying. 😟  I am also trying to get into physical therapy, but places seem to take forever to get an appointment.  One place booked me in for me in for August 24, and now I’m waiting to hear if a different place can get me in sooner.

   Since we had some perfect summer weather (not too hot, not too cold), I would have loved to do some gardening, but that would have required both arms. Instead one day I went for a long and lovely walk. It was the perfect way to get exercise without using my shoulder. (Especially since I left the dogs at home so there was no pulling on my shoulder from any leashes.)

    Here's the rail trail I walked along. It goes by several lakes so the views are pretty.

   There were also lots of wildflowers in bloom which were also quite pretty.

   At one cabin along the way I came across this beautiful garden in their yard. It was a certified wildlife habitat garden,  at least that's what the sign you can see stuck into it said.

    And I had more pretty lake views too.

   Besides a nice walk and a few other random things, my husband's paternal side of the  family also had a family reunion this past Saturday. Lots of people came from all over. The furthest was his cousin and her husband who came from California. The party was at my Mother-in-law's home, and I know she probably wished she could have been there with everyone. We did raise a toast in her memory, but of course, there are no toast photos. Those would have been perfect for T day. More about that some other time since that event can be a post on its own.

   Therefore, to wrap up today's post I need to share a drink. 

   I finally made it back to Pop's to have my first lobster roll of this summer.  We usually try to get there once a month, but with the cost of life this year, I haven't been back since they opened in May. It was a really lovely night, and we could sit outside and eat.  You can also see the Diet Coke I brought from home and that  I had already been drinking before I got to Pop's.

    I had one small complaint though. I asked to change from the French fries that usually come with the lobster roll to onion rings. The woman at the window told me there would be a slight up charge. OK. That was new. But then, compared to the amount you used to get, there really weren't all that many. Not that I needed more, and these were quite good, but it's the point. Unless they had a shortage of onions, their serving size was smaller. Up charge and smaller, isn't that what life has become? 😩

   That's all for me. Wishing everyone a happy T day and week ahead. 

A Mid-Week Walk

   Hi everyone.  Happy middle of the week. 

   A few weeks ago I had an appointment down in Portsmouth. It was a beautiful day at the shore; one of those days where the breeze came in off the ocean and made the temperatures right along the coast a good 15 degrees (F) cooler than inland. I had thought about going to the state beach for a while after my appointment, but I figured by the time I was done with my appointment (since it was the perfect day for sand and surf), the beach would be really crowded. Instead I decided to head over to Odiorne State Park and go for a walk. It was really a lovely one too.

   The state's done a lot of upkeep there, so the trails were cleared and set for walking. I first headed down towards the beach area of this park. You do get people who come to this "beach" to enjoy the sand and water, but since the only way to get there is to walk in through the trails or boat in,  this beach doesn't get crowded like  the bigger beaches just a couple of miles down the coast.

   I would have walked out to the point along the beach as the tide was low enough to do that, but when I came around a corner, the beach was rather busy. Grin. Rather than disturbing the geese, I turned around and headed back into the woods. 

   The shade felt great anyhow.

I thought this tree  had an unusual shape.

     Out at the point there was this big bunch of tiger lilies. The state had also mowed the grass here. I wonder if at some point in the past, long before this was a state park, there was a house here. A friend who is an archaeologist told me that one clue she often has about the location of  no longer existing buildings  is where you find clumps of flowers that are not wildflowers.

    It's always fun to come out to this point since 1) the views are so pretty and 2) we boat through the water here. I like seeing the view from another perspective.

From there I went back into the woods along the trail.

     Some of the Second World War coastal defenses are still here. When I was newly retired and came here I wondered if the graffiti was from any of my former students. Now I've been retired long enough  my former students are (hopefully) no longer irresponsible teenagers and are responsible adults. 

    There used to be some actual art graffiti on some of these walls, well done butterflies and birds, but now the graffiti is just messy scribble and a waste of paint and viewing. I continued on.

   Pretty soon I was back to the parking lot.

   I hope you enjoyed taking a walk with me on a beautiful summer day. And hope you are having a beautiful summer day also.

 

It's Thursday

    Hi everyone. Happy Thursday. We have some rain arriving today, but otherwise it's been a gorgeous weather week so far. 

     I'll start today's post with another journal page for Matilde's Houses and Buildings challenge at Art Journal Journey.

   This page is in my Dina Wakely ledger journal, so all the writing in the background was already there. I started by taking a stencil that had some wet stencil paste on it and cleaning it off with a wet baby-wipe onto my page. Once dry, I did a bit of fussy cutting. I also used some stickers (from Stamperia and Ciao Bella) and punch out images. Before I added the old VW onto the page, I used black paint to make the road. I decided not to add any road markings to it because 1) it would make the page too busy and 2) because of the car you can tell what it is. 

   After I arranged the main images, I added a couple of fake paper postage stamps (49 and Market) as well as a 49 and Market pre-printed tag. I added the string to the left side. I also stamped some postmarks using stamps I have in my stash.

  I also have a tag today for Lynn's Add Some Text challenge over at Tag Along (and ATCs too).

   I started with this wine colored paper that had the white writing all over it. I cut it with an AALL & Create die. In the same die set was the one for the backing layer. I cut this sheet out of tag stock and then I stamped a bit of writing on it using that backing page from an old set by Oxford Impressions (a long defunct company).   To finish off my tag I added an acetate image from 49 and Market,  a gold paper butterfly image, and another AALL & Create die cut.

   I outlined the edges of both background layers with a black pen. I added a bit for bling to butterfly. I stamped the word wings (a very old mounted stamp with no maker on it),  and I finally added these pink beads to the front. 

   And  to wrap up this post in case you aren't a paper art enthusiast, on one of my travels, when I went walking  on the road to my mother-in-law's house, I saw some cool shadows.

    You can see Mr. Pete was with me. Miss Maddie was spending the day at the vet having a glucose curve done to be sure her insulin levels hadn't changed for her diabetes.

    That's all for me today. Hope your week is going well. 

Camera Gear

 Hi everyone. Happy middle of the week. I hope your first week of October is going well.

Today I have a journal page to share for Neet's In Gear challenge over at Art Journal Journey. 

My page today is about how I love taking photos. My camera has always been one of my most valued possessions. Do you still have a film camera? I have my old film one squirreled away in the attic, but now my camera is digital. If you own(ed) a film camera,  do you remember picking out the right type of  film from all the available choices?  And of course nothing was instant like it is now also. I don't miss having to pay for film developing, and I definitely like being able to play with my photos on the computer now.

My page today is made with printed paper. I used one sheet for the background. It was missing an edge (because I cut something out of it) so I used a scrap of coordinating paper to fill in the gap. This lady is cut out of another sheet, and the camera and film image is also cut out from some printed paper. The 3 large quotes in the middle of the page are from one of my favorite old sets of 7Gypsies stamps. To finish off this page I added a quote sticker and 3 chipboard gears that I colored to look  old.

And speaking of taking photos, last Friday morning I went for a short "hike" with 2 friends. None of us had been to this trail before, and it was really quite lovely. We walked down to the Isinglass River in Rochester. Rochester is the New Hampshire city just a couple of towns away from where I live. 

My friend's pink fleece really popped in the forest.

There was even a small waterfall.

And a rope swing with this scary ladder. 

And there's just a touch of color coming on the leaves here.

These tree roots among the rocks look almost like a sculpture.

Time to walk back to the car and go get some breakfast. 👍

Hope your week is going well.

Thanks for stopping by.