Primary Day, My Dad's Birthday and T for Tuesday

It is primary day here in New Hampshire. The 100th anniversary of the the first in the nation primary. With all the many candidates in the running for president it will be interesting to see how the votes fall (and maybe even a little bit scary) and who is left in the race on Wednesday, because there will be candidates who don't have money left to remain in the race. 

Personally I will be glad that all the poll phone calls will stop and the pile of candidate flyers every day in the mail will go away. But I am glad to be able exercise my right to vote and be a part of this tradition.

Last Friday I was home with a snow day from school. School closures for snow days still make feel like a kid. Yahoo-I can go back to bed and don't have to go out into the weather! 

So later on in the morning, when I got up after a little nap and some extended reading in bed time (which is the real reason I love going back to bed on snow days), I got up and made my daughter and myself a yummy snow day breakfast, which I am linking up to T is for Tuesday on Elizabeth's blog.

Blueberry pancakes, a link of chicken sausage and a big glass of milk! I didn't need to eat until dinner that day!

And I didn't realize today is Fat Tuesday and time for Mardi Gras. Guess all the election hoopla along with the recent snows has thrown me out of the loop. Happy Mardi Gras everyone.
 So this young boy is my dad when he was a kid. Today he would have been 92.

 Here's a rather blurry photos from his days as a soldier in WWII.

I know you probably can't read this dad, but I hope wherever you are you are having a really happy birthday!
And
Thanks to all the rest of you for stopping by today!

Butterflies

A little twist today on the theme over at Art Journal Journey. This month the theme is If Music Be the Food of Love, Play On, hosted by Hazel.  

The background page comes from a book I picked up to rip apart. It is all about opera. It also had some music in it which you can see  here, as I used strips of this music. Then I had a sheet of paper which I doodled and painted hearts and cherries all over, which I then free hand cut into some hearts. Before I glued them down I stamped some music on them. 

I thought the butterflies would be fun with the little faces on them. I also stamped some images. doodled the butterfly trails and cut along the stamped the scallops along the top and bottom of the page.
So another weekend flew right by; it seemed just as fast being  an unplanned 3 day weekend with the snow day last Friday which extended the weekend.
Speaking of snow
I'm not really looking forward to today since we have another big storm coming in. And its due to arrive at the worst time,  late morning/lunch time. That means by the time I need to drive home from work, the roads will be nasty. My only hope is that this is suppose to be once again a coastal storm, so hopefully as I trek inland the snow on the roads (and even more so, on my up hill driveway) won't be quite so bad.
Or at least one can hope that's how it is. I really don't mind my  commute most days, but it is never fun when the weather is nasty.
And wishing everyone a Happy Chinese New Year and the start of the Year of Monkey!
Guess I need to go get ready for work. Yawn! I stayed up watching the Superbowl last night and even though it wasn't that late, it is Monday, and I am not very motivated to get moving. But I must.
Thanks for visiting.

Fashionable Ladies

Sometimes when my creative muse is still flying around and hasn't landed yet, I take pre-made backgrounds and an old Italian fashion magazine that I've got and do some cutting and pasting. For some reason cutting and then laying a photo on the page inspires my muse to get her focus.

I sometimes wonder what the models would look like if they had  different color lips or if they had dirt smeared on their faces. Or something on that line. Sometimes they just come out being a plain old mess,  but that doesn't matter because its all play and experimentation. To make the muse happy.

I had an intern a few years ago who was a male model. I always wondered what he would look like with a black eye or something that made him less photogenic like a pot belly. But he was a really nice man and all the potential to be a really good teacher so I didn't focus on that.
And I didn't realize until just now that Moo-Mania USE YOUR SCRAPS theme is still up and running so since I am using scraps from an old magazine, I think I will ink on up.

So anything exciting going on for you this Sunday? We have the Superbowl tonight, but its not as exciting when your favorite team lost in the last round  of play off games. The weather people are telling us we have some more snow coming in the next day but are also telling us it is way too early to give amount, though most likely plowable. Hmmm.

But it has been a sunny and not too codl weekend, and today I am hoping the muse is around for a little art time which is always very exciting.

Thanks for stopping by my blog!

The Morning After the Snow

The sun is shining, and it is cold. Winter is back. I loved having no school yesterday though. I baked cookies, played in my happy place for over 4 hours, took a nap and caught up on the final episodes of Project Runway Junior. With the snow flying it didn't exactly lead to doing all those "chores" that needed to be done. 

Here's a journal page from yesterday I am linking to Art Journal Journey. This month's theme is "If Music is the food of love, play on" and is being hosted by Hazel. Stop by to see all creative journal pieces.

I used a Gelli print for the background, some painted rings and images, and a lot of stamped phrases. Then I added all these pretty little sequins.

So before yesterday's snowfall this is what my side yard looked like. We weren't snow free but almost there! My head was convinced it was March or April, especially since the last few weeks had been unusually warm.

Then Thursday morning's  forecast of a dusting turned into about 8 inches of snow.

 The snow stopped just before sunset yesterday and it was rather pretty.

Now that the sun is out I guess I need to get those "chores" done, so I am signing off.

Have a great start to your weekend!

It is Friday

Which means it is Paint Party Friday! Many thanks to Kristen and Eva for hosting this weekly collection.

I've added some more items to one of the pieces I showed you a few weeks ago. I went pretty realistic except for a couple of little surprises in the window.

Every piece of art needs something a little surprising, or so they say.  Here's my 2 kitty angels. I have been missing them lately. I need to add faces to them. I think I should maybe make them appear more transparent and maybe  little less solid. I guess I picture angels being a little more ephemeral than these 2 are right now.

And although not finished, I made more headway with the other window, potted flowers piece too. (Ignore the rug around the border of my painting as I photographed this in the best light which was to lay it down on the floor.)

 I've also dabbled  in a little baking this week.

My husband, the anti-muffin man, decided that he LOVED cinnamon chip muffins. So I made a batch for us with  streusel topping. 

And I've been reading a bit. too

And my mom has pneumonia so yesterday I took the day off from work, drove the 2 hours down to her house, and took  her to the doctors. He wanted her checked into the hospital as she is 86 and had been on lower antibiotic doses for a few days already to no avail. Getting her checked into the hospital took the usual hours.

 (I must say, emergency rooms in the city are something I had never experienced before- living here in wooded rural New Hampshire. I couldn't get over the number of people-with beds filling the hallways too. In our local small hospitals a rush would be 5 maybe 10 people.  Once I needed an emergency room in San Francisco, as I passed out during dinner at a restaurant and even though I came to the manager had called for an ambulance.  The EMT's brought me to a small private hospital instead of  the big one near the restaurant. It was an interesting ride up and down the famous hills of that city  in the back of an ambulance-my first and only ride in one to date. Come to find out I was dehydrated so I was soon sent on my way back to being a tourist and visiting  some friends of my husband's family. But the best part of this story is that the friends, who have done very well in California, took us out for a scenic city tour at midnight in their Jaguar which was fun (because riding in a Jaguar isn't very common for me) but also delighted my daughter who was 17 at the time.

OK, after that long winded detour back to my original mom story.

Then once Mom was settled into the hospital I drove 2 hours home. It was a long day, but even with Mom being sick, she was in a pretty fun mood. Her short term memory loss has made her into such a comedian. More than worrying, I am still smiling over all the great laughs we had yesterday.

Sounds like they expect that a few days of heavy duty antibiotics and prednisone will put her back up on her feet.

I hope.

And now, this morning, we have snow!

Enough they have canceled school! Kind of a nice surprise (since we were suppose to be missing this storm until the forecast changed last evening) and really appreciated after my long day yesterday.

Yesterday it felt like April and which was sooooo nice I nearly forgot it was February.

Happy Weekend everyone! 

My Travel Journal is All Set

This weekend I finished up my travel journal for my upcoming trip at the end of the month. 

Thought I would show you the "finished" book. 

Its a mixture of painted pages, plain tags, envelopes as well as other scrapbook and office supplies.

Of course won't be finished until I complete it while traveling and once I get back home.

But a few pages need a bit of artsy ephemera that I won't be lugging with me. This dapper gent is my inner cover. The black star is actually only an image stamped in silver on black paper and then cut out. 

You can see my pages vary in size, shape, design, etc.

I did find this vintage postcard on eBay and liked it so much I bought it and already added it to the book. The woman reminds me of my mom when she was a young woman.

There are lots of places to write, doodle and glue things down.

I've also added little pockets and envelopes. I love to be able to include little "souvenirs" I picked up along the way. I also love to find those free travel brochures because I chop them up to help record my journey.

 I assembled the book using a plain cardboard cover, one of those Tim Holtz 2 ring binder pieces you can buy, and lots of aluminum tape you get at a hardware store. I haven't used this tape for awhile but it was really fun to use it again.

The first 2 posts about producing my journal are here Making a Travel Journal Part 1  and here Making a Travel Journal Part 2.

Thanks for visiting!

Sweet Cherries

So the new challenge at Art Journal Journey started on Monday and this month's theme is "If  music is the food of love, then play on." Hazel is hosting and  here's my first post to this challenge at AJJ.

So one Friday evening recently I went to play in my happy place but after a week of work, I was tired, so I spent my evening  drawing with a black Sharpie and then painting in those drawings. That's where these cherries came from.

It was a fun and relaxing  way to spend the evening, a little out of my usual routine, and all of those are good reasons (in my book) to play with a Sharpie and paint.

Later on I sprayed inked the page, but I didn't like it very much, so I stenciled the white paint dots and then repainted my cherries and after that I worked OK for me. It felt very Valentine's to me- where the cherries and Valentines connect I don't know, but for some reason it did. So I die cut a lacy heart, which you can see around the edges of the other die cut heart made from plaid paper. I outlined it all in white, stamped and cut out the cupid (a TH, Stamper's Anonymous image), and stamped the love you words. Finally I doodled the border and called it done.

Then Monday I saw the new challenge for AJJ and decided I could doodle in a few musical notes  (though not 100% necessary) and now I really am done with this page. Not my most favorite page,  and I do like the heart and the cherries, but the background is still bugging me. Oh well, it is bright, cheery and a little different so time to move forward.

A new challenge also started this week  on Try It on Tuesday. The new theme is romance, so I think this also works for that too. I am  linking up this post to the TIOT page.

That's about all there is going on in my world. Warmer winter temperatures, work, new kids at school I am really enjoying so far, some evening reading, a little art time, and all the typical chores of life. Oh yes, I am also really enjoying the new episodes of the X-Files on Fox. I enjoy that show so much I actually bought the entire series box set a few years back and I sometimes sit down and watch a bunch of episodes. When I am feeling like a couch potato, So now its going to be hard to stop after just 6 new shows.

I'm glad you visited!

Hope to see you again soon!

T for Tuesday is Second on the Second Today

Is that title a mouthful or what?

So since it is Tuesday it is time for  T for Tuesday which is hosted  on Elizabeth's blog  T-Stands for LeMonde/Altered Book Lover .

But since it is also February second Elizabeth is also hosting Second on the Second. Wow-What a busy day!

Here's some photos that I posted in March of 2014 from my trip that year to New Mexico. I had gone out there to  visit some friends for  my February school vacation week. It was quite a T centered week.

 How about a little chocolate cake too? I could go for that right now!

And then I created some T pages in my travel journal for that trip.

You can find both original posts here.

Taos Travel Journal and The Way To Start the New Year.

I also have a second part for Second on the Second, also from 2014. That was the year we had a huge number of snowy owls wintering down along the coast from the Arctic. I had never seen a snowy owl before so my daughter and I went on a little road trip to go see some. It was right around this date we did that. Here's that original post Snowy Owls.

 And last but not least- Happy Groundhog Day to you all. If the groundhog sees his shadow, we get 6 more weeks of winter, and if he doesn't, then spring is just around the corner. I'm not sure the history of this whole thing, and it is kind of crazy, but it is also pretty fun. The weatherguy said this is the half way point of the actual season of winter. Wahoo! Although its been feeling like spring here already, it is good to know we are truly getting closer to real spring. Lets hope those groundhogs don't see their shadows.
 Thanks for stopping by!

Try It on Tuesday

Here's a journal page I made awhile back and converted  into a silhouette  for Try It on Tuesday. The ladies originally were stamped but I colored them in and made them silhouettes.  I think I am just squeezing this one in before the challenge changes.

The background is made with stencils, paint, spray ink and some stamped and colored images. I also  added the die cut gear heart.

Monday comes so fast. It was just Friday evening and the weekend flew right by.

I have a few more photos from my Saturday beach walk to share today also.

 And this restaurant had this fun Valentine's tree made by old wooden lobster traps stacked up and then decorated. I thought it was kind of fun.

Everyone needs a little fun on a Monday, right?

Hope to see you  stop by again soon.