Some Art and Then a History Lesson

It can't possibly be midweek already, can it? Time is flying. I have one more week off and then its back to work for me. I can't think about that yet though. I am going to try to keep it out of my mind until at least next week. Try being the word.

So today I begin my post with another spread from my Iceland travel journal. I have been working away at it and am almost done. Once school begins I will be mentally moving onto the next round of  life's adventures and Iceland will seem further away, So I am really try to finish it up ASAP.

This spread is all about sheep. They are everywhere in Iceland. All sheep  roam free during the summer, and in September they have a roundup.  You even see them on the sides of some very steep grassy hills, which made us joke that they looked  like they were kept in place by Velcro. We also laughed about pink sheep- not that there were pink sheep, but some of the hay bales were wrapped in pink plastic, and as they were as round of the fluffy sheep, we joked about pink sheep. 

So I found a pink sheep postcard which made me smile and thought would be a good memory for my journal. I also bought a little Viking  reproduction  trinket that came in a jewelry box. Instead of having cotton at the bottom of the box, there was a little bit of this unspun black wool. (Of course there wouldn't be cotton in a country that has a bigger sheep population than people population.)So I also added that to my page because I love the texture it creates.

I am linking up to Art Journal Journey too. Sheep are a wonder of nature with there cool wooley coats. How smart we are to figure out to spin it and turn it into yarn which can be used for both knitting and weaving.

So this past weekend I went to the Hudson River Valley in New York for a couple of days. I had never been to this particular area of New York, but it was green, lush farmland with some beautiful homes. One of the towns we visited was Hyde Park, which was the home of one of the US's former presidents, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. For those of you who may not be familiar with US presidents. FDR was president back during the 1930's Great Depression  and during most of World War II. He was the longest serving US president, having been elected to four 4 year terms. It is because of him that US presidents can no longer serve more than 2 terms (8 years) in office.

This is the home he was born in and was his residence all his life. I didn't know that he only owned it for approximately the last 4 years of his life. It was instead owned by his mother, and she ruled the roost. But it was also here that  some dignitaries including Winston Churchill and King George the VI and his wife Queen Elizabeth of  England visited. 

 This was his bedroom. I don't know if you can notice the phone on the wall next to the bed, but this was his direct line to the White House in Washington. 

FDR came down with polio as an adult and he was paralyzed from the waist down. He needed a wheel chair, however he had regular chairs made into wheelchairs. He wanted to keep his disability hidden since in those days many people believed physical disabilities also meant mental disability. This wheel chair is in the extra large dumbwaiter installed in the house so that FDR could get up to and down from the second floor where his bedroom was. He would pull on the cord to lift the dumbwaiter up to the second floor. 

You might also see the wheelchair in the living room.  What is really cool is that when FDR died he gave the house to the US government. That included all the furniture and many of his other belongings. I think its fascinating to see things that FDR actually used. I like to imagine what it was like when they actually living there.

There is also FDR's presidential library and museum on the grounds which was really fascinating too. It was actually much bigger than I thought, and bit overwhelming, but I found a few things worth photographing.

 This is his car, with hand controls since he could not drive a standard car due to his paralysis.

And when Pearl Harbor was bombed by the Japanese in 1941, FDR gave this speech the next day. Here in the US it is a famous speech, about "a day that will live infamy". This is FDR's hand corrected draft of the speech. No speech writers in those days.

 His desk from the Oval Office at the White House.

 And many of the knick knacks he kept on his desk.

OK, long post.  Hope you made it and didn't either fall asleep or click off. Ha-ha! 

Thanks for stopping by for a visit. 

Breakfast in Iceland

 Happy T day everyone. Its Tuesday, so stop by  Bleubeard and Elizabeth's blog and see what the T gang has been drinking and maybe even eating. And you can even join in and post your own drink/food related post.

So last week I showed you lunch in Iceland and this week I am showing you breakfast. I must say, European continental breakfasts are usually interesting  depending on what country you are in, and the Icelandic breakfasts carried some foods which reminded me of my childhood. I grew up with a Swedish grandmother who always put on a big Sunday morning brunch spread for us. All my father's siblings would be there with all us grandkids, and out of the 8 of us, 5 of us were all about the same age so you can image what a crowd we were. 

Hot coco on a cold morning, as well as apple juice. Granola, a cheese sandwich on some slightly sweet light rye bread, pickled veggies and some pickled herring. I think I made at least 2 of my friends scowl with the fish, but I really like it. Whenever I manage to get to IKEA I always have to get a couple of jars to enjoy some at home. (Which, by the way, makes my family scowl at me too.)

Throw in a hard boiled egg too.

And then you need a little something sweet. That chocolate cake was to die for, and the little pastry was yummy too.

The next day I went for more chocolate cake, this time with some current jelly.  :)

And at one hotel we could make these Icelandic waffles, much thinner than the waffles we usually get here in the US. Some jelly and whipped cream- more of a dessert but oh so delicious.

My sweet tooth definitely gets me in trouble.  Good think I was walking close to 20,000 steps most days on this trip.
And I also have another journal page to link up to Art Journal Journey. The theme this month is Nature's Wonders, hosted by Gill. I always find it amazing that by putting either seeds or seedlings in some soil, watering and fertilizing this soil and before the season is over, you have some wonderful fresh veggies to eat.  Here's a summer journal page about my veggie garden. The pickings have been great this summer.

So this afternoon (Monday afternoon) I returned from a nice little weekend journey to the Hudson River Valley in New York State with my husband, his sister and her husband. What a beautiful area that is. We had a lot of fun visiting some historic homes, a presidential library and museum along with visiting a winery for a sangria fest. Other than the extremely hot weather (97/ almost 37 degrees Celsius), it was  a fantastic weekend  And it was great to spend some time with my hubby too of course.  I've photos to show you from there too.
Hope everyone else had a nice weekend and didn't have to deal with that brutal heat.  Happy T day and thanks for visiting.

Fairies, Elves, Giants and Gnomes

If you visit my blog regularly you are probably getting tired of seeing my Iceland journal. I have another spread to show you today. The theme is those fantasy folk that many Icelanders (especially in the past) believed lived in the island's landscapes. In Icelandic they are called Huldufólk. 

The left side of my spread is a painted mountain with my abstract glacier coming down. I created the face in the rocks by painting a coat, then laying down a die cut, then adding more paint. Once the paint had started to dry I removed the die cut and what I got was this nice image. I added some black molding paste and sand to make the ground on the base, painted in the greens and yellow flowers, and then  after doodling and painting the little fairy homes on a separate sheet of paper, I cut them out and added them.

The left side is made with a Gelli print on deli paper, along with the addition of the Icelandic postage stamps and the elf/gnome cut from a playing card.

I suppose these guys are part of nature's wonders, especially if you think of them in a fantasy way, so I am linking up to Gill's fantastic themed challenge at Art Journal Journey.
And since it is Friday. let's party. Paint Party Friday that is.  Thank you Kristen and Eva for hosting every week.
(And stop by both challenges to see some great art too!)

Some of you may remember this photo I took.

These are fairy home I discovered when we stopped at this wonderful little church right next to the ocean. They were on a little knoll behind the church. I used them as my inspiration for the little fairy houses in my page.

We noticed this little church on our first day in Iceland. Can you see it in the photo below, way off on the right.

 We turned off and headed down towards it.

  And here it is close up, although I somehow managed to cut the top of the steeple out of my photo.

 A side view with some of the little cemetery and one of the pretty windows.

 Who knew dandelions in a field would be so pretty? 

 And we actually got to go inside of this church. Most of all the little churches were locked- and we saw a lot of them. They looked perfect up against the mountains and open fields. This church was very pretty inside.

So we had a pretty successful trip into Boston to meet with the kidney transplant team. (My husband needs a transplant.) It might be as early as October. My husband has a couple of other tests to get done, and I (as the donor) need to meet with my team in a few weeks. Keep your fingers crossed that all goes well in the next few weeks. :)

I'll be back early next week. I'm off for a couple of nights with the hubby along with his sister and her husband.

Thanks for visiting and have a great weekend everyone.

Iceland Journal Part 2

We had rain here today, and I must say it made it a nice low key day.  OK it actually motivated me to do a little bit of picking up around the house too, because who wants to stay in and clean on a gorgeous day. But on a rainy day, you might as well. I also worked some more in my Iceland travel journal, so  here's a few more pages to show you.

My inner front cover. This is the degree latitude of Reykjavik. I got the idea from an Icelandic brand of outdoor wear called 66 degree north, but I didn't want to be a copycat. This is the furthest north I have ever been , although back in my 20's I did visit Ornskoldsvik, Sweden where my uncle lived and that is at 63 degree latitude north, which is pretty close. I guess unless I want to be technical they are really around the same latitude.

Also more views of my hand carved (some backwards) rune stamps.

And my other pages have flip ups.

 The fisherman and the underside weather tag were on a shirt I purchased for my daughter.

A card from the hotel we stayed at for 2 nights in the family room-all 4 of us shared a room and I even got the bottom of a bunkbed.

 It was a huge salmon fishing area. I would have liked to have given it a try.

And I had to do a page of a few places we ate (and those buy anything gas stations).

Plus I added a little gnome. Just for the spirit of Iceland.

So we're off to Boston to go see the kidney transplant people today at Massachusetts General Hospital. Keep your fingers crossed for us that all goes well and we can set a date to move forward.

Hope everyone else has a great day.

Iceland Journal Part 1

Happy mid-week (already) everyone. Today I have a page  for Gill's  challenge over at  Art Journal Journey.    Its a great challenge this month with a theme of Nature's Wonders. 

 So I have been working on my Iceland Journal. I didn't bring the book with me, but got it all made so I could come home and record my journey. As I saw a lot of Icelandic horses, I made a spread just about them. The big horse face comes from  a tourist brochure I picked up and the horse on the left came from a deck of cards I picked up. Its a great card deck because it has photos of many things in Iceland. And even better, it was way cheaper than postcards.

 This isn't the greatest of photos. I used the cut out horse along with a postage stamp of horses. I also had this thick die cut of a chess horse in my stash that I thought would work really well on the page.

I also had this Viking stamp which I used on this left hand page.   The little rune images (top and bottom of the page) are stamps I made by cutting a piece of foam. I love them, but I did mess up and forgot to flip them backwards.  Oh well, I'll still use them.

Did you know that since Iceland's horses have been isolated from the rest of the world's horses they believe that they are probably like the original Viking settler horses that arrived in this country back in the 800's? Also, if a horse is taken off the island it is illegal to bring them back, They are trying to keep a pure line, which I think is pretty cool.

Here's a couple of other pages from my Iceland journal.

 I'm using some pages from old children's book about Iceland in my journal. That's what you see on the right of the top  photo and the left page of the bottom photo. I also used more tourist brochure images, a postcard of an old Icelandic photograph, a postage stamp and some more of those chess pieces from my stash.

I've got more to show another day. Hope you enjoyed your visit today.

Pick Your Favorite

Howdy everyone. Today's post is a little of this and a little of that.

But first thing is that  it is T day. A big hello to all the T Gang.

Be sure to stop by Altered Book Lover, Bluebeard's and Elizabeth's blog to see, or even better, to join in on the T for Tuesday fun.

I want to show you some of the food I ate on my journey to Iceland. Today I am showing you lunch.  Now we only ate lunch a couple of days because what we  usually did was eat a big breakfast (included with our hotel) and then do dinner. Lunch was generally something light or snack. 

But one day we went for a picnic.  We actually had a late lunch because finding a picnic table was about impossible at lunch time. We drove past about 15 tables and they were all filled. So after we back roaded off to the glacier and then drove back out again we finally found a table for lunch! You can see my drink was water.

This was our view from the table. We were draining out some melted ice from out cooler bag which is what that blue blob in the foreground of this lava field is.

And one day we had these delicious ice cream bars. Not exactly high on the healthy list, but boy did it taste good. 

Most days my snack lunch included a handful of these along with some cheese and crackers. One of my companions brought this mega-bag , (and actually I brought a couple of small bags), but we all shared them. They have peanuts which are good for you, right?

 And finally the day we flew home we decided to have a big lunch since our flight was at 5:30 in the afternoon (17:30) . And even though we were due in by 7:30 (19:30), we knew by the time we got through customs and out of the airport it would be late.

So I had this yummy fish and chips with another glass of water.

And I also wanted to show you the cool ATC's I received from Halle  of Halle's Hobbies for the T Day Anniversary swap. I know it took me a bit as I was away the week they arrived, so I must apologize for being a little bit behind.

 And look at this gorgeous card she sent them in.

And I've been reading a lot lately. I love going back through my blog posts at the end of the year to see what I actually have read, so I am also going to give you a few  book reviews. I'll be quick.:)

 I've reread these books (#s 1 &2) in the Sookie Stackhouse series, but I wanted something fun and not too intense for the plane trip. Plus I haven't read them in many years and I've had a hankering to reread them. A good vampire story  is always worth a reread.

 And I'd never read any Willa Cather, but she is a classic American author. I loved this book. I know this story is about 100 years old but in some ways it still felt very fresh with a strong woman lead character. If you don't know it, the story is about immigrants on the Nebraska prairie. But in some ways it is interesting how some parts of life don't change no matter when or where someone lives. There's still loneliness, the search for love, and wanting to build a decent life.

 And now I am reading this story which one of my traveling companions told me about. The story takes place in Iceland in the year 1000, and it bounces back and forth between  people and the Norse gods. I am enjoying it. Its right up there with the vampire books I mentioned earlier, light and a little bit of fantasy. Of course it helps that I am just back from there and I can really picture the scenery and story based on what new things I learned last week.

OK, I think that's enough babbling for me. I don't need to write a book. 

Have a great Tuesday everyone.