So Sweet

Hi everyone . Two weeks have flown by once again, and it is time for a new challenge at Try It On Tuesday.

Thank you everyone who joined us  for our Go Green challenge, Also  thank you Aimeslee for being our guest host for that challenge. It was such fun to see everyone's green, which along with blue are my favorite colors.

Our new challenge might have you thinking about candy, babies, adorable children, puppies, kittens, honey, maple syrup or other cute things. For the next 2 weeks our theme is

So Sweet

The little bunnies I tucked in among the felt flowers are really sweet, and since I'm also thinking a lot about spring, I made this bunny themed journal page for this challenge.

I started with some stenciled deli paper scraps. Then I painted my whole page light pink and inked a bit of purply-pink also. I'm not sure the sunflower photo frame would be my choice now that the page is finished, but I had glued it down and added the big stamped bunny face before I decided to added sweet little pink stamped bunnies in the flowers.

The felt flowers were recycled from another project, and I added some paper buttons to their centers. I thought about adding string through their holes, but since this page  is in a journal I didn't want any thick string to make the page bulge any more than it does with flowers. Of course now I look at it I say why didn't I just add a bit of sewing thread. Hindsight is always so informative, isn't it?

Be sure to check out all the other ideas and inspiration from my talent design team members. 

This challenge runs for the next 2 weeks, and we allow any type of art that works with our theme. 

I am also linking up to Valerie's Anything Goes challenge over at Art Journal Journey. Please remember we only accept art journaling and no cards, tags, ATC's or other non-journaling art pieces.

I hope you have some sweet ideas and decide to share them with us at Try It On Tuesday.

Thanks for stopping by my blog too.

 

T Stands for a Traditional Rural New Hampshire Spring

 Hi everyone.  Happy Spring to you! ❤

It's already once again time for T over at  Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's blog .

Last week we a had a huge snowstorm on T day. We measured around 12 inches/ 30 cm of snow at my house, but the news reported that my town had 22 inches/56 cm.  I’m not sure where in my town the weather gauge is but there’s definitely a variation. (I do know how to measure, and we didn't get 22 inches.)  I'm personally not a fan of big storms in March because I want it to be more like spring, but they aren't uncommon to have. Luckily, with more hours of daylight and warmer temperatures  the snow is melting away. Fast! 😀

This past weekend was Maple Syrup Weekend in New Hampshire, a time for people to visit sugar houses during the maple syrup making season. I didn't visit any sugar shacks this past weekend, but I did 2 weekends ago. For T day let me share that fun adventure. 

You might remember  from last year  how my daughter's in-laws have a sugar shack. They tap maple sugar trees to make maple syrup. My husband and I were invited to spend a day with them in the sugar shack.  I like doing this because maple syrup season is a sign of  the  coming spring, and since it is such a traditional thing to do, it makes me feel part of the history of my area. 

One way to collect sap is with a traditional sap bucket. If you do this, when the sap is running,  you need to visit the trees daily to empty the sap bucket into another container. Then you bring that larger container with the sap back to be processed. If you keep the sap cold (like around the freezing point), you can store it a week before processing, but if it's any warmer you have to process it quickly.

Instead of buckets,  people with bigger sugar houses often use sap lines, which transports the sap through gravity feed back to a large container near the sugar house or to a  place where the sap maker can go and collect the sap.

The lines are certainly not very pretty, but depending on the size of tapping area and how much sap is running, you can have hundreds if not thousands of gallons of sap a day. 

It's always exciting to see the buckets and tap lines come out because it means (minus  big March snowstorms) that spring is on its way.

I've shown photos of maple syrup making before, but this year my daughter's in-laws have upgraded and have started to make syrup to sell. Last year when we went they had a small evaporator, but  they have now switched it out for this larger one. You can see all the steam coming off as they boil down the sap (to get rid of the excess water) in the open silver pans on top. It smells great 😀. And to keep the sap boiling you have to feed the woodstove (that you can see in the front) almost constantly so it stays red hot. 

This batch was ready to drain out of the evaporator. It took more than 1 kettle to do that.

Then they needed to check the sugar content as well as the density to be sure it was not too watery or not too thick.

After that, once the syrup cooled,  it needed to be filtered in their new filtering unit.(The unit is not actively filtering when I took this photo.) 

These next 2 photos shows all the bottles of syrup they made the day before we came out to visit. (And a kitchen roll/paper towel roll too-smile.)

They've been making about 25 gallons a day, and all these bottles are quart  bottles. For those of you not familiar with our crazy system of measurement, it takes 4 quarts to make a gallon. Maple syruping season is very busy for syrup makers, and you really can't control when the sap starts to run and when it stops running. That means you have to boil down sap daily while you are still getting sap.

And I did remember to get a drink photo for T this week. You can see my beer and my daughter's can of hard cider on the picnic table on the outside of the sugar shack.

We had a late winter outdoor bbq that day with hot dogs, hamburgers and salad. Boy did it all taste yummy, even if we still needed to wear our winter coats while we ate.

It was a nice visit, and I'm glad my daughter married into such a nice family. And it's nice that we can all get together sometimes too. So many nices, eh?

Have a great T day and week ahead. And as always, thanks for visiting my blog.

Weekend Post

 Hi everyone. It's the weekend. I hope you have a nice one and do something you enjoy.

I have a fun little adventure planned for tomorrow/Sunday that I am looking forward to. I'm going to the theater with my daughter and a friend. I'll tell you more about it in another post.

I want to start today's post with another tag for Valerie's challenge at Tag Tuesday. Her theme is birds.

To make this tag I used lots of scraps off my work table as well as a tag I painted. I really like the 2 colors and my splash like effect of the paint, so you'll probably be seeing some more of that type of background in the future. To make it I just put a blob of paint down and used a dried up baby wipe to smush it around the tag. Then I repeated that process with the second darker color.

I also promised to share more photos from Edison's and Ford's Winter homes in Fort Meyers, Florida. Let me finish off this post with rest of those photos. 

This is the view down by the river which is the waterfront of these 2 homes. You can see that the pier was destroyed in the hurricane and all that is left is the base support pylons.

I love this wonderful old fashioned porch. I really liked these houses because they were 1) beautifully vintage and 2) they were really down to earth and not opulent in any way. This would be a great place to sit with a book and read.

And in the garage Ford had built near his home, there were a few antique cars. I bet you can guess what company made them. 

This is Henry Ford's house. It was not built by Ford, but he bought this property when it went on sale so he could be next door to his friend (Edison). You can see our tour guide off to the right in this photo too. He did a great job.

There were also a few of Ford's cars in the museum they had on the property which was across the street from the homes.

I didn't take many photos in the museum so I can't share more of that.

The pool area was closer to the river, and it sustained damage during Hurricane Ian last fall. We couldn't go into the area. Edison built the pool for his children. 

 

Here's another view of Ford's home. I think the other house in this view, way down the end, was either private property or museum administration offices.  

And this is from me standing on Ford's front walk looking back to the Edison house. I'd love to be planting my gardens in January, but I have no plans to move to Florida.

Here's a few views from inside both of the homes.

You couldn't go into the homes, but for 2 very wealthy men, these homes were (in my opinion) really lovely. I actually thought (before I visited) that these homes were going to be large and over the top like so many people build nowadays, so their simplicity surprised me.

 

I think ibises are very interesting looking bird, and they make me think of ancient Egypt.

The roots of a couple of trees that came down in the hurricane.

An artist had put up 3 sculptures. One was of Mrs. Edison in the garden center (which- for shame) -I didn't photograph. There was also one of Edison and his banyan tree.

And one of Ford by his house.

I'm not sure these statues really added anything, except you could see what these people looked like.

Something was also being filmed in Ford's garage by his house. They started filming right after we walked through, but the language was in Spanish so I don't know what it was about.

And last but not least for my British and Commonwealth friends, there was a large tree planted in memory of the Queen last summer. You can see the top of it in the second photo.

This post is long enough. Hope you enjoyed the photo tour of Edison's and Ford's winter homes.

Enjoy your weekend. 

Friday Art

Hi everyone. Happy Friday and Happy St. Patrick's Day if you celebrate. 

The first piece I am sharing today is a page for Valerie's Anything Goes challenge at Art Journal Journey. As it also has a face I am linking up to Nicole's Friday Face Off, and because it's Friday I am linking up to Gillena's   Friday Lunch Break.

I was playing around with various shades of green when I made this page. By this time of year I am really missing all the green outside as well as all the other outside colors. (Thankfully the sky  is always giving us some kind of color show).  I tend to start using a lot of green in my art to make up for the lack of it elsewhere . 

I  found this image of the lady in a magazine, and I liked her. She looked like she was dressed up to go out, or maybe even to have her portrait painted, so I framed her on some textured background. Then with all the green I got to thinking about St. Patrick's Day, so I die cut some Celtic designs and also added a few shamrock wooden ephemera to my page. 

I also have a tag to share for Valerie's Birds challenge at Tag Tuesday.

I used a couple of colors of acrylic paint for my background, as well as some crinkly  deli wrap that I was previously using as scrap paper to paint small images on. I used a white paint pen to make the jagged lines at the top and bottom, and then I added some magazine images as well as some bits and pieces off my work table.

That's all for me in this post. Have a great start to your weekend everyone. 

 

Greyscale

 Hi everyone. It's Thursday, and time for Rain's Art and Dinner Date.

This week Rain's theme is greyscale.

Last week I met my walking friend and we walked around the 2 malls that are back to back in Newington (New Hampshire). It takes an hour to walk around them, and though usually not a very exciting walk, it works when there is snow or lots of mud on the ground. It also works when the tide is high at the beach. For most of the walk there are sidewalks, and usually, especially over at the bigger indoor mall, there is barely any traffic because much of the mall (like many indoor malls) is now empty.

I looked up and took this cloud photo which I then changed to greyscale. You might wonder why I was looking up and taking a photo, but there were a couple of bald eagles soaring overhead.

Next let me share the original photo, and since I was only using my phone, you can just make out one of the left hand side of the photo. In fact it looks more like a speck of dust. 

I think it makes a cool photo of clouds though.

I cropped this photo a couple of times so you can see it is actually one of the eagles. 

I wonder if this pair was the same pair or one of that pair's offspring that nests out on one of the small islands in Little Harbor that we've seen while boating. We have a decent size and rising  bald eagle   population here in New Hampshire, and although I don't see them on a regular basis, I do see them relatively frequently. (According to the NH Audubon  Society website we have 80 breeding pairs.)

And some photos tell totally different stories whether they're in greyscale or in color.

Here's the side view of my yard Monday morning in black and white. (With the snow we had before the big storm  Monday night and Tuesday.)

The black and white version is a cool picture, but it doesn't capture the color of the sunrise. It does make the morning feel colder than it actually was.

Here's the color version (not altered), as well as a couple of other  sunrise photos, below.

I also made another loaf of bread this past week. This one is called pain de mie, and it is another white bread.

I seem to be in a white bread baking mode lately. I'm working backwards as I started with sourdough artisan breads several years ago.  This bread was delicious and makes great sandwiches if you don't want something chewy.

I needed a covered pan to make this bread called a Pullman pan.

By covering the bread while baking you get a thin crust, as you can see on my loaf. I also found the backstory behind these pans interesting. They're called pullman pans because back in the day when train trips were popular, the chefs would bake their bread in these covered pans. The cover allowed the chefs to stack their rising loaves on top of each other simply by pulling the cover over the dough that was forming the loaf in the pan. This worked perfectly since train kitchens weren't exactly the roomiest of places.

That's it for me since this post is long enough. Have a great Thursday and for those of you who I only visit on Thursday,  have  rest of your week also.