Monday, November 30, 2015

November Photo Wrap Up

 Happy cyber-Monday everyone. Its the last day of the month already. Wow- this month did fly. Kind of like my long weekend. Not ready for work today either but what can you do?
So  I just have a few photos from this month that I never showed you. Kind of a nice way to wrap up the last 30 days.















November was a good month for me! No snow yet, a few days off, a new cubbie cabinet in my play space (which hopefully I will be finished in my cleaning project tonight or tomorrow since I am ready to start to new art), good times with my family and friends.
Hope yours was good for you too.
See you next month
-ha-ha!

Saturday, November 28, 2015

Already the End of the Weekend

The long weekend is flying right by. Way too fast.
Of course.
I can't believe it is already Saturday night.
This weekend has so far been about food, shopping, some cleaning and lots of laughs.
My husband's sister's husband is a chef so we had a delicious but way too much food dinner on Thanksgiving. 
Of course there would have been more stuffing but one of the dogs got into it. :)
I guess he wanted dinner too!


 And I didn't do any baking for Thanksgiving. It made it really low key. And very NICE. My niece Ally, seen here below, was playing budding pastry chef. Guess she takes after her dad the chef. But my daughter and I did make another cranberry vodka with a splash of orange turkey shaped jello. It was a lot better with the splash of orange. Here's the link to the turkey jello post earlier this week Holiday Weekend.
And even though we didn't go out until 9 AM on Friday, we did do some Black Friday shopping and got lots of good deals. My husband is hooked on Black Friday shopping. And he hates to shop. But a few years ago he discovered the big chain hardware stores have good manly deals. Like drills and tool boxes and that kind of stuff.
My daughter and I went out Wednesday evening to do some girly shopping since the holiday deals were already up. (And no one is shopping then either.)
I've always wanted to put a Christmas tree in my dining room kitchen area. But it is not a big space and most trees wouldn't fit. But I found this pencil tree (on a good sale too) Friday. 
I need to decorate it still but I put it together this morning.
This makes me smile.
I think tomorrow we are off to the Christmas tree farm to cut a real tree for the living room. 
And after shopping Friday my daughter and I went out and met a friend of mine who was up from North Carolina. You can see my friend's reflection behind me in the left corner taking this photo.
We chatted, had drinks and had more food. I am ready to get back to normal amount of  food again.
And I am shopped out now too!
And I am finally getting close to getting my studio finally purged, reorganized and picked back up. Today was rainy and made a good cleaning day.
I need to get it finished because cleaning it isn't as fun as it was when I started.
And I want to get back to some art play!
Its been a nice weekend so far though. Warmer weather, and maybe nothing too adventurous but fun holiday weekend activities.
Better than last year- Thanksgiving 2014!  We had this the day before the holiday and lost our electricity for over 48 hours.

Thank goodness we didn't get any snow this year.
That's all for me. Thanks for stopping by to visit.

Wednesday, November 25, 2015

Holiday Weekend

My long Thanksgiving weekend had begun, and I am very excited about it. The charity event  the club I advise at school   ran on Monday evening and  went off without any hitches, plus for the last 2 days I've had no voice with a good case of laryngitis.  I am glad for a down day at home to recoup and relax. Tomorrow we travel over to Maine to have our traditional turkey dinner with my husband's family.
Yum. I love Thanksgiving because for me it is a pretty low key holiday.
Last night I watched a show on PBS about the Pilgrims and the whole history of why we celebrate Thanksgiving here in the US.  Growing up in Massachusetts (where the Pilgrims landed and settled in 1620) and living  in various parts New England all my life, this history of the Pilgrims is sometimes a little idolized, but what I liked about this show was that it taught me a lot about the complete story of that settlement and those people. If you are interested it was the American Experience-the Pilgrims. I recommend the show.
Not sure what I am going to do today, but hopefully take a walk and squeeze in some more studio cleaning or even a tad bit of art time. I might bake something yummy to bring with us tomorrow. Or  maybe even go out and do a bit of Christmas shopping That's what my daughter wants me to do with her. 
It all sounds like fun.
Speaking of my daughter, she was inspired to make a alcohol and gelatin turkey for our dinner Thursday. She made a sample on  Sunday evening with cranberry flavored vodka, cranberry juice and unflavored gelatin.
Cranberries just go so well turkey, as many of you probably know.
It tasted pretty good. (We had to sample it before we served it to everyone on the holiday). She and I made another one for Thursday last night, and this time we added a bit of orange juice to it also.

Not sure if I'll be posting in the next few days, so I am going to wish you all a great rest to your week and of course Happy Thanksgiving (for those of you who celebrate).
See you soon.


Tuesday, November 24, 2015

Man of Number-Part 2

 Another man of numbers page today. I also showed you one last week. If you want to check it out, you can click here Man of Numbers , the first one
The photos didn't come out so great. Somehow I didn't get the page very straight and square. Sorry about that.
 The background is a Gelli print page. Then I added some ephemera, some doodles and some paper scraps. I also did a bit of stamping. And coloring.
And since this page is the color of fall, which is this month's theme at Art Journal Journey, I am linking this page up to it. Thanks to Susi for hosting this month.
This is most likely my last link for the month since with the busy Thanksgiving weekend I'm not sure whether I'll have time to make any more pieces.
Can you guess what this texture is?
A bee hive!
I figured it was safe to walk over now that its been cold and buzzing bugs are hibernating.
Thought it had a pretty cool texture!
Have a great day-and thanks for stopping by!

Monday, November 23, 2015

Another Week Begins

Another weekend has come and gone.  
Monday is here again. But this is one of the best weeks of the year. Thanksgiving week!
Two days of school, a big turkey dinner on Thursday, some family time and fun over this mini vacation!
Just got to get through today at school- its a very long day for me. Tonight the club I am one of the advisers for is running a charity event. It will be at least 9 pm when I get home. Thank goodness tomorrow is like Friday.
So here's a journal spread for me. I am linking to Art Journal Journey. The theme this month is the colors of fall, which I used here even though not in a really typical fall way. Thanks to Susi for hosting this month.
This page began with me collaging some Gelli printed papers on black. Then I used an owl stencil and yellow paint. Once she dried I used some various pens to doodle over her. Finally I added some embellishments and some blue and orange painted circles.
So last Friday morning when I left for school, the rain was moving out and it was just getting light. The sky was this incredible pink-purple color.
 And the pine needles in my driveway also had this incredible color. I didn't touch up any of the colors here at all.
Got to love nature's colors!
Guess that's all for me today. Thanks for stopping by!

Sunday, November 22, 2015

Getting a Little Holiday

My studio space is STILL a mess in my major cleaning project, but the other night when I decided I wasn't going to clean, I spent some time doodling and playing on some partially finished pages.
 I was feeling a little bit Christmasy with this one. Painting, doodling, stamping and adding a TH found relative card was the basis of this spread.
I got these stamps marked way down when my favorite local craft store (now out of business) was selling off inventory. I wanted to try them out which is how this page got started. 
Kind of sad not to have anything other than a big box store to go to now for craft supplies or checking out new items, but I guess life is moving on in so many ways. 
I did manage to get some other fun items marked way down during my last trip before the craft store closed-which was about a week before they closed for good. 
 My entire bill was less than the regular cost of all these Stencil  Girl stencils.  
 Most of my purchases were these gift bags which were wrapped closed with these ribbons. I think ribbon will find good uses in my projects.
 As will these assorted ephemera pieces.
 I ended up buying like 6 gift bags. 5 of those bags each contained one of these paper packs or journals. The bags were priced less than most of these journals sell for.
The other bag contained these 2 books. Along with other things like some stamps or some paint or texture paste.
I guess I played Santa for myself a little bit that day. 

So hope everyone's weekend is going well. I need to get myself moving here. Its a dark damp morning here in New Hampshire, but my studio cleaning is calling me. Even though sitting here and poking about on the computer is fun and relaxing...life is still moving on.
Enjoy what's left to weekend!