T Stands for Cold, Snow and Food

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

    Last week was another quiet week for me. It's been a relatively quiet month, even though I've  had some outings with friends, mostly I've been home. My husband is still improving from his back issues. Not as quickly as he wants to be improving, and he's had a few bad days, but he is driving again. He just doesn't have a lot of longevity yet without needing to rest his back or even more so, one of his legs. 

     Like so many other people, we also had some very cold weather and some snow last week too.  So far from this past weekend's storm we've gotten about a foot of new snow/ 30.5 cm, and it's still snowing as of this Monday night. The 2 photos in this post are not from this storm but from one we had earlier last week.  In this first photo you can see how we sheltered the bees this winter, and although I haven't yet checked them since this really bitter cold set in, last week I was still seeing signs of life in the hive.  👍

    And since I don't want the hubby to go backwards in his back recuperation,  I've been doing the shoveling and bringing up the 40 pound/18 kg packages of bio-bricks (compacted sawdust bricks) that we burn in the woodstove. By bringing up I mean carrying the bio-brick packages in from the garage, through the basement, up the stairs and then over to the woodstove. Who needs to join a gym when you can get a good workout right at home? 😈😉 For all I comment about doing these things to my husband, I am getting some muscle building exercise doing these extra chores. 

   You can also see the ice that is under the snow. Good thing there are grippers ,which if you don't know, are things you slide on your boots or shoes that have  metal pieces in the bottom that help you from slipping on the ice.

   Last week with the cold I spend some extra time in kitchen. Besides my regular food preparation I made a couple of loaves of anadama bread. Anadama bread is a traditional New England bread made with the addition of cornmeal and molasses. 

     I also cleaned out the fridge and made a big pot of soup. I'm calling it clean out the fridge soup because I added some leftover sausage and chicken, and a bag of green beans (from my garden this past summer) that were in the freezer. After I took this photo I also decided to add some green peas.

    I need a drink for T day, so here's my photo and the story that does with it.

    My husband had to go get some paperwork at his doctor's office so we went for a little drive one day.  On this drive we passed a sandwich shop we like to go to, and even though we didn't stop I got an over-powering urge for a tuna melt or tuna sandwich or something with tuna. Nothing else would satisfy me. Not far from our house there is a little market that makes sandwiches besides selling some items, and so my husband stopped. I went in to see if they had tuna on the sandwich board. (Yes, I know I could have made my own sandwich, but by this time I was actually starting to have a bit of the hangries  because it was  now mid-afternoon. )

    Anyhow, guess what? A tuna melt was their special sandwich of the day.  That made me very happy.

   The guy who waited on me was very chatty, and he mentioned he grew up in a town down at the coast that attended the high school where I taught. I asked him and yes, he did go to the school where I worked. He didn't have me (but I did recognize his brother's name), so while I waited we had a chance to talk about "the good old days" a bit. Well his good old days when he was a student, but still fun to chat.

   Lisca also asked for the sour-dough discard brownie recipe (that I showed you last week), so here it is: Sour Dough Discard Brownies

1 cup/170 grams chocolate chips

1 cup/ 227 grams of unsalted butter

1.5 cups/300 grams granulated sugar

1 cup/220 grams firmly packed brown sugar

1 cup /125 grams all purpose flour

3/4 cup/64 grams unsweetened cocoa

2 teaspoons/6 grams salt

5 large eggs (250 grams)

1 tablespoon (13 grams) vanilla extract

1 cup sourdough discard at room temperature

and then whatever you'd like to add to the brownies like nuts or chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven to 350 dgeres F/ 180 degrees C. Use a 13x9 rectangular baking pan (not sure what that is in metric) and grease it or line it with parchment.

2. Melt the chocolate chips and butter. Stir smooth, Remove from heat and whisk in the sugars.

3. In a clean bowl, mix the flour, cocoa and salt. Set aside for a few minutes.

4. Once the melted mixture is a bit cool, add the eggs. (You don't want to add them when its hot and cook them.) Add the vanilla and then fold in the flour mixture. Add in any additions like nuts of chocolate chips and then spread the batter in your prepared baking pan. 

5. Bake for approximately 38 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Let them cool completely in the pan before removing. 

    That's all for me today. I have plans to go on another snowy owl hunt later this week; fingers crossed it isn't too brutally cold and that my friend Deb and I see one. 🤞I hope everyone has a great T day and week ahead also.

It's Sunday

   Hi everyone. Happy second half of the weekend to you. I hope your weekend has been warmer than mine started out. At 8 yesterday morning (when I was writing this post) with the wind chills it felt like -19 degrees F/ -28 degrees C. 😰 If you are also in this polar vortex I hope you're staying warm.  Later today we're predicted to get a lot of snow. If you happen to be in the path of this storm, I hope you also stay safe and warm. Wherever you are, I hope you are having a super weekend and not having this wintery weather so much of the US and Canada are getting or about to get.

   Today I'm joining my "What's Up?" challenge at Art Journal Journey. I'm also joining Gillena's Sunday Smiles and Nicole's Sunday in the Art Room.

   I'm not sure what I think about this page, but I took a risk and gave it a try. My original thought was about looking up at some great art pieces in a museum, like looking up the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. I expanded it to go beyond looking at art in one place and looking at art in any museum. I wanted  to include this woman; she is definitely interested in something up above her. I cut her out of  an old book. Some of the art on the walls is also cut from an old book page, and some of that art is stamped with old rubber stamps. 

   I drew in the floor and walls. I painted the posts and then glued in some yellow waxed thread. Originally I had a cleaned off a stencil on the page and the white paint from that actually shows up pretty well so you see the windows and wall details, which I thought definitely added to the museum feel. The page was colored with yellow and brown inks and some watered down yellow acrylic paint. You can also see I stamped some city names where you'd find a lot of major art (and that I had stamps for). I stamped in some travel definitions. I also added the quote stamped with white ink on black paper.  All that together finishes off this page. 

  I don't know if you'll like this page or not, but it is definitely a twist of the words  Sunday in the Art Room.😉

   Not to bore you with extra photos, but it was actually above freezing last Thursday. Before I went out and raked off the edge of the roof, I noticed water dripping off some icicles in my living room window. (I know, I need a life...ha ha.) Anyhow, I wanted to see if I could catch a water drop falling in a photo, and I did. 

  OK, enough for me. Have a super rest of your weekend and start to the new week. 

    

   

Friday Faces- And a Knitting Update

    Hi everyone. Happy Friday. Today I'm posting to link up to Nicole's Friday Face Off and Gillena's Friday Lunch Break.

   It's been another fairly quiet week for me. The hubby is still in recuperating mode with his back, but he's definitely improving- actually quite a lot. 😏  We've had some snow and some cold weather this past week too. And there's some really cold weather coming this weekend and then a lot more snow coming this weekend also.  Or so the weather folks say.  Is it February yet? 

  For my faces this week I have a couple of things to share. First here's the cover of a homemade journal that I found. For some reason I made it and put it away  in a drawer, and I recently rediscovered it while looking for something totally different. I shared this photo in my post yesterday.

    Here's a new journal page that I made in a different (but store bought) journal that I'll be linking  up to my "What's Up?" challenge at Art Journal Journey. It also has a face on it.

    The words are hard to read since I used black letters for them, but they say,"If...Only".

    I've also done a bit of knitting, mostly last weekend while I watched some football playoffs with my husband.

   It looks like there's a lot of solid black up near my needles, but actually there are various dark colors that just don't show up. If I lighten up the photo more you can just barely see that. I think when I get past this area and add more blue and white you'll be able to tell better. At least I hope so.

   With the brutal cold coming on Saturday (they say it will feel like -20 degrees F/ -29 degrees C) and then some predicted snow Sunday into Monday, I think there will be a lot of knitting getting done. ❤

  To wrap up this post, I was wondering if anyone (in the northern hemisphere) had some good views of this week's Northern Lights. I went out to look for them, and with my phone I could just make out some color. But I did get some fun night sky photos  so  I'll end this post with those.

 

At first, it was too cloudy for any sky phenomena. 

I don't have a very clear northern view, but you can just make out some faint pink on the left.

This (above) photo is just interesting because the  horizon looks almost like daylight, but you can see the stars on the top of it.

And then (below) a little later just the stars.

And finally, the view when I left the deck light on. You can make out just a tad bit of snow in the trees.

    Have a super Friday and start to your weekend. I hope it's not too cold or if you are in the south of the planet not too hot. And that you have some good weather too! 😉

   

This and That Art for Thursday

    Hi everyone. Happy Thursday to you. I hope you're having a nice week so far. It's been chilly at my house, and it's going to get even  chillier  before too long. 😨

 

    A couple of weeks ago I was going through a drawer and came across this journal I had made and never used. Now why was it just sitting there, tucked away? I guess at some point I wanted a journal for something and then never got to using up? It was a fun find, but there was no sense putting it back into the drawer only so it would be forgotten about again. There's no time like the present right? Especially when  the Andy Warhol Queen paper it was covered in was calling me so now I'm filling it up. ❤ 

   On the back of a page I added this tag that I made.  Or maybe it's more of a bookmark. I'm linking this up to Brenda's Love and Romance challenge at Tag Along (and ATCs).

   Shortly after I found this journal, I also found some scraps of paper that were either tag or bookmark sized already. Since it's not worth wasting them, I used this turquoise colored one and lightly inked the background with  a green ink pad. Then I added this postage scrap from 49 and Market. The big flower is also from that same company. Then I stamped  the little xo series in 3 of the postage boxes. I used a very very old peg stamp from a Valentine's set by PSX. The big X and O comes from another old clear set by Memory Box. I colored them in. I also took another peg stamp from the same Valentine's PSX set and stamped 3 little black hearts, which I then used as a frame around some little card confetti hearts.  (I think they are from Sprinkletz.) Finally I added a bit of funky yarn to the top and bottom, and stamped the LOVE word at the bottom. (It is another very old stamp and doesn't have a maker mark on it. It might have been from the same PSX peg set, but I just don't remember.) I finished by outlining the edges with a Sharpie.

    I also have a page for my "What's Up?" challenge at Art Journal Journey.  "What's Up?" with me is that I've been working in my newly found journal and have been making nice weather inspired pages. 😏 Anything to forget about the cold, ice and snow. Grin.

     Some of the  pages in this journal are watercolor paper, and then inserted in between them  are some large pieces of other types of paper. This page is some music printed paper. I decided to not only continue my spring/nice weather theme but to tie in the music also.

   I actually used a lot of stickers on this page. The flowers are another John Derian sticker, but I did enhance this one with some markers and pens. The guitar was a sticker outline that I added and then colored it in. The trumpet and sax were both fully colored stickers.  The hummingbird is a 49 and Market laser cut image, and the chickadee was on a tag that was connected to the new mug I bought and shared this past Monday on T Day. I fussy cut him out.  I also added a few little metallic musical notes stickers.

    The "Sit a Bit" quote on the page is stamped, and the flower's Latin scientific information were part of the big sticker that I cut out and added in a different spot. Finally I finished by adding some washi tape to the top and bottom. 

    

    It's supposed to be the warmest day of the week today, and I hope to get out and walk or least get a little  change of scenery. That's it for me. Thanks for stopping by my blog. 

Time for a New Challenge

    Hi everyone. It's Tuesday so it's time for a new challenge over at Try It On Tuesday.. Thank you everyone who joined our It's Cold Outside challenge. That's always a good way to start the new year, even though I know for many people it wasn't cold outside at all. 😏

     For our new challenge, you need to Add Some Text.  Here's my journal page.

    After I sent this page off to Try It on Tuesday to get it added to  our main post, I then decided to ramp up the romance a little bit. Here's my page with some hearts added. I think the colorful hearts finish off the page a bit more without changing it too much. 

   My journal page is covered  with some pages from a small and very old dictionary.  I left them a bit "rough" to create some texture. Then, once I decided what I was going to do with this page, I used a green ink pad and added a bit of color to the background  to emphasize the texture.

   The giant rose is a sticker from a John Derrian sticker collection book. I was thinking spring and a bit of Valentine's Day too since when I cleaned up my work space I took out a small bin of Valentine inspired supplies.  I die cut the lace along along the bottom using black paper. I added a couple of "fake" postage stamps (49 and Market) and used some postal rubber stamps to cancel them and add the postmark.  I also stamped this cute little frog, colored and fussy cut him. I was originally thinking spring and  about the spring peepers who start chirping, but then when I added the cupid and the quote (both stamped on acetate), I got thinking that maybe if someone kissed the frog he would turn into a prince. 😉

   Be sure to check out the other design team members blog posts. I think this one should be easy as most people add text to their cards or journal pages. I am also linking  my journal page up to my "What's Up?" challenge at Art Journal Journey.  My Art Journal Journey challenge runs through the end of the month (art journaling only please) but our Try It On Tuesday challenge runs for 2 weeks into very early February. 

   Thanks for stopping by my blog, and I hope to see your creation(s)  at our Try It On Tuesday text challenge.

T Stands for My New Mug, Birds, and Some Baking

    Hi everyone. Happy new week to you. And hello to everyone who visits for T Day over at  Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's blog .

   I've had a fairly quiet week this past week. Over this past weekend we had some light snow on both Saturday and also later on Sunday.

    Besides watching some football playoff games and knitting while I watched, I also spent some time on our snowy Saturday watching the birds. Actually I was "playing" with them a bit because the flock of starlings that last year was only 2 birds big is now up to 31 birds.

   I had just put some fresh bird food out, and although I am not trying to starve the starlings, when they swoop in it is hard for the other birds to eat. (And those starlings eat all the food; in fact they'd eat me out of bird food if I let them. But if you feed birds and deal with starlings you know that.) But the starlings won't swoop in if I stand in the doorway. They sit in the tree and chatter, and then one or two will fly to another tree and chatter. I can tell they are trying to  not only scope out the food situation but to see if I am still standing in the doorway.

 

    The other birds don't mind if I stand in the doorway, so they came in to eat. It's fun to watch them, although when Pete came over to see what I was looking at, he was disappointed it was only birds and no squirrels. 😏

    However later he got to see some squirrels, including this guy in the snow digging up bird seed.

   Birds brings me to my ticket for T this week. I have a new mug.  A few weeks back I went to the bird store to get a new seed tube. They always have fun bird "gifty things" too, especially right around the holidays.  When I went in they had some items including some bird mugs marked down 75%, and since I needed to spend $2  to get a 20% off coupon to work, I bought myself a new mug. (Which came out to be even less costly when the 20% got added to the already 75% off. What a deal-grin. Or maybe an eye roll if you're like my husband. 😉 )

    I even remembered to take a photo of it one afternoon when I was making myself a cup of tea. 

  I chose the nuthatch mug because they are such interesting little birds. It was either that or the cardinal,  and not that I don't like cardinals, but I also like the little less showy birds.  I think they need a little love also. 

   I've also done a bit of baking lately, as you can see in my T day photo. A couple of weeks ago I made some chocolate chip cookies because they're my husband's favorites, and with his back, I thought he'd appreciate something special.  (Of course I had to have a couple too.)

   This past Saturday, while it was snowing and in between feeding/watching the birds, I made a pan of sour-dough discard brownies. I have a sour dough starter that I've been feeding  for almost 10 years now, and every week or so I need to remove some of the starter and feed the rest of it. (I keep it refrigerated. If it's not refrigerated you need to feed it much more frequently.) I've made these brownies before and they are a bit cakie (rather than chewy) so I decided to make some peanut butter frosting to put on them. 

   I added peanuts to the brownies instead of walnuts or pecans, The peanuts tasted good, but I think I added a few too many.  Oh well still, they are yummy.

   That's it for me this week. I hope everyone has a super T day and week ahead.

     

   

Sunday Art-The Redo

    Hi everyone. I hope you're having a nice weekend. This past week wasn't the most exciting for me since my husband was still home with his bad back. He's SORT OF feeling better (fingers crossed it continues to improve), just still in a lot of pain to sit.  The poor guy. If he's testing my patience, this is really testing his own too. 

 

    What's also made it tough at least for me right now is that there is so much ice on the ground (even with the melt because now it's cold again and the melt has frozen) that unless I head down to the beach or to a shopping mall, I'm feeling a little bit cooped up. Well, this too shall pass, as it always does.  

    I mention this not to complain but because it fits in with my art for today.

    Today I am joining Nicole for her Sunday in the Art Room and Gillena for her Sunday Smiles. I am also joining  Art Journal Journey where my challenge is"What's Up?".

    Since I wasn't doing all that much last week, I had quite a bit of art time. However, my muse wasn't exactly hovering over my shoulder inspiring me much. I think my muse has gone someplace  without back issues and ice on the ground. 😏 (Grin)

    To motivate myself to make new art, I have gone back to and slightly revised  a couple of journal pages that I made before but that I didn't really love. The great news is that I now really like these pages. Let me share one. The old view is on the left and the new view is on the right.

    The old view wasn't terrible, but it felt a little disconnected. The red ticket and the heart, no, that didn't belong. And everything just felt like it was floating on the page. There wasn't any focus on the old photo.

    On my new version I did some covering up with  1 inch wide washi tape, and I added this worn looking frame. Then I moved around the gold key (luckily it pulled off OK) and added a new quote. I actually like how less of the clock shows and the family now looks more anchored to the page. I also really like the white stamped words on the black paper.  I do miss that you can't see as much of the filmstrip on the left of the original, but I don't think the filmstrip was really all that strong an addition on the original.

     Last week I shared my work desk, and today I thought I would share a  wall unit I keep my small individual rubber stamps in.  And that I just love also.

       

   I love little cubby units, and several years ago I saw this one in an antique store. The best part was that I saw it right before my birthday, and it made a great gift from my husband. The bottom row is a bit cut off,  but it doesn't go down any further than the half row you can see in the edge of the photo. The writing on the unit  was on it when I found it. It used to be part of  the campus post office at the University of New Hampshire.

   Yes I have A  LOT of rubber stamps. ( I love rubber stamps.) 😸

   What I love about the top (as well as the smaller unit that came from IKEA years ago) is it gives me space to put out some of the little tchotchkes  that I've collected over the years. Some of them were gifts; some were even gifted to me  when I was a child. Some are little things I picked up on trips. Also, when I was a teenager my grandmother went to South Africa for several months. My uncle and his family were living there at the time (and I was so jealous I couldn't go with my grandmother). My grandmother brought back lots of African art and carved wooden animals, and you can see a few of those which were either given to me or that I collected from my parent's home when it was cleaned out.

    I had my post written and then I also noticed that Nicole was showing her African art. I also have a few pieces of African art, as I mentioned above. Here's some close ups of what I have; all it  came back in my Nana's suitcases.

  My parents received 2 masks from her. I don't know where the other one went to, but I took this one when we cleaned out my parent's house. I hang this face on the door into my art space (which is just the spare bedroom) since it obviously doesn't fit on  the top of my cubbies.

    My parents also received these 2 wooden giraffes. Although the mask was something it took me years to appreciate, I always loved these giraffes. I have one downstairs on my fireplace mantel, and one here with my tchotchkes. (And you can see a few of my other little knickknacks better too, but I was really just trying to get close up photos of  the giraffe and the water buffalo in this photo.)

   I'd apologize for the shadow in the photo, but I think the shadow looks interesting.  And here's 3 other items my Nana brought home to me on that trip.  

   I love having a personal space where I can put these items because they all hold memories and make me smile.

   That's all for me today. Wishing you a great rest of your weekend and start to the new week.

  

 

I've Been Knitting and Other Random Things

    Hi everyone. Happy Friday. I'm having a fairly quiet week,  but we've had some warmer temperatures (well winter warm,) so that has been a great break after all the cold we had so far this winter and that has now returned as of today. 

    Today I am joining Nicole for her Friday Face Off and I'm also joining Gillena for her Friday Face Off. Today I have some random photos to share, nothing too exciting since my week hasn't been wildly exciting either.

   Here's my face for Face Off. It's not the clearest photo. But you can see part of a hat I knitted, at least the part not covered by my hood.

   I've been back knitting my Icelandic sweater I started 2 winters ago. The first winter I managed to get through the 2 sleeves since I didn't start the sweater until February, and then by this fall I managed to get the plain part of the body done. Now I'm working on the  yoke, which I was hoping to finish by the new year, but since that hasn't happened, I hope to get it done soon. Icelandic yarn is pretty heavy so if I don't get it done soon, it will be sitting through the hot weather until next winter. 

   I counted wrong when reading the pattern to start to yoke, and by the time I realized it I would have had to rip out several rows. Nope, I didn't want to do that so I've been creating my own design as I go. But I have been following the pattern to know when to decrease stitches. I love creating my own pattern though and knitting with the multiple colors too.

   Since we had some warmer days this week, I took the dogs down to the beach one afternoon when it was low tide. I didn't get to walk as long as I wanted to because my husband wanted me to drop him off at his office so he could get his work laptop and bring it home, but I did manage to get a nice hour of fresh air. The beach was great that day because even though there was no sun, there was also no wind. 

    Miss Maddie enjoyed the walk but not as much as Mr. Pete did. Maddie (being blind) needs to stay on a leash, but Pete is great off leash and doesn't bother other people. Since the beach wasn't  crowded, he got to do a bit of running.

   That's all for me. Have a great rest of your Friday and start to your weekend.