Seasons and Seafood

Oooo, I just know the season of lobster rolls is coming to an end!  I LOVE LOBSTER.  On a roll, in a shell, in mac 'n cheese, as a potato skin topping, in chowder- you name it and I'll eat it. :)  Now I must brace myself to fall back on my love of shrimp.  With cocktail sauce.  The kind with TONS of horseradish sauce.  Ya know so you have that sinus reaction a few seconds after eating it.  Some folks can't get enough jalapenos, me I'll stick to horseradish sauce.  And pepto bismal tablets.  LOL!

I've seen the leaves changing already here in New England.  They are already much prettier than I had hoped given the drought this winter & summer.  I feel bad for folks on leaf peeping trips this year though.  The trees put on a much more glorious fashion show when they have had lots of water. 

I've been cleaning again- or still?- anyway, this are bits 'n pieces from my other projects.  The color combo makes me think of summer and of fall which seems very appropriate for a day like today.  Sunny, a little warm, and a crisp breeze to remind you of the changing season.  There are times when I'm sad for the change of the season, but then I think "would I enjoy them as much if they never changed?"

What do you like best about fall?  What do you like least? (I bet it is raking!)

Deets (kinda):
Stamp- Lori's Lil' Shrimp/Fred Mullet
Card Base- Kraft/Memory Box
Zigzag paper- White Bread (back side)/Basic Grey
Ink- Twinkling H2O's(applied directly to the stamp)

Happy New Year to all my friends celebrating Rosh Hashanah!  May you all have a sweet and wonderful New Year!

I Heart Seafood!

Happy Flag Day in the USA and it's Top Tip Tuesday Time!  We have some great new TTT Team members that we are debuting today!  If you want to skip to fun TTT stuff scroll down to 'til you see the ***.  If you'd like to see what inspired my creation, start here. :)

At the end of April I was starting to get that summertime bug.  We are fortunate to have family up in Maine and a summer seasonal property that we rent out that opens up there in May.  Luckily for me, I came across the most lovely Etsy shoppe Three Sisters Harvest and she had just the ticket to get me ready!  My package came in such sweet wrapping, my icky picture doesn't do it justice- Gigi tied each package so beautifully with shells for bows!!!

Each one of the packages had a HUGE (perfect for the beach IMHO) canvas bag with a lobster, but each one has a different color shell.  I kept one and sent the others to my DMIL and DSIL for us to all use when we get together for our family reunion up in ME this August.  I, of course, started using mine for a school bag as soon as I got it. LOL!  The best part- I convo'd Gigi on Saturday, she came up with this design (based off this bag she had made), made all of them, and I had them in my hot little hands by the following Saturday.  She's AMAZING!!!
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I used Gigi's bags as inspiration...

to create this card!

 Okay so it's a shrimp, not a full-fledged lobster, but how fun is this?!? :)

It's a Fred Mullet shrimp stamp that I "inked" with Twinkling H2O's.  It took a few tries before I had quite the consistency of H2O's that I was looking for, but this is such a fun technique to try!  The flourish stamp was meant to kinda mimic waves (I know, a bit of a stretch).  

So to celebrate our new DT members over at TTT we are hosting an Anything Goes Challenge!!!!!  You totally have to join in the fun!  You could win goodies from Robyns Fetish (they are offering our lucky winner 4 stamps of their choice) or from Stitchy Bear Stamps  (1 prize of a $10 voucher).  Come on over and show us whatcha got.  Pretty pleeeeeaaaaaassssseeeee! :)

Also, don't forget to join in the fun with my blog candy----Become a follower and leave a comment in order to win okay?!?!

A Day in Portland (Maine that is!)

We spent yesterday in Portland with our friends Jeff (the one who takes awesome pictures) and Erin (the one who makes awesome Olives for Dinner).  

photo taken from 2 Note

We met the most wonderful gal at 2 Note!  2 Note is a perfumery that can't be missed if you are in Portland!!!

We, of course, hit my favorite kitchen place LeRoux Kitchen.  It's the same place as I mention and was inspired by in this post.  I'm looking away from the camera as if I was saying no pictures here, but really it was just that I didn't know Jeff was taking a picture! :)

We ate at Erin's favorite vegetarian restaurant Green Elephant.  Jeff took a pic of another bracelet I made like this one, but I promise to show pics of what we ate for lunch later this week. :)  It was Yummy!!!

It was a wonderful day and we met some great independent store owners that really reinforced our appreciation of "Mom and Pop" shops.  Please support those folks wherever you are.  They are what America is all about!

Lighting the way

I'd love to say I didn't post this week because I had heard about Blogger "having a fit" and dumping posts, but really I was just being a little slacker this week. LOL!  I was kinda productive in other ways though...

I made these Father's Day cards (no worries, none of these are going to my DFIL. hee-hee!)  I used Papertrey Ink dies to cut the edged kraft circles and Papertrey Ink stamps for the lantern and sentiment.  I'm a little fuzzy on if the background stamping I did with chalk ink was from a Technique Tuesday stamp or Hero Arts.  I took my cling stamps out of their packaging and put them in CD cases.  As a result, I'm in a pickle when it comes to figuring out the manufacturers.  Yikes!

I'm pretty sure the paper is old BG paper, but I tossed out all my "garbage" before I stopped to look at the label!!!  The bakers twine is Jillybean and I, of course, used Copics and memento ink for all the stamping and coloring. 

I'm lighting the way with these cards here:
colourQ- Challenge 84 yellow, olive, navy, kraft, white
My Mum's Craft Shop- To Die For
The Spotted Chick- Kraft
Stamp Something- Anything Goes
The Shabby Nest- Frugal Friday

Hope the water will begin to recede for all the folks who have been suffering from the Mississippi floods.  My fingers are crossed and my prayers go out for all our farmers who may have to be flooded to protect Baton Rouge and New Orleans.

On a lighter note, may you all have a weekend of family, friends, and fun!

Autumn in the Air

 

Autumn is definitely in the air this weekend, but the Nor'easter has passed and the sun came out so we took some time to wander the hills of Maine with the ever-eager-for-a-walk Cadfael.  The leaves even put on their colorful frocks for us!

Keeping with the crisp autumn day theme... :)  I thought a cute pumpkin card was in order!  This is all made with bits 'n pieces.  The stamp is from ducks in a row, the paper from memory box, and I used my copics to quickly color it all.   Enjoy!

One Park, One Card, and a Lot of Traps

Here's a hint of the card below, but first a few more photos of Northeastern Maine! :)

This is one of the many BEAUTIFUL views at Acadia National Park.  I think we were pretty lucky to come when we did.  From the looks of the park it must be a zoo of tourists in the summer months.  There is an amazing infrastructure of carriage roads for horses and hikers, then other roads for bikers and yet more for cars.

The cool, but also bummer, was that the restrooms weren't open!  Since the restrooms were closed, we did get to see this deer when we tried one of the stops.  It was skittish, but still calm as the few of us who were in the park all snapped shots.

My camera battery died just after I go this shot!  We were able to get wicked close while this little one had a mid-afternoon snack.  It was really awesome.

Good news for Cad's fan club.  Acadia was much better than the day before guys, much better. :) There was some much to smell and investigate while we explored different parts of the park!  We found a beautiful pond just before we left, but of course my battery had died so I didn't get a shot to show.  It was so quiet and picturesque, I totally get why people like to come to Acadia.

Just two more shots before I get to the card.  There are lobster traps everywhere in the town we stayed.  It's very humbling to see some of the fishing towns.  You can tell that everyone's survival depends on good hauls during the season.  My DMIL's family has many farmers in it and I can appreciate where my meat and milk come from.  I really felt an overwhelming urge to hug a fisherman to say thank you for doing this work.

There really are traps and boats everywhere, in yards, by sheds, in driveways, in fields, EVERYWHERE!  I understand that the lobster season hasn't really started yet and that's why we got to see traps on land more than on sea.  They were all sorts of colors which was kinda neat to see, although it looks like this shot doesn't have some of the more colorful traps.

Of course after all the ocean views I would make a card with a lighthouse.  I really did try to make a "boy" card.  Clearly I wasn't very successful since there is a bow and some flowery background paper.  Oh well, I'll get out my little lobsta stamp and try again. :)

Easternmost point in the US

It's spring break for me this week.  Most folks on spring break travel somewhere warm and have drinks with little umbrellas in them.  Not us.  We drove ourselves 6 hours to northern Maine and it snowed on our drive!  Well, we've never been ones for doing what the cool kids do. :)

On our first full day of vaca we headed to Lubec.  Did you see those commercials this winter about the people that see the first sunrise on New Years Day in the US?  This is where they would be.

Actually, this is where many folks come I hear.  This is the West Quoddy Lighthouse.  Kinda funny huh.  West Quoddy is the most east.

It's weird how quiet it is here.  I live in the outskirts of the burbs when I am home.  I thought it was pretty quiet.  I have even lived on a rez in SD, but you quickly forget how quiet the world can be when there aren't a lot of people around.  Even the ocean is quiet right now.

This is the bridge from the US to Canada.  We remembered to bring our passports cause they have gotten pretty strict about that sorta thing since 911.  I remember when I was in college being able to just pop back and forth, but that is no more.  The thing is, we forgot something.

We forgot Cad's papers.  Ugh!  I even made sure he had all the shots and whatnot to be able to wander over with us!  I love the look on his face here.  He is simply saying "I was stuck in the car for hours.  There is no way you are leaving me behind so you can lolly-gag in Canada.  Let's get back in the car and get something to eat."  We ended up scrapping Canada.  We got to see what we wanted to see which was the easternmost point in the US where the first minutes happen in this country every day.  I know.  We're kinda dorks.  Nothin we can do about it, but live up to the moniker. :)

I hope to have a crafty something posted soon.  Maybe something inspired by this trip, or maybe another ABC book.  I'm going to be posting beautiful pictures from Acadia too!

Easter Monday

Happy, with just hours left, Easter Monday to all my Canadian friends!  I gotta say given the amount of sweets I enjoyed this weekend the converse of this sentiment true as well. LOL!  (Yup I'm watching Big Bang Theory so I sound like a geek).

We pulled another "Savannah" and ended up going to Maine to celebrate Easter.  Originally I was going to host, but my DMIL got a head cold and didn't want to spread it to us and my DSIL's family. (Hi Barb! Hope you are feeling better!).  As I was on my way to the market with DH when I checked my email and the fam up in Maine invited us up! 

YAHOO!  A chance to see even more family than we expected AND we got a quick 10 minute walk on the beach before we left town.  Shots of the beach are further down. :)

The nephs got a chance to play with "new" toys (they were worried that since the venue changed they wouldn't get to play with Auntie and Uncle's lego collection- at least we are loved for something. :) )

Many thanks go to our master chef Aunt Pat.  She is a genuis in the kitchen, especially when you consider there are many very unsual food allergies on my husbands side of the family.  The food is always THE BEST.  The pot in the center is her famous chocolate sauce.  When she asked if we wanted it for the ice cream the cries of yes erupted from all over the house!  We all love ice cream in this family, but it is nothing without this sauce. :)

New England has been socked with storms lately and we were curious to see how the beaches weather the storms.  WOW!  There are usually some rocks, but this was how rocky the beach was on Sunday.  The weather was stunning and you would have thought it was early June with the number folks walking the beach enjoying our very unseasonable 70+ weather.  This is the first time DH and I have worn shorts on Easter since we lived in Clemson.

DH was excited to find a big piece of driftwood that had washed on shore.  He was equally disappointed to have to leave the wood on the beach. :(

I leave with a parting nod to Easter and the actions I will be taking soon when we finally run out of candy.  Alas, another season of Cadbury Creme Eggs has passed.  Sigh.  I hope everyone had an equally fulfilling holiday weekend. 

***Hint the countdown is around 10 or less to a fun candy announcement. Stay tuned!***