A Wild Long Weekend

What a great long weekend it was!  The weather could not have been more perfect - blue skies, no clouds, hot weather.

Lots of wildlife sightings:

I saw a hawk on my drive up to the cottage Saturday afternoon:

There were geese in front of our place when I arrived.

Can you see the goose?

Turns out there were more than one.

They came back later with the family.

"Hello world, here's a song that we're singing..."

Big excitement to see a snapping turtle on the road when I drove into town for groceries in the afternoon. Got out of my car to take photos and with the help of a local gentleman, made sure it crossed safely and was on its way to the river and not into someone's garage!

(sighting duly reported to the Toronto Zoo's Turtle Tally when I got back to my computer today).

Alas, I didn't see the moose that my friend Jane had seen earlier that morning but I will keep looking!

Friends hosted a margarita party on Saturday - you want to talk "wild life", look no further!

And just to put the icing on the cake, we were lucky enough to get just a peek of the solar eclipse yesterday, as the sun was setting:

But of course, once the sun dropped below that tree line five minutes later, the show was over.  Until the fireworks started later in the evening!

All in all, it was one great weekend to start the summer off just right!

A Summer Blogging Decision

Welcome to my 1,318th published blog post! 

Photo courtesy of todaymade.com

Wow, that seems like a lot, doesn't it? I started blogging in September of 2008.  As I got into the groove, my goal was to blog every day. If you look at the stats on the right hand sidebar of this screen under the heading "Blog Archive", you will see that I have been successful at doing so for the past 2 years and only 10 posts short of 365 in 2009. Some of those blog posts were scheduled in advance but that took preparation, especially if I was going to be away for more than just a weekend. It has been good discipline for me, to write every day.

But lately I've been wondering if it is really necessary. What would happen if I didn't blog every day? Not so much from the standpoint of "would anyone notice?", as I know my faithful readers are out there (and I love you all, thank you for showing up regularly to see what I've got to say!) but more along the lines of, "would the world come to an end if I missed a day here and there?" No. "Would I personally feel bad about missing a day?" I don't think so, not any more. "Can I cut myself some slack and allow myself to skip a day here and there?"  Yes. 

The more I use my physical journal every day to record and capture the thoughts and images in my head means that some days, it feels like too much to have to write a blog post as well.  Whatever that urge was to blog every single day seems to be occasionally absent nowadays. Not to mention that on certain days, usually the ones where I have been overstimulated on the computer all day at work and my eyes are crossed and blurry as a result, it feels more like a chore than a choice and that's not a good thing.

At the moment, my inner voice is telling me I need a rest. Sometimes, you need to take a break from doing something to see if it is something you want to continue doing. That's what a vacation is for, to spend time away from your regular routine and explore new directions and places.

So for the next little while, I'll be giving myself permission to take a little blogging vacation from time to time. For now, it will just be a day here and there, to see how that goes. Like this weekend, being the first long weekend of summer for us Canadians, I'm off to the cottage for the next 2 or 3 days to "open up", which involves a lot of heavy duty cleaning to air everything out and clean up the dust and dirt that have collected over the past several months since October when we closed it down for the year. Since we don't have access to the Internet up there and since I haven't had time to schedule any posts for the next day or two, there might be a gap in communications.  I think we can handle it, don't you?  Just didn't want anyone to worry if there isn't a new post each day.

It may be that when I go to Italy, I won't even take my computer (gasp!).  I'm not sure about that yet, I'm still pondering that choice, it seems rather extreme but also enticing to go off the grid for two whole weeks.  We'll see.

In the short term, I'll just see how it goes to let go, just a little bit, every once in a while.  But please stay tuned!

Aberfoyle Abstentions

Here are a few of the treasures that were available at the Aberfoyle antique show last weekend that I didn't come home with:

This exquisite little photo album:

The dealer actually had two of these and they were amazing but at $195 each, they were definitely out of my price range!

Any of this vintage clothing which, alas, just wouldn't have fit me (although I was strongly tempted by the black silk muff you can see hanging on the coat rack on the right hand side):

This rather frightening family portrait, which no doubt would have given me and the cats nightmares if I had hung it on my wall:

This vintage metal swing, only because I don't have a porch on which to place it (and yes, I would have had to have the doll to go with it!):

This picture of the Statue of Liberty which I quite liked but didn't think I needed:

This fascinating collection of drawers:

which must have come from an apothecary of some sort or, as my antiquing accomplice Colleen suggested, the set of a Harry Potter movie.  The drawers were labelled with names such as garlic, mandrake and hemlock! (click on photo to enlarge)

And these Star Trek: The Next Generation dolls, which I am still regretting not getting.  If only to use them as photo props, as my friend Kate McKinnon does.  Ah well, next time!

Aberfoyle Acquisitions

Most of what I bought at the Aberfoyle antique show on the weekend was made of paper.  Some old books, an assortment of postage stamps from around the world (they were selling 200 for $1, of course I had to get several packages), half of an autograph book (missing the back cover):

The back cover and some of the pages are missing but it's filled with beautifully written autographs such as this:

I got this lovely old recipe book for only $10. 

It is only partially filled and most of the recipes seems to be for cakes, although there is one for liniment and one for "good table beer" (the ingredients for which include "1 hogshead of water, 1 1/2 bushels of malt and 2 lbs of malt"!!) I wasn't sure how old the book was but there is a recipe from a newspaper dated 1903, so it must be at least that old.  I love the handwriting!

I bought 10 scrapbooks from someone's collection, half of which are small composition books and the other half are larger scrapbooks.  They are filled with newspaper articles from the 1950's to the 1990's on various topics.

From the same vendor, I bought a number of little bits and pieces, like these bank books and receipts.

Everything was beautifully packaged with a cardboard backing and plastic covering and labels identifying the contents.  So organized!

I also picked up 2 vintage photo albums, one empty celluloid type:

and in poor condition inside (but perfect for taking apart and making into a journal!)

and the other one decorated with ducks (don't you wonder why?):

and full of delightful photos such as these:

Doesn't this baby's face just make you laugh out loud?

All in all, a wonderful selection of ephemera was brought home by yours truly!

The Devil and Mary Ann*

One of the drawbacks of working a 9 to 5 job, at least for me, is having to go to bed by a reasonable time in order to be a reasonably functioning person on the job the next day.  Nevertheless, last night, I stayed up past my bedtime.  I could say the devil made me do it but in reality, I hold Mary Ann Moss responsible.

On Sunday, Miss Mary Ann posted this blog post in which she showed some pictures of a ledger book to which she was adding paint and decorative tape.  I was inspired to do the same with a ledger book I had bought back in January when I was in Port Townsend.  Just recently, my friend Laurie had asked me if I had done anything with that book and I'd had to admit that I hadn't.  Yet.

I didn't read MA's post until yesterday and then had to wait until I got home from the Journal Junkies meeting last night before I could make a start, which is why I ended up staying up late.  I was still somewhat hesitant to begin but Mary Ann had sent me an email saying "do it!" (much like that little devil that sits on your shoulder and whispers in your ear!) and I could no longer resist.

So I opened the book and - deep breath! - slowly began to add some tape. 

Then I got a little braver and started adding paint.  Mostly using my Adirondack dabbers and smooshing the paint around with a wet wipe.  (Yes, "smooshing" is a word that is very often used in the art world to describe this highly skilled technique.)

After that, I used my Sharpie paint markers and added some lines and dots and circles here and there.

I'm quite pleased with the final result on these pages:

especially the way the original ledger entries show through here and there.

As you can see, the colours are soft and mostly pastel.  Not that that is a bad thing but I think those are my go to colours when I am not feeling quite as brave as I could be.  I woke up this morning thinking, why didn't I use bolder colours?!  Next time.

So thank you, Mary Ann, for once again inspiring me to be brave and try something new.  I'm not sure what the next steps are for this ledger but at least and at last, I have begun.  And it felt devilishly good.

* with apologies to Catherine Cookson, who wrote a book with this title, I thought it was perfect for this blog post!

Life is a Comic Strip

Tonight is the May gathering of the Journal Junkies group at Bizzy B.  The theme for this month's journal pages was comics/cartoons/humour.  Here is my page:

Alas, my scanner isn't quite wide enough to get
the full word "strip" on the top right side.

I pasted down a number of comic strips as my background and covered them with gesso.  I drew boxes on a sheet of collage tissue paper that had been decorated with acrylic paint and filled in the theme for my page, "Life is a comic strip - Be your own super hero." I added colour with Derwent Inktense watersoluble ink pencils.  I found a picture of myself and turned it into a super hero style photo by drawing on a mask and some detailing with Sharpie markers.

After I took the above photo, I wrote a couple of quotes on the top and bottom of the page to finish it off, "Able to leap sleeping cats in a single bound" and "My cape is at the drycleaners."  :)

Happy Mother's Day 2012

My mother is celebrating Mother's Day this year out in Calgary with the family of one of my brothers, having spent the last two weeks in Alberta (she spent the first part of her trip with my other brother and his 3 boys).  It feels strange not to be spending today with her but we did speak on the phone earlier.

Mom, Dad and yours truly

Wishing my mom and all the other moms out there a wonderful day today!