Saturday Afternoon Movie & a Trip Down the Past

  Since Sunday is Groundhog Day I thought I would share the movie:
             
                                       Groundhog Day

   A fun movie with Bill Murray where he keeps waking up to the same day.
I was bored with this movie-but it was memorable because it was filmed in 1993 at Woodstock, Illinois's town square-just down the road from where we lived. So of course all of the locals were excited about the movie crew coming to town.
  I remembered this was fun to see them change up some of the stores on the square for the movie.
     Woodstock square is still unique with it's brick paved road around the square of shops and business's, and at the time we lived there a very old large post office. In the center of the square is a grassy area with a large gazebo type structure that would hold ice cream socials and music in the warmer months. The town would also close off the square to traffic and hold huge craft and art shows-I really enjoyed those when we lived in that area-before 2003

Found online  A cynical TV weatherman finds himself reliving the same day over and over again when he goes on location to the small town of Punxsutawney to film a report about their annual Groundhog Day. His predicament drives him to distraction, until he sees a way of turning the situation to his advantage.

Release date: February 12, 1993 (USA)

Director: Harold Ramis

Featured song: I Got You Babe

Story by: Danny Rubin

Screenplay: Harold Ramis, Danny Rubin

This movie got good reviews

I looked up some photos of the square in Woodstock Illinois

An article on the town for the movie click here

This was the town's-and hub's favorite bakery-everything from scratch-doing this search I discovered the new owners closed it-that's sad They were world famous for their huge cinnamon rolls. an article here of the history of the bakery

Happy Saturday-my second on the 2nd post is previous to this one

Second on the 2nd-a Bit Early-Butterflies on Lavender & Cheesecake Made

  I saw that Valerie posted early, so I decided to as well-Sunday is super bowl day and I will be rooting for the Kansas City Chiefs. Very fun as I haven't watched a super bowl game now in several years.

   Also on February 2nd is Groundhog day where we will see if the groundhog brings us more winter or not.

  Second on the 2nd is hosted by our Bleubeard and Elizabeth and we share a previously posted blog post-you are most welcome to join us.

  I found lovely photos in May 2012 of beautiful butterflies on my lavender plants. I am hoping to attract butterflies here at our lake house too.
  Click here to see the full post those daisy like flowers are wild chamomile-I dried the flower tops for teas, and I also dry the lavender flowers with stems as well.



back in 2014 I mentioned Ground Hog Day and the super bowl here  In that post I was the only one in the house watching the game as Hubs does not watch sports-so he is the football widower in our house haha and it is still the same just me rooting for my team. 
     I am thinking of having another shrimp boil though on Sunday.

  I made a keto cheesecake this morning-I am happy with the results. for the sugar I used Lakanto baking sugar, for the crust I made nut crust with cashews-hubs favorite nuts, and for the topping I used a can of no sugar pie filling.

   We are going to spoiled with warm temperatures on Sunday and Monday-around 64 degrees f  Then it drops back down to the 30s and 20s f again.

Enjoy your weekend everyone!!

Last of the Handmade Soaps & a Journal Page-Just for Fun

Monday evening I decided to finish up the soap making. When I make soaps now I make a bunch for myself and to share with my friend and her husband. She then shares some with her Mother in law. Her husband is a big fisherman too so I have a mold that I bought for my husband and him as well.

  I love these molds. I also am making some bars with this other mold I really like. Over the years I have made the motif in a pretty bronze color too.

  I also had the urge to add to my mixed media journal-just for fun.

    While straightening things up and digging out my soap supplies I ran into the box of craft goodies that our Mia had sent me last year.  She sent it out about the same time we started packing for the lake house-so I have not gotten to use anything yet.
     She sent me several pieces of fun fabrics. I chose this piece because it made me smile-she sent me a pretty large cut off piece so I have more-perhaps a pillow cover in the future.
     I wanted this page to be simple-so I added those arrow wasabi tape pieces-which I then used a crayola twistable crayon to add a little color-which picked up texture from the fabric-nice, and I went through my tea bags and chose one that had allot of reds in the tea bag from the herbs-and I cut two pieces to cover a couple of windows-they show through the tea bags.

Note: photos will enlarge just click on them

Below the page is dry

  I am off to clean up my soap making project and then watch the St Louis Blues hockey game tonight-I have missed seeing the games as last week they were hosting the Allstar NHL hockey game

T Stands for Tuesday & My Last Week Catch Up

Happy T Everyone-our last Tuesday of January 2020-can you believe it??

  January for me usually feels so long and I can't wait to get to February but this year not so bad. We had lots of up and down weather-ice-snow-and spring like weather. We got to see the eagles at least every week and this past week every day. We had insulation blown into our attic-there was none up there at all, I started mixed media journaling with new ideas for me-it was a good month this year.

  You are most welcome to join us for T with our hostess Bleubeard and Elizabeth. Only requirement is to share a drink related photo.

  Late last week Tuesday my computer monitor died, so if I missed visiting anyone at T last week that is the reason I didn't get to you. We had bad weather on Friday so the new monitor didn't arrive til Saturday Actually I got Larry's monitor and he got the new one-a curved one and much larger as his vision is not real good-It looks like a miniature tv lol. He has been watching allot of science and informative videos so this will be perfect for him.

  Last week I actually accomplished allot. I had already decided to move my 30" loom into the room off the kitchen. It is where my computer and oak desk are, and lots of shelving and vintage cabinets on the one wall. I am leaving room at the back of this room open so a blow up mattress will fit. We do get a couple of out of state visitors during the year.
   So I decided to move my spinning wheels, and a few other weaving and spinning items and set up around my loom. This gave me much needed room in my over stuffed craft room. (please excuse the dust-I am getting to that this week)

  My warping board-that one to the right of the loom with all the pegs will be hung up on the back wall. This is how I set up the warp-that yarn that goes on to the loom and gets threaded etc.
   This project has been half threaded on this loom for years-I have a mind block against this project for some reason. If this was not expensive organic cotton I would have taken this all out and be done with it-I will get this threaded by end of February-my goal for this coming month. The weaving part is fun.

When I was shopping at a huge flea market with a neighbor friend years ago-I fell in love with this cross stitch kit. I don't cross stitch but my friend does everything needlework-so she said she would stitch this for me. I love it so much and found a wooden frame for it.  I picked up the handmade pottery sheep at a garage sale too Now I can view it while weaving.

I brought over my stuffed animals so I can enjoy them more. The baby bison was a gift I picked up at Yellowstone Park for supporting their non profit Yellowstone Forever. Peggy had told me about it, and the gift can only be picked up at the park. The cow was a Valentine gift years and years ago from Hubs-it had a balloon for a long time. and my sheeps, and a few other little stuffed animals

I brought over this mini loom too-so I could free my desk space.

These Harley pigs and vintage chair always sat in a corner in the bathroom at the woods house-I couldn't leave them behind-found a spot here
  and in the back corner is my large frame for hand quilting

Over the weekend, now that I could straighten up my room again after the insulation was finished (I had to clear all the deep steps so they could get into the attic) I was able to get to my soap making supplies. 
  So I made soap over the weekend for me and a friend-I have one more batch to make today (Monday)

I now have space behind my desk and sewing area-that was full of spinning items. and I removed a small vintage trunk that sat on top of the green button cabinet-so this room feels so much better now

Those are old flannel sheets on top of the leather filled trunk that we used for moving things. I am going to make strips out of those and make one of those toothbrush rugs-or perhaps seat mats.

My desk now all set up for journaling I have ordered the things I need to make modeling paste-so I am excited to try that next.

Last week when I went through my bags of spinning fibers and organized them better when I put them back in the closet on those deep steps-I dug out some roving to finish spinning. The blue I had bought on ebay from a seller in Alaska-it is very soft, but it is a strange fiber to me-very elastic as it springs back to thicker yarn after spinning it. What I had spun before I did on my ashford spinning wheel and is very thick like a rug yarn. I am working it up on the drop spindle now.
   the other yarn is very soft and I am finally spinning it finer too I don't think I am improving my spinning until I see the bags of my very first attempts-those I may weave into mats and then felt them down a bit.

    Being without my computer for almost 5 days I can see I spend too much time on it. way too much time on facebook-I read allot of author and art groups there. so I am going to limit myself on facebook especially.  Too much politics over there right now too.

  During the week I brought out a small teapot I haven't used for some time. It has a little strainer that fits inside nicely-easy to clean. So I enjoyed allot of cups of teas last week. I am also working on using up the different loose teas I have had on hand for a very long time.

   and another little handmade pottery cup

This is a nice tea-only dried fruits

Just a few more photos-some of my soaps-lavender bars and calendula and ground oats in shea butter glycerin soap base

After these bars I also made matcha green tea soaps, rose soaps, and next up soaps in fishing motif molds.

Eagles were very active last week-we saw them every day including their youngster from last year

This move has been even more special to have a lake house with eagle neighbors.

Happy T Day everyone!

Tuesday Watching the Eagles

  It was a very cold day today. Very low teens all morning and then it did warm up a bit to 30 degrees f but still very windy.
   While I was drinking a cup of hot tea early this morning while sitting at the kitchen table I heard the eagle singing. Wow the eagle must be close.

   So I looked out the wall of windows facing the lake and there he was-sitting close by at the neighbor's to the right of our dock-this is the direction of the sunrises.

This was very fun since he was sitting lower and so close. I didn't see him take off.  Looked up at that tree across the road and the pair were sitting together-which they don't always do-this was a bit blurry-sorry (the photo below)

 A little bit after I took this photo I finally got to see one of them fly off-they just drop out of the tree and then fly-he headed to the lake and flew around there for awhile. Seagulls were in the area flying around too-they must not have been hungry.

They were very vocal today as well. The male came back and then he landed up higher in this tree. When I went back out around 2 in the afternoon to get the mail out of the mailbox-Wow Three eagles were flying around overhead for a bit and then went into the woods in the middle of this circle road.  Last summer we saw a young eagle so I am guessing the family was out and about today.

Very fun-I am easily entertained haha

T Stands for Tuesday

 Good morning everyone, brrrr we have had frigid temperatures here in the Ozarks for several days now. Today (Monday) we were 7 degrees f early morning.

   Sunday I made us a pot of clam chowder turned out delicious-I love soups and stews in the colder months. and while working on our taxes-mostly sorting through everything first, shredding what is not needed any more-I watched the two football games to determine who would be in the super bowl.
  The Kansas City Chiefs have been so much fun to watch this year-they have an awesome quarterback and a gifted coach. It's been 50 years since the team's last super bowl appearance. So Congrats to them.
   The Green Bay Packers game was the opposite- they didn't show up to play a championship game-they were so bad I turned them off and watched a new Hallmark mystery movie instead haha.
   I think this will be a good pairing for the super bowl match up. I haven't watched a super bowl game in several years now so looking forward to this year's game.

  Cold weather brings homemade chocolate to mind, which is my drink share for Elizabeth's T for Tuesday  These mugs were a garage sale find and they are handmade and perfect for hot chocolate. I used milk, Hersheys Special Dark chocolate, Splenda (for the sweetener) and a splash of vanilla extract.

  I don't have any art to share today-although if you missed it-last week I posted a few new journal pages.

  This was our good morning view at the lake Monday morning

  It is a bit too cold to step outside so this was taken through the window.

Happy T Day wishes everyone.

A Football Movie

 Happy Saturday! Since this is a big football weekend I thought I would share a very funny football movie.
   I laugh every time I see it-love the two main characters and well it's just a fun movie.

The Replacements

The pros were on strike so they put together this team

Information about the movie here     and  The movie was loosely based on the 1987 NFL strike, specifically the Washington Redskins, who won all three replacement games without any of their regular players and went on to win Super Bowl XXII at the end of the season.






May the best teams win this Sunday

A Cold Windy and Wet Friday-and Another Journal Page

 It's another wintry mix here on the lake today. This time it started out with snow-then ice then we are to warm up a bit and get rain. It is quite windy out there too. I didn't think we had ice yet so I grabbed the mail to go out in the mail box and good thing I always grab the railing as I slid right down-lol So nope came back in the house as I would never be able to walk up that hill to the mailbox.

  I took a couple of photos just now

  It's still pretty to me looking at our view of the lake.  I need to bring in that ash tray as no one we know smokes any more.

  January in Missouri is Eagle Days. Allot of the conservation areas hold events within the state. I thought perhaps we would see more eagle here but still the same family. and many times one of them flies right by my husband's work room window and then flies up to the top of that tree I show photos of. He says it happens so fast he barely has time to react and watch. All wings mostly. That would be cool to see.

   So the eagles inspired my latest journal page. There were a few nice photos from a contest in the weekly Wednesday newspaper so I cut out my favorite. I think this one won first place too.
    The background papers are from recyclables-the dark green was from an envelope, and the polka dots was from junk mail. The other cut outs were from Christmas cards, a cancelled stamp from when they were .39 cents. and I do like stamping on a seperate piece of paper now-this is from the green envelope. and the little bit of turquoise was cut from a foil coffee bean bag.

I almost did not add that top greenery to the left-I tried a couple different pieces I had cut out and settled on this one. That area I thought was a bit too blank without adding a little something more.
  Now that I am looking at the photos-I could have put the green envelope on both sides of the page and not the same width. I am still pleased with the results though  Another thought was to turn the bottom greenery downward so both were not facing up-but this piece didn't look good that way.

I am enjoying these collages in my spiral junk journal-gives me small projects for crafting. Keeps my mind active-and that's a good thing.

Happy Friday and coming weekend everyone.

     I will be watching football on Sunday as I have a favorite team in each game this year-Green Bay Packers and the Kansas City Chiefs.  Will you be watching the games??  I am still really enjoying watching the St Louis Blues hockey games. The last one was so exciting even though they lost in overtime.

A New Journal Page Something New

  Good morning everyone,
    I thought I would share my latest journal page. This one I was trying something new again. I will be linking up with Art Journal Journey with Jo's theme Something New

  After watching the mixed media video (I shared the link a couple posts back) about using gesso in different ways to create texture I had to try. The artist had suggested using a thick gesso but the one I had worked well for this technique.
   Another way to re use your tea bags. After your tea bag has dried from using, add the dried tea to your gesso and stir-and apply to your page. She was repurposing thin cardboard from packaging for her piece. Instead of glueing the two pages together as I have been doing in this journal I glued a third page.
   I am so happy with the results. I chose a paint that I had in my stash-see photo-and then added wintry photos from magazines and christmas cards.

All photos will enlarge just click on them. I was inspired by our wintry weekend-ice and snow for a few days.

After the paint dried and I did add a coat of liquitex over the surface, I still had a difficult time getting things to glue down. I ended up putting heavy books on this page and let sit overnite-it flattened out the page well and things are now glued down. The quote is a little loose around the edges but I am pleased with the results.

New to me was this texture technique, and using this paint. I have had this paint in my stash for a few years now-I had thought of using it on fabrics but worked perfect for this journal page

Thanks for visiting.

T Stands for Tuesday

  Good Morning Everyone,
Another Tuesday is coming up-the holidays have passed us by, a bit of winter and almost mid January already-Wow.
   T on Tuesdays is where we share a blog post with a photo of our drink reference. You are welcome to join us with our hostess Bleubeard and Elizabeth.
   If it was not for this group I would have no one to blog with-sadly-since all my original blogging friends are no longer blogging but prefer Facebook instead which I find sad. The plus side is I am enjoying blogging again and sharing my art and learning new things with a wonderful group of new blogging friends. I really appreciate you all very much.

  Over the weekend we were very cold-allot of flooding in Missouri-we had so much rain that they needed to open up the dams which causes all the rivers downstream to flood. It was quite the mess in some areas-and near our woods home-although our woods home would never flood thankful for that.
  We then got a good layer of ice, snow, and now the warm up begins-we will be in the mid 50's f Tuesday and Wednesday.
   A few days before the weather event I wired up two suet feeders-after two days we had some birds-perfect for the wintry weather-this morning the big one is empty so will refill it today. We have allot of small grey squirrels-I needed to really wire this up well so they could not open it up or run off with it-the racoons will do that too.

We had allot of this bird below-not sure what they are

 If you missed my last post, I grabbed some kids crayola watercolor paints to play with and made a journal page I am pleased with this one.  The moose was cut from my Yellowstone Forever magazine and this was a painting. the cut out trees were cut from a coffee whole bean bag, my trout stamp, and thanks to I think it was Deb that suggested printing off the words on a seperate paper-I loved that tip



  This is my first ever attempt at using paint in art-except for when I play with dyes on fabrics-much to learn as you can see. But the process of making this page was fun-and new to me.

  I went on Pinterest for mixed media ideas. I found a really good one with how to make 20 textures with gesso or modeling paste-these suggestions really opened up more ideas and fun for me. here is a link  You are probably familiar with these but it was all new to me as I have never worked with gesso or modeling paste before.  I do have a question-do any of you make your own modeling paste or thick gesso? if so does it mold or go bad fast? thanks

   This was a big football weekend to help decide who will make it to the super bowl. I have not been watching much football again this year-but when I saw that my favorite team since '67 The Green Bay Packers were in one game, and Missouri's team Kansas City Chiefs were in another game I had to watch. the KC game was wild and fun and I love their new quarterback and I have always liked their coach Andy Reid-he has accomplished allot in his career except he needs a super bowl win. The Packer's game was rather boring in comparison but they both made it to the next round. If they both win I will see them both in the Super Bowl that would be fun.

  I decided to move my loom to the room off the kitchen and where my computer desk is, and on one long wall bookshelves and vintage storage cabinets and dressers. I have it facing looking through those glass doors into the kitchen. This room has a light on the ceiling-the living room has no lights at all. This move frees up space in the living room-we are going for that room not to be cluttered. This will now give us some space next to the woodstove for oue mountain man and Native American things.

This room with my loom will be full with trunks and a few crocks as well that I kept too, we had a huge huge collection of crocks and I love them all-but no space here for the big ones. Behind this area-will eventually be cleared away so room for a blow up mattress for any out of state guests that should visit.

Don't look at the dust-that will be my task this week-cleaning and dusting and getting more things in order.

I emptied all of these boxes and more. I found places for some things, and other things to sell either online or take back to the woods house to sell.

My gnome collection-the photo shows them dusty-so I need to wipe these down with a damp rag. These will eventually go into a glass case These are sculptures and are all signed by the artist Tom Clark and each one has a coin. I believe these were made in the '80s
    I also have gnome plates that my Mom had gotten me-to hang on the walls-I will finally hang those too.

and I did find the perfect spot for my Yellowstone books-I had not filled these little shelves yet that are on a cabinet for the television in the living room-Perfect and I can see them when sitting on the couch
   I picked up the handmade pottery piece to the left when I was at Yellowstone in 2017

and I also picked up this pottery piece too back then at the Grizzly and Wolf center-it sits next to the tv and this is a print from a young cub.

I received a lovely New Year's card from Erika-and I love all the stamping-thank you so much

For my drink reference today I made myself something new.  Lakanto is my new favorite brand for keto sugars. No after taste and have not gotten any stomach issues from this brand, the sweeteners bake up well too. I have found the best prices on their online site-and I wait for sales-they had a really big sale around the holidays so I stocked up for baking this year.

This beverage is pretty good for something different You will see in the back the timer-it is for the sweet potato pie that is baking.

I have never made one before-just came out of the oven. Looks really good. I made a pecan nut crust-the edges of the nut crust always seem to burn a bit.

Yesterday I tried a totally new pumpkin pie recipe (Larry prefers sweet potato pie over pumpkin pie) that divided the eggs and whipped the whites so the pie came out very light, it also used molasses and lots of spices-came out pretty good too.

Happy T everyone, and Happy new week.