My Vacation to Michigan to See Andrea!

.

(If you don't know Andrea, you may want to pass the post up...but if you do and are curious about where she lives now, check it out!)

Just back from a week at Andrea's new home... somewhere in Michigan!... ok, where the purple pin is:

Thankfully, the weather was perfect and only required a light jacket.  Andrea was bummed because she wanted me to see the snow she has been living with for the last five months!  I wasn't bummed, I've seen snow and I didn't take a good coat for cold!

Pictures...in the order I took them:

Their back yard!  AMAZING view of Lake Superior

The lighthouse that is  2 miles away at the far away point in the above picture:

Going down closer to the water

 Back of the house

About 2 miles away from the house...no walking to these falls, just drive :-)

Tiny movie of the falls, click to start

Living room...birds...dog (Autumn Rose)

To the left, looking out the window from the livingroom (faces the lake)

To the right from the same standing point

(Sorry, I should have Photoshopped some of these but...you get the idea)

Then there was site seeing on the first few days...day one, I saw FOUR PEOPLE! ... ALL DAY LONG!!!  THERE ARE NO PEOPLE THERE!


One of the highlights of the tour....for Andrea anyway, she insisted I take this picture:

The actual bar:

More Lake shore from another place

Another falls, taken from the car.

A lake that was still iced over:

The nearest store and gas pump ($4.40 a gallon)

Arbutus, the owner:

The shelves, if she doesn't have something she'll go to her home upstairs and get it off her own shelves...just charge less because it is used... :-)

The Refrigerator:  LOVE!  WANT!

They have tons of churches (ok, I saw about 15), all about this size... if you click on the picture you will see that the sign says the church is "Closed for the Season":

We had company over one night, for supper and playing cards, the bird counter from New York...there to count all the birds that migrate through the area.  Seriously, he stands on top of a mountain, for 8 hours a day, counting every bird that flies by...extremely interesting guy... when he leaves here he then goes to Georgia (RUSSIA) to do the same thing there!  Can you believe it?  He goes to the top of the mountain, regardless of the weather and just counts birds...alone, all day!!!  You can see his report and blog here: http://keweenawraptorsurvey.org/.  We met him when we went up there to look for eagles (saw about 5 but they were too high to get a good picture) I wish now I had taken a picture of HIM!
He was purdy! :-)...and about 30 :-(


Anyway... this was dessert!  DELICIOUS!  And as you can tell, beautiful!  Andrea is her happiest when cooking...and she did A LOT of cooking while I was there.  MISS IT ALREADY!  I'm back to cheese and crackers here :-(

1000 foot long ship passing by the house. (about 5 miles away) ... Taken from inside the house.

 Sunset!

 The sun, the moon, and Venus (According to Jim...I wouldn't have known)

 Supper time.... 6 deer came by every night for supper, no bucks though

Birds, lots of birds....

 There is a crow on the far off tree...you can't see it here

so I zoomed in....

Autumn Rose

The witch's circle in the back yard!  I don't think Jim appreciated me calling it that but it reminded me of the Betty White scene in "The Proposal"!

The room where the four cats live.... She was only able to bring four of the 13 or 14? with her so she left half of her heart here in Georgia :-(

The garage...you have to park up there when there is snow because you can't drive down to the house. It is almost as big as the house!  I was standing by the house when I took this so it is a little hike and climb to get to the car during the snow season.

The young Andrea!

Local post office

The biggest town we went to, about 30 miles away ... Houghton, where Michigan Tech, pizza and WalMart are!!!

A cell tower, Andrea REALLY wanted to climb up

Tiny video of the waves the last day I was there...it was calm most of the time but supposedly these are "3-4 feet tall ...  you can't tell because of the angle" according to Andrea... but you can hear how hard the wind was blowing! 

My view most of the week...LOTS AND LOTS OF TREES!   I only saw TWO TRAFFIC LIGHTS the whole week... and we traveled around for hours and hours, all over the peninsula!  Yes, Andrea wanted me to sit in the front seat so I could see better but you have to wear a seat belt up there!...I'd rather sit in the back.

Some of the houses...


The local chapel of the (5 miles away) a Catholic Monastery of the Byzantine Rite...the place where 5 Monk's live, "The Society of St John"

Phillip's Cabin...Phillip built Jim and Andrea's home...we went by there so I could see it...Andrea loves it because it reminds her of a gingerbread house...and the inside is really cool as well....lots of cool art pieces.

I can't believe I didn't get a good picture of the outside of their house!  SHOOT!

More:

The only "real" service station I saw the whole week...about 15 miles from where they live!  $4.05 a gallon (I think it was $3.80 here in Georgia at the time)

The airport:

Great week!  Thank you Andrea and Jim.


HOME AGAIN!!!... at 1:30am!

Home Sweet Home (behind the clump of pine trees to the right) 

Just in time for before all the dogwoods are gone!

Time to Hurry Again!

If you are taking the Joanne Sharpe Class you may want to take advantage of this sale on Tim Holtz Color Wash!  If you haven't gotten to that lesson yet I promise you will want it!  I just order every color.  BUT HURRY!!!  Things run out fast on this site!

I would go get some even if I weren't in Joanne's class if I were you. :-)  Gotta love a sale!  And actually, I just bought $50 worth of stuff for free because of their AWESOME buying credit plan!  My biggest problem is wanting everything I see, and saving points up for what I really, really want. 


Here are a couple of things I made with the last order I placed for the Tim Holtz Tissue Paper.  LOVE THAT PAPER!...it makes a quick job of an easy background.

Color Magic!

Years and years ago, "before the fire" I was a polymer clay artist.  I LOVED it!  But, it was extremely messy, and expensive so when the fire destroyed everything I chose not to get back into it...because I had all new carpet...and, it was expensive!

One of the things that I (FINALLY) learned after wasting lots of money trying to buy all the colors of clay is you really only need THREE! + White +Black.  You can create the whole color wheel with the primaries and all the colors will blend beautifully together.   Just don't try to throw in a different "red" (or blue, or yellow) into the mix, you have to stick with the SAME three primary colors.  

Back then I used a formula to create each color 1 part blue + 1 part yellow =.  What I did today was far less

formal.....Today I decided do it with paint .... I started with these three colors + white.

Look at what I got! LOVE!

I KNOW!  Doesn't seem right does it?  To start with only those three colors and end up with all this!  BEAUTIFUL! 

The Bridge, The Bear and God

I just got this as an email and wanted to share it with you guys... AMAZING STORY!


This bridge is on the Old Donner Pass Highway . It has a spectacular view of Donner Lake and Donner Pass on Route 40.

A bear was walking across Rainbow Bridge ( Old Hwy 40 at Donner Summit , Truckee ) on Saturday when two cars, also crossing the bridge, scared the bear into jumping over the edge of the bridge. Somehow the bear caught the ledge and was able to pull itself to safety. (You can actually see him better in the first picture)

 

Authorities decided that nothing could be done to help Saturday night so they  returned Sunday morning to find the bear sound asleep
 

After securing a net under the bridge the bear was tranquilized, fell into the net, lowered, then woke up and walked out of the net.
 

There is a moral to this story;  this old bear made a wrong move and found he was hanging by his nails. Somehow he was able to pull himself up onto the ledge where he saw he was in a very bad, impossible situation and what did he do?

Yep, he took a nap and sure enough, God took care of the situation while he was asleep.

The moral of the story is that when confronted with a bad situation, sometimes the best solution is to take a nap and let God take care of the rest.

God is on the job.

I like that!

HURRY! HURRY! HURRY!

.

 I just discovered the most AWESOME online store! It is called "Blitsy".

It is actually up and running!  I just ordered $48 worth FOR FREE because of the $10 offer! (after just 2 hours of being signed up!)

 Sign up and start getting your credits account growing

Pin It

They have SUPER SUPER sales that start every Monday, Wednesday and Friday and go for a week....while supplies last!  

And it isn't just old stuff, I just bought BRAND NEW Tim Holtz stuff that I've never seen!

Like this KRAFT CORE PAPER!!!  No more screaming white edges!!!

And this ROLL of tissue paper!!! TWENTY SIX FEET of it!

These are just a few things that are ON SALE RIGHT NOW!!!  WHILE SUPPLIES LAST!!!

HURRY!!!  CLICK HERE!

Little Known Pinterest Trick

.

If you want to "pin" something on a site.  Select some descriptive text (like the title), then click on "Pin It" on the menu bar and the text that you selected will already be populated in the description field...no copying, no pasting required!   I LOVE THAT!  because typing something there is my least favorite thing to do!

* * * It doesn't work with the embedded "Pin It" buttons because the blog owner has already populated the description for you.

 Hope all is well in your world!  Have a great rest of it!
N. Pin It

Painting With SU! Inks

Hi All,

Just stopping in to say that I'm still here, just not doing a whole lot of "creating" these days.  Except over on my "doodle" blog.  It is easier to do a quick drawing than to pull everything out and come up with something new every day!

I started taking the Joanne Sharpe class on Tuesday so that is where I'll be "playing" for the next month.  We are making 3 journals in 29 days.  Not bad for the $35 she is charging for the class!  I have always loved her use of BRIGHT colors so I'm hoping to learn what she does to get them!  That really was my goal for signing up.  I don't like to take classes because they usually teach you how to create "their" look so when someone else does it, it still has the original artist's signature look.  Don't like that.  I want my own look...even though I like their's better, I want my own.

Guess what though!  This week I stumbled on a way to get BRIGHT colors!  I tested painting with SU! ink pad refills and it works!  LOVING IT!   Actually, I'm feeling kinda stupid that I haven't thought of it before because I use to use the ink from markers by coloring on plastic then picking it up with a wet brush.  Same idea, only much easier!

 Here is something I just finished painting:

BRIGHT, quick and easy!  I just put a little ink onto a pallet, added a TINY bit of water to the watercolor paper then used the brush to paint the color on.  You really want to add the water to the paper first because the ink soaks into the paper most right where you put it first so you end up with a darker spot....good if that's the look you want, bad if it isn't!

OH!  And I almost forgot to mention!  I was a "Featured Artist" over on RainbowElephant.com!  GO FIGURE!  THAT was a TOTAL shock!  Very sweet lady!  And she apparently has TONS of followers because I have gotten lots and lots of hits on the site!  YES!  Please, go check her site out and tell her hi for me.  Her blog is mainly focused on "Repeat Pattern Line Art", a phrase I had never heard before her.