Jingling Along for a White Christmas

With Thanksgiving in the past now, and December not more than a few days off, one comes to the realization that this is the last Jingle Belles challenge for 2016.  And it's a photo inspiration challenge.

Pretty, pretty, pretty!

And you know what caught my eye?  The eyes on the tree.  What is hiding there?  

Snowy Owls!

I love snowy owls.  I've had the opportunity to see them in captivity at the Raptor Trust and the Philadelphia Zoo, but it's been on my bucket list to see them in real life - in the wild.  The last few winters there have been reports of snowy owl sightings at Island Beach State Park and Long Beach Island here in New Jersey and I've seen pictures posted on Facebook from locals there.  But ideally, I would love to see one in person.  Maybe in 2017.

From a visit to the Raptor Trust in 2012

From a visit to the Raptor Trust in 2012

It just so happens that the day this challenge was posted HWNSNBP brought me what he called a "Friday present".  (This totally was out of the blue - never had a Friday present before or since.)

We have accumulated a nice collection of white owls over the last several years.  Some are ornaments for the tree.  Truth be told, I like all birds, but at Christmas lately, these are my favorite.

So of course you know I had to try a tree full of owls.  I have a set of two tree dies that I thought I could use by dissecting them into layers to make the tree taller so I could use owls that were not too small to cut out and were proportional to the tree.  I'm showing the close-up first, because try as I might I could not get a good picture of this card and all it's sparkle.  

I had these little owl stickers in pastel shades that I thought about using, but wanted to stay true to the inspiration, so I traced a few of them onto white cardstock and added the details in silver and black before fussy cutting them out.  It wasn't really that tedious.  I eliminated all the feet and the ear tufts because snowy owls don't have ear tufts.  

Another reason I chose not to use the stickers (and I tried) was because they did not stick too well to the glitter paper, which brings me to another observation.  I did not realize that glitter paper has a nap to it.  The die that I used has both trees on it and they are facing in opposite directions and since I cut them up to stack them, you can see the difference in the paper ever so slightly.

Okay, maybe not there so much as here, where the trees are side-by-side.

Okay .............take my word for it, there is a difference.  (Who cropped that picture, Zorro?)

I was on a little bit of a roll and actually put two cards together for this challenge and as I'm usually challenged by time (even more so during the holidays), I'm putting it in this post, but I don't think I can link up more than one card from a post, so here is where it is.

The trees in the background and the rabbit (also a part of that die) are cut from the wood sheets that I found a couple of weeks ago.  It was a challenge for this particular die to get a good cut on that thickness.  I had to do a lot of snipping and cutting to fully release the trees.  But as luck would have it, not one branch broke off.

So why don't you join me in visiting the Jingle Belles to see how the others were inspired by this photo?  Click here.

Oh, and I saw that the inspiration for Our Beautiful World this week is ~White~ so I'd like to add a photo from this post to that blog also.  You have to go take a look at the pictures of "white" from around the world.  Go ahead - get inspired!

Our Beautiful World - Sunlight

We sat on the balcony a couple of weeks ago, listening to the concert at the dock across the street and marveling at the pattern in the sky.  It was like the rays of the sun except that the sun was behind us. It went from this.............

to this.  And it really was weird.  I wondered how that happened and heard from a friend across the country that she had seen something similar recently.  

So as I was checking the weather . com this week, I took a quick look at their photos posted from their current photography contest and someone had entered a photo with the same phenomenon.  Only that person knew what it was called - anti crepuscular rays.    

"Anti crepuscular rays or anti solar rays are similar to crepuscular rays, but seen opposite the sun in the sky. Anti crepuscular rays are near-parallel, but appear to converge at the anti solar point because of linear perspective. Anti crepuscular rays are most frequently visible near sunrise or sunset."

Maybe it's the KOOK in me, but I get a kick out of learning about odd things like that.

Tonight, there was evidence of crepuscular rays at the solar point of the sunset.  

I added some sun rays to the card I recently made for a friend's one-year-old grandson.  (Yes, that's supposed to be a giraffe, but I think the snout looks more like a pig's.  Oh well - he's one and probably will not notice.)

Since the theme for Our Beautiful World this week is sunlight, I thought I'd add some of my favorite sunset pictures from this summer.

Including the next two taken tonight, September 2nd.  A week ago the weathermen were forecasting a stellar 4-day weekend, but that forecast gradually fell apart during the week as hurricane season has promised to impact us in one way or another.  

We're headed back inland tomorrow as coastal flooding and high winds are part of the prediction. This is Hurricane Hermine I'm talking about which just passed over Florida and will shoot up the east coast and is expected to stall off the Jersey coast.  I hope that our coastline does not take a heavy battering. And I hope that everyone is safe.

Drop by Our Beautiful World to check out some beautiful sunlight-themed pictures from around the world.

Last Weekend in Pictures and Our Beautiful World - Bridge

HWNSNBP (He Whose Name Shall Not Be Published) gets up before the sunrises to get on his way to LBI to surf fish.  On his way he passes the bay beach around the corner from us and if his timing is good he might catch the sunrise as he did last weekend.  

He also happened to catch all these white birds (egrets) very close to the road opposite the bay beach.

And you can see that many of them took off as he approached.

Since our condo is on what is call "Pirate's Peninsula" you either turn left to go around past that bay beach to get to the main road (Rt. 9), or you turn right to go over a little bridge which takes you into what some consider the "main street" of Barnegat and also to Rt. 9.  The little bridge was closed from October until just before the 4th of July which made the choice a no-brainer.  Not having that way out though was precarious in bad weather.  There were several times that the bay flooded the road during storms and once this winter (when we weren't there) the area was evacuated as they knew that people would be stranded in the snowstorm.  

Sunday we had our annual crabbing trip with our Table 7 group.  We rent a pontoon boat and the 9 of us pile on with our drop lines, fishing poles, and one crab trap.  It was hot as Hades last weekend. The temperature was said to be 100º but the feels like temp was at least 111º on land.  On the water it was a little more bearable (except for the darned flies!!!! - the biting kind!!!!).  

We move around the bay trying to find a good place to drop the lines and eventually we do go under the bridge to explore the waterway that it spans.  

And when you don't have any luck in that area - you head back under the bridge.

Here's HWNSNBP hamming it up with a sea bass that he caught and then threw back. 

The highlight of the trip for me (aside from catching 2 of the 5 fish we caught that day) was the swan encounter.  This swan left it's group that happened to be swimming by us to come and check out the boat probably looking to see what we had to share.  (This is the first time that we have had the swans around, usually it's just the seagulls looking for a handout.)

But we were not going to throw anything to it to encourage it to get any closer so it turned around and swam away and back to the little group.

Even though it was not a very productive day crabbing and fishing, we always have a good time with our friends.  There is laughter, sarcasm, playful complaining, and a lot of "remembering when".

One of our friends' mother is a bit under the weather and was undergoing a health procedure this week so I put together this card for her when we came home from the weekend.  This die can be used as leaves on a tree or like this as a flower head which I think reminds me of the Queen Ann's Lace that I posted last time.

I took a glitter gel pen and defined the petals some more.

Well, I know my bridge is very standard but useful and now I'm on my way over to Our Beautiful World to view some bridges from elsewhere on our planet.  Stop by and give a look if you can.

Edited to add:  I missed the link - ugh!  Go look anyway!

Weekend Wonders

Last weekend was full of wonders........

A stunning sunset that I almost missed.  

I was sitting out front listening to the concert across the street at the dock.  I had made a couple of trips to the back of the condo to check things out but it didn't look like much was going on so I resigned myself to just enjoy the music and some people watching.

A little while later HWNSNBP came up and said to me "you know I'm color blind, but I think you might want to see this".  

Oh how right he was!  The pink morphed into such an intense red as though the sky itself was on fire.

We spent July 4th wondering if the weather would hold out for the fireworks that were planned for that evening.  Late in the afternoon, with the threat of approaching storms, the start time of the fireworks was moved up so they actually started before complete darkness, however the stormy sky was dark enough a background to enjoy them.

Many people left before the finale as it did begin to rain towards the end.  

Watching through the window as the crowd left became a light show of a different kind.

Especially when the rain intensified.  All those headlights causing the raindrops on the window to sparkle like stars.

Speaking of stars, I've been meaning to share this picture of the origami stars, boxes, and cranes that my daughter shared with me.  She had a student this year that was very much into origami and would gift them to her.  

Aren't they cool!

The theme of the week over at Our Beautiful World is Bits 'n' Pieces so I'm going to share these little bits and pieces of folded paper there.  Won't you join me in a trip around the world to see more bits and pieces?

This, That, and 333

Last Sunday's sunset was another stellar one.  The colors were so intense - owing to the cloud cover. I find it hard to stop clicking and tear myself away, yet I am also impatient to see how it will continue to morph and if it becomes even more beautiful.  There comes a point when the sky is still very visible and very colorful, but the camera just doesn't do it justice.  Coming in off the back porch, it continues to look very much like a mural and will eventually fade away leaving only the blinking lights of houses and towers in the distance.

We went over to LBI (Long Beach Island) on Monday morning with our bikes for a quick ride before grabbing breakfast sandwiches from the Inlet Deli.  The temperature was perfect and there was a breeze that felt so good in the warm sun.  There weren't many boats out or people around which I think is typical for a Monday morning.  Riding down one of the side streets the lighthouse was framed by this boat launcher.  

As we were arriving back at the condo on Friday night it was in the midst of a thunderstorm which, thankfully, slowed down a bit so we could get inside without getting too wet.  I was busy watching the storm pass on the back porch hoping to see whether there would be a sunset opportunity and almost missed the show that was on the other side of the house - a rainbow!

This is a panoramic view of it I took with my cell phone which I could only get to work once and you really can't see the colors that well, but I tried.

After it dissipated, I went back in to back and caught this sunset.  I just never do get enough sunsets.

So where does the 333 come in?  Here is a picture of a box turtle that our son sent us this week.  They seem to have regular turtle visitors to their yard around this time of the year.  They come to lay their eggs in the soft dirt and then venture off into the wild again.  They were kiddingly asking what to name it and I suggested 333 because of the pattern of 3's on the turtles shell.  

I know that's a stretch of the theme for Our Beautiful World this week (Three), but there are three three's, so I hope it counts.  I've missed the last month or so, and I hope to get back in the habit of visiting there because I love seeing things through the eyes of the lovely hostesses from around the world.  Check it out, why don't you!