Barnegat Lighthouse Museum Garden

The museum itself was closed until June but you can stroll through the garden surrounding it at any time.  It is actually tucked away quite nicely a couple of streets away from the actual lighthouse.  In fact, I think most people don't even know it is there.  We didn't until it was included on the Lighthouse Challenge Tour two years ago and we had been out there many times to visit the lighthouse itself. 

The garden looked a little ragged - plants gone to seed and weedy, but someone cared enough to plant some pretty pansies by this driftwood........

It was hard to tell if these border plants were meant to flower like this or whether they had bolted as they looked to be in the ornamental cabbage family and might have made it through the winter in such a secluded setting..........

Isn't the contrast of the flowers with the purple stems striking! 

I was very surprised to see the lily of the valley.  There were only one or two stems of flowers left and I must have made a pretty sight squatting down and tilting the camera up towards them to get their picture..........

That green bug was an added bonus I didn't even notice until I transferred the pictures.

The next three pictures are a series of the stages of the lilac blossoms.  Normally I try to avoid the lilacs only because their heady scent causes me to sneeze, however, they were unavoidable as they hung over the pathway.......

The plantings in this garden span the three blooming seasons and we've managed to see it during the fall, summer, and now spring.  They've done a nice job of keeping it flowering nicely during all those times with the perennials that are there and the added annuals that add to the overall composition.  It's always interesting to come back and see what's in bloom.

She Gets It

Our children think we're a bit off the deep end when it comes to our excitement over the bluebirds.  They may not be entirely wrong about that but we try to keep it in check.  Here's the nest as we found it on Sunday.......

"Now I know how you and daddy feel about those bluebirds."  This was the text message I got from Rachel this weekend after she discovered that the ducks outside her friend's place had 9 ducklings. 

You're right Chickadee - they are "so cute". 

Pictures from the Weekend

We trekked on down to Barnegat on Friday night.  The breeze was just cool enough to warrant a cover up, but it was also so refreshing.  Saturday morning HWSNSBP made a trip to get a new fishing pole and offered to go the extra distance to "The Scone Shop" in Point Pleasant.  He brought back a dozen of the most delicious scones and a small serving of homemade lemon curd.  I wish I'd taken a picture of them but I couldn't wait to dive into their deliciousness! 

Thankfully, my friend J and I had taken a nice walk that morning, and the three of us planned to do more walking at the lighthouse in the afternoon.  We couldn't have asked for better weather when we got there.  Just the right temp and a breeze strong enough to keep you cool as you walked.  We did some beachcombing and J found this.......

It's a bone of some animal we think.  I thought perhaps a skull of some sort, but I can't find anything like it.  If anyone out there has any idea what it came from please let me know.

Here are some more pictures......... 

I'm not sure what kind of ducks those are, but don't the eyes look cool.  And the eyes of the herring gull are pretty cool too.  There were many, many boats going in and out of the inlet (of course the horizon wasn't crooked, it was me).  Somehow I can't resist the way Mother Nature composes those little eye-catching groupings in the sand.  So random, yet beautiful. 

So we each found something this weekend - HWNSNBP found a great deal on a fishing pole, J found that wonderful piece of nature, and I found my lost pink nightgown on the hook behind the bathroom door at the condo!

I'll share some more pictures tomorrow of the garden at the lighthouse museum. 

Thursday's Throw Aways - Chipboard Challenge

Chipboard.  You come across it on a daily basis, but not always in an artistic format.  Yes, you can get precut chipboard shapes and add ink or paper to them, but it also can be found in the form of cereal boxes, the backs of notepads, cd mailers, shirt boxes -  you get the picture.   Today's Way To Use It Challenge is to use chipboard and since it's also Thursday I thought it would be best to repurpose one of those everyday sources of chipboard.  Here's what I started with.........

A chipboard mailing envelope and a waxy piece of tissue paper that was used to wrap something glass I bought at the Dollar Tree.  I cut a 6 x 6 square of each and then ran the chipboard through my Xyron with the sticker cartridge.  Then I placed the tissue paper on top of the sticky side and burnished it until it was nice and flat - no wrinkles.  Once that was done I ran it through my Big Shot with the Circles 2 die to get the nice big scalloped circle you see here.........

The big Melon Mambo flower was made with the new Island Floral Bigz die.  Actually the center was another Throw Away - a button from an old shirt.  I fed some pink cotton thread through the holes and tied the ends in knots to look like stamens.  The other flower is from the Floral Fusion die with a center from the Three For You Punch.  I stamped the diagonal Ballet Blue piece with Boho Backgrounds in Brilliant Blue ink. 

The sentiment comes from Teeny Tiny Wishes and it was stamped in Melon Mambo and punched out with the fancy label punch.  I sponged the ends of the label with Ballet Blue ink.  The sentiment is popped up on dimensionals as is the large flower.  There is a half daisy under the large flower ...... you might say I was cleaning up the scraps on my work table and you would be right.  Most of what you see in this project was bits and pieces of what I had lying around unused. 

I added the white taffeta ribbon to the bottom left by putting little pieces of red line tape down and making rivers and valleys with it, sticking at the valley points.  The card base is Old Olive. 

This is kind of wild, but I like the drama of it myself and I'll be able to hand-deliver it to my mother on Mother's Day. 

Sketch Challenge Thank You

Last Wednesday was Administrative Professional's Day and the staff in my school gave my co-worker and I a beautiful hydrangea plant.  I had been mulling over an idea for my thank you card but had not been able to put it to paper yet as I was lacking inspiration for a layout.  Well, thank goodness for the Sketch Challenge today...........

I created my own little hydrangea plant with one of the new mini punches from SU available May 1.  I punched a bunch of the four petal flowers out of Pink Pirouette and then laid them down on my matt pack and pressed my embossing stylus into the center of them to give them some dimension.  I added the dots in the center with a Pretty in Pink marker and then glued them to a small oval and a 3/4" circle of Pink Pirouette.  The leaves come from the Little Leaves Sizzlit. 

The card base is Pink Pirouette stamped on the edges with Vintage Vogue and the 4 squares are some dsp layered with Pretty in Pink.  The center square is Certainly Celery and I stamped the sentiment from Tiny Tags in Garden Green.  That panel is popped up with dimensionals.   Lastly I added the pink taffeta ribbon.

I know, I should have a picture of the real plant.  Trust me, it's beautiful.  I intend to put it in the yard but we've got a frost warning for tonight so it's inside for the evening. 

Teapot Tuesday 91

We're going the softer side this week which means that our cards are going to someone who needs a little pick me up.  Check it out here at the Teapot Challenge.  There's actually a lot of need for pick-me-ups this week as our hostesses' MIL passed away this weekend also.  Her MIL is also the mother of one of our teapotters as well.  Hopefully all the petals and all the ladybugs will cheer these ladies up.

So without a story of my own this week, and going just on the teapot itself, here is my card...........

It looks a little plain in the picture, but IRL the embossing of the Very Vanilla panel shows up much more. 

The card base is Kraft with a layer of Garden Green.  The embossed panel is Very Vanilla and the corner is punched with the scalloped corner punch.  I used the get well sentiment from Teeny Tiny Wishes and stamped it in Garden Green.

The daisy is of Whisper White and punched with the Bigz Daisies die. The leaf was punched with the leaf die twice, once in Garden Green and again in Certainly Celery.  I cut the Celery leaf in half and glued it to one side.  Then I took my stylus and ran it down the center and gently folded the leaf with a mountain fold to give it dimension.  The little ladybug is wooden.  (I've got a bunch of ladybug stuff left over from Rachel's sororiety days!)

I curled the leaves of the daisy and layered the petals.  The center is made from a 3/4" circle of More Mustard and a 1/2" circle of Summer Sun.  The edges of both were cut and ruffled up. 

If you look closely below you can see the embossing a little better and how I used the head of my stylus to add some more dimension to the flower center.

Before I put this all together I took a dauber and dabbed the edges with Bashful Blue ink. Now I have to figure out how to mail this without it getting completely flattened!  Any suggestions?

I had duplicates of most of my pieces of this card so I did another one using today's color challenge - Ballet Blue, Old Olive, Barely Banana and neutrals of your choice with a desert option of something red.

Bluebird Update

I'm not sure if this is an old couple or a young couple but this nest is not like any other we've seen.  The nesting material that you see on the right is very high in the box and almost right up to the front opening.  There is little material under those eggs and you can see they are nestled into the lower corner.  She must like it that way!  The first picture was taken on 4-20 and the second one on 4-24.  There may be another egg but we won't know for a while as it's been raining all day and due to rain through tomorrow also. 

We haven't installed the nestcam yet.  We thought we'd let them have their first clutch uninterrupted and get used to us nosing around before we put something foreign in there. 

On Saturday we were in the garden almost non-stop from 2 to about 7 and Mr. and Mrs. Blue watched us from a distance and were very quiet.  They don't start incubating the eggs until she's done laying so that's why we're thinking there may be another one.  They usually have 3-5 eggs in a clutch.  We also wanted them to get used to having us around and trust us so she'll stay put when we do our gardening.   He'll have to feed her and there'll be a lot of chattering back and forth.  They make the sweetest sounds singing to one another.

Featured Stamper - GloriousGreetings

The Featured Stamper today is Gloria, one of our teapotters.  She has a great gallery you could get lost in. 

The rules for the Featured Stamper Challenge are to pick a card from the stamper's gallery and change at least two things about it. I visited Gloria's gallery and chose this one - Bee-utiful Ballerina.

The little ballerina on her card reminded me of the little fairy in the new SU set A Little Bit of Magic coming out May 1st. 

I changed the colors, the shape of the image panel, and the placement of the sentiment.  I also left off the ribbon on top and added a white punched eyelet border there and added a bow to the ribbon on the bottom. 

A friend at work just had her first grandchild.  She has three sons and now has a sweet little granddaughter.  I added some blue to this card and had the fairy holding a blue flower over the new pink flower as they now have a little girl in the family too. 

Here's a close up of the fairy........

Congratulations Gloria!  You're a great inspiration. 

Captured

Click on any picture to see it larger.

I ran outside to get this picture this morning.  Doesn't he look like he's posing?  The light was casting some cool shadows and I was able to move so I could get the shadow behind Mr. Blue.

Then I looked down and saw this little guy right about the same time he saw me.  He froze - I didn't....

I was about 10 feet from him.  Then we were off to the Great Swamp Nursery to start the flower beds....

There weren't too many people there today and we only bought a couple of things.  We'll be back.

It was a gorgeous day and perfect for working in the yard.  This is the Red Bud at the peak of bloom and starting to leaf out.......

Some Bridal Veil through the deer fencing......

A dried up Clematis bloom........

And some mystery tulips - don't know where they came from...........

While I was weeding in the garden, I lifted up a stack of dishes (yes, I have dishes in the garden - I used them as a border) this guy was burrowed underneath.  Unfortunately the camera focused on the weeds over the top of him but you can see his coloration.  It's salamander not a snake (I would not have been calm enough to capture a picture of a snake!).....

And one last picture that I took when I came home from work on Friday.  We had another bird visitor to the yard.  One we haven't seen in quite a while..............

We're expecting rain for the next several days, so I'm glad we got started in the garden today.  I have a ton of weeding to do as we didn't put the garden to bed in the fall as we should have and some things have really gotten out of control.  It's also very overgrown because I have a hard time pulling out the volunteers of the good plants even though they come up where they don't belong.  But, I've decided that I'm going to be better at that now.  Time to clear it out and try to keep it in check.  Wish me luck!

Same Stamp Two Ways

I still had the Inspired By Nature stamps out on my table yesterday so I decided to use the flower stamp in a little experiment.  I used the same colors of my SU markers to ink up the stamp and stamp it onto Whisper White cs. 

The first one I stamped in full color and added lines and dots to the image to show some definition of the flower.

After I inked the second one, I spritzed it with water and stamped it that way.

Here they are up close............

And side-by-side.............

I used the Top Note die to highlight the image for each card.  Sentiments come from Teeny Tiny Wishes.  Both cards have a base of Chocolate Chip and use the colors of Ruby Red and More Mustard in cardstock and patterned paper.  The accents on the watercolored card are a Summer Sun corduroy button threaded with a fine strip of Chocolate Chip paper as the thread, and a little spiral punch out in the upper left corner.  The accent on the other is a knot/bow of Chocolate Chip grosgrain.

I can't make up my mind which one I like better.  Do you have a choice?

Earth Day Thursday's Throw Aways

You know that I send socks to my daughter's old college roommates for holidays, well, I actually found some cool socks for Earth Day (which I forgot to take a picture of) and I sent them off to the girls late last week.  I hope they will receive them in time for today. 

While I didn't get a picture of the socks themselves, I did keep the packaging that the socks came in and what better than to use them for my Earth Day Thursday's Throw Aways.

They were a nice weight of light cardboard and you can see the printed picture of the Earth on them.  I decided that I should use scraps from my scrap bin on this to keep in the theme of recycling and Earth Day. 

As you can see I had to remove the hook carefully from the top without tearing them.  That left me with a hole on the top and the hole on the front and back in the lower half came from the plastic thingy that attached the socks to the holder.  You can't see it in the picture, but there is some very small writing in the upper lefthand corner which I needed to cover. 

I used a crimped piece of cardstock to hide the empty hole at the top.  The larger writing on the front was covered with some leaves and flowers punched from scraps in my scrap bin.  The finishing touch was to add a pink cotton string.

I managed to get three of these done and I'll definitely be saving one of them for myself.  I think I'll put it out on my desk for Earth Day. 

Go Green! 

Administrative Assistant's Day

You probably remember it as Secretary's Day.   It's now known as Administrative Assistant's Day or Administrative Professional's Day.  Either way it was today.  These are some little goody bags I made up for the clerks and secretaries, no wait, the administrative assistant's in our school district.  They have candy kisses, a flavored tea bag, a fancy binder clip and some of them had little note pads in them. 

It was a crazy day at work today.  More so than any other crazy day.  Our school budget was defeated yesterday.  Three mediocre (and I'm being polite when I say that) candidates were elected to the Board of Education.  We had a class trip to Philadelphia and one class left their lunches at the school.  And, I registered a new student who does not speak any English. 

But the highlight was the beautiful Hydrangea that the staff gave me along with a card signed by the staff with a lottery ticket in it.  Sadly, it was a loser, but the thought was there.  And my boss gave us a giftcard to Olive Garden.  Oh, and I saved a couple of candy kisses for myself!

Teapot Tuesday 90 and Thursday's Throw Away (Early)

And they're off! No I'm not talking about the teapotters being off, although you might take it that way sometimes!   This week we're off to the races.  The big one.  The Kentucky Derby, and yes, we are a week or so early, but Cindy says we need to practice and to shop, and to.....well, stay out of trouble too!  Here's our teapot for this week...........

Well, not having a horse stamp, it was a stroke of luck that my son got a letter delivered to our house this week with a stamp that had a horse on it.  Not just any horse but Seabiscuit.   Now Seabiscuit may not have won the Kentucky Derby, but I'm sure if given the chance, he would have liked to try again. 

I carefully cut the stamp off the envelope and mounted it on Real Red cs.  Then I ran a piece of Creamy Caramel through my Big Shot with the new embossing folder and highlighted that with my Creamy Caramel ink pad, direct to paper.  That piece was also backed with Real Red.  The Vanilla panel was stamped with some Kentucky blue grass - the grass stamp from Inspired by Nature stamped with Handsome Hunter ink.  Again, mounted that on Real Red and used a Barely Banana cs base.  I had this little horse charm that I attached to a piece of grosgrain and just tied a piece of hemp onto the ring.  The sentiment comes from Inspired by Nature and was stamped in Creamy Caramel. 

I was actually excited about how this card came out and how I was able to combine a "postage" stamp with a "rubber" stamp and come up with something like this.

So head on over to the Teapot Gallery to check things out for this week.  I just know there will be a lot of interesting stories as well as cards this week!