A Mixed Bag...including art!

This post is going to be a bit of a mixed bag, some more pics of our mega-holiday in Alaska, some arty pics, a TY for an award as well as plugging my most favourite blog of the moment. We'll start with the blog that I just can't live without...The Creative Junkie. The wonderful thing about Andrea and her lovely posts is she does it every couple of days...so you don't have to go too long without your eyes watering, pee running down your leg and your mouth hurting from being stretched in a grin from ear to ear! When I first stumbled across this particular blog I was laughing so much I just HAD to read everything she had previously posted and I'm so glad I did! The CHIA Pet incident is just classic....go on.....read it.

Okay, onto the rest of our day in Juneau. You might remember this was Mother's Day and we'd had a fantastic helicopter flight over glaciers (including a walk on a glacier!) in the morning. Next we went up to Mount Roberts via the Mount Roberts Tramway. The take-off point is actually on the dock and in the following photo's you can see how steeply it rises before landing at the top at the visitors centre and snow everywhere! The square shed structure you see on the dock next to our ship is where the tram takes off from....onward & upward...


The ship's getting smaller...

At the top taken from the visitor centre - what a view!!!

Here's Grant trying not to fall over in his oh-so-slippery leather soled shoes. Drat, I was hoping to make some money on funniest home video as I took about 3 video's of him doing these little walks in the snow. He didn't oblige.

After Mount Roberts we did a quick walk-around inside the Juneau Douglas Museum then started to head back towards the ship for a bite to eat but first, "let's have a quick drink"! We popped into a nice little Irish bar with the locals but unbeknown to Joan and myself, each drink was a double and we'd not eaten lunch and we WERE heading back to the ship for some food. So we had a couple of drinks, left the bar to get that food and we ran into Mike, one half of our dinner companion couple who sits with us each night at our table.

Joan & Kelsey...."Where ya goin Mike?"

Mike..."Off to get a drink"

Joan & Kelsey..."We know a GREAT place, we'll SHOW you!"

So it was that we ended up back in the bar for more double bourbons, still no food on board but the bar pretzels will soak up the booze....right??? WRONG!!!! No idea how much later it was that we staggered/giggled/guffawed our way up the street to the ship, Joan nearly taking home a souvenir Juneau fire hydrant that was almost embedded in her leg as she walked into it full tilt. The bruise lasted for days and turned all lovely shades of purple/green/yellow.

Here's a nice little doggie we saw while staggering up the street, poor bloke must've thought all Aussies are nit-wits the way we acted.

and here's Mike and Grant being best buds in full swing in the bar,

But first, WAIT, there's the Red Dog Saloon (which was full of tourists and was why we didn't go there for a drink), but it does have a shop attached where you can buy real Juneau souvenirs so we bought a couple of t-shirts, one a size XXL for God knows who, a couple of Red Dog Saloon condoms for our 2 son's as well as hubby's brother, and for hubby's brother's girlfriend - just what she always wanted - a Red Dog Saloon garter!!! Told you we were pissed, there would be no way we'd buy that crap if we weren't! lol

Finally made it back to the ship where we (Joan, Grant and I) visited my Mum in her cabin to say a boozy hello, which is also where Joan was staying (there is a reason I'm saying this). Grant had invited Mike back to our cabin for some more drinks (silly, silly, man) so off we go back to our cabin. Joan gets inside and sits on the bed while Grant is preparing more drinks. 10 minutes pass, she's still sitting there with her head in her hands...

Kelsey..."what's wrong Joan"....

Joan..."nuffin...I'm concentrating".

Kelsey..."Oh, okay.

Several attempts at conversation with Joan proceeded over the next couple of hours as she still hadn't left the side of the bed and her head was still in her hands.

Kelsey..."are you okay Joan?"

Joan...."I'm CONCENTRATING!!!!!!!!"

sigh.... The upshot was that after a few "visits" to our bathroom I had to phone Mum in her cabin and say "Sorry Mum, Joan can't come home tonight, the ship is spinning in a vortex and she won't get there". Joan stayed the night in our conjugal bed - I was in the middle in case you were wondering though I did wake several times in the night and as she was still in the same sleeping position I was a little concerned that lest I touch her, she may be stone cold!

The next day we visited Glacier Bay, the Hubberd Glacier to be exact, 6 miles wide and oh so beautiful. Worst weather of the trip, 35 foot seas and 50 knot winds and a MEGA HANGOVER added to a wonderfully listing ship. Certainly was a Mother's day to remember!

Onto some arty pics, kudo's to you if you've lasted this long!

I posted a pic of one of my mica atc's on another blog that was having a comp for "flourishes". I love flourishes so had no trouble adding them to an atc, here was my entry.

The image is a transparency trapped between 2 pieces of mica with flourish stamping, some embossed and a piece of cuttlebug scroll that was embossed also. Here is the link to the blog if you want to take a look at some other entries with flourishes.

I have a couple of pieces of artwork coming up in Cardmaking, Stamping & Papercraft using Rachel Greig's Darkroom Door stamps, the "Doors" set. Can't show the full pieces but here's a couple of glimpses of one of the cards, the other piece is a canvas.

That's it for now!