Art and Tea

White Poppies

When I paint, I have the TV on sometimes as company. I  listen more than watch but it is a nice distraction. Sometimes I listen to CBC sometimes music. The other day, Martha Stewart was on and she made a tomato soup that I want to try. It is simple and by all accounts delicious. I am posting it here so I can find it:)

Martha's Tomato Soup

Makes 6 cups

• 6 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 2 medium yellow onions, chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, chopped
• 24 ounces canned whole plum tomatoes
• 3 cups homemade or low-sodium store-bought chicken stock
• 2 teaspoons sea salt
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Directions

1. Melt butter in a large saucepan over medium-low heat. Add onion and garlic; cook, stirring, until onions have softened, about 15 minutes.
2. Add tomatoes, chicken stock, salt, and pepper; bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and cook until tomatoes, onions, and garlic are soft, 10 to 20 minutes.
3. Working in batches, transfer cooled soup to the jar of a blender and puree until smooth. ( I use an immersion blender, much easier and less mess to clean) Return to saucepan and place over medium heat. Cook until soup is heated through. If soup seems too thick, stir in some extra stock to thin. Serve immediately.

Tropical storm Hanna is headed this way. Sunday will be a rainy gusty day. Ike looks to be quite a scary hurricane . Category 4!

Periwinkle Cottage

Well, our car died yesterday:(
It was overheating just as I pulled into the parking lot of the Motor Vehicle Licensing place.
Ironically, I was there to renew the permit . After my hour  wait in the building, the van had cooled down so drove with the heater on full blast to dissipate the heat, to our local garage. The heat pump needs to be replaced, but safety inspection is next month and the car needs too much work to make it worth while. While on the hoist the mechanic had looked it over. Sigh. We've already put a LOT of money into it this year. Time to bite the bullet.
I am thinking of a second hand Toyota Corrolla. It will save on gas, that's for sure. Any suggestions?

I am jangled. There's always something isn't there.

I've got a pot of veggie soup on the stove and a painting in the works so that will calm me down and get me centered.

Hayley started Dalhousie today! Her first class is Psychology and then Biology. Tomorrow are her Theatre classes and a French class.

Remember I mentioned that some of my work was headed to a pediatric unit in Missouri? Here is a link to Tiernan Design, she posted some pictures of them.

Full Moon Cats, available on eBay

I feel as though I've been away on a long journey and am out of touch with the world around me. Strange.
The thundery storms and lashing rain these last few days have added to that sense of removal from the real world.
I am slowly getting back into the swing of things. Feeling easily tired but not sick, thank goodness!

H has been involved in Frosh events which started yesterday. University classes start on Wed I think. Yikes.
I am so glad she is going to school here close by. It is SO expensive to go to school. She can save money by living here and studying locally.
She wants to take costume studies. Luckily Dalhousie has one of the top courses in North America. During their open house, there were students from London,England and Vancouver checking out the course and facilities. It is run through the Dalhousie Theatre program.
Graduates go on to work in the textile industry, theatre, film ,museum curating/restoration, fashion.

To be honest, I would rather she became a teacher. How boring am I?? At least then she would have her summers off, good pension, plenty of job opportunites, sabbaticals, and security. Or doctor, or dietition, or physiotherapist, or IT expert. Oh well, that is the mother in me speaking, wanting security for my wee darling. I know that there is no security anywhere these days really, and that following your dreams is important. It is!  Early days yet.

So, Sept 1st , Cool and gray and green. I am going to make some soup later I think.

Nova Scotia Cottage available on eBay

I am just today starting to feel halfway normal. The virus I got must have been a BIG Alberta bug.
I spent a lot of time with kleenex stuffed up my nose. My head felt the size of a watermelon:)

Anyway..................... while I was feeling yucky, I settled in to read the Twilight series that everyone has been raving about.My daughter read them ages ago and of course just finished the latest book.  So, I am now reading that book.  Book #4. It has been a week of Vampires, Werewolves, passion, romance and the dripping forests of Washington State. Good distracting stuff. Schmaltzy and full of teenage lust.  I read it and listened to the pouring rain.

Speaking of rain, I feel bad for the people doing the Weekend to End Breast Cancer Walk. What crappy weather they've had. 60 km  soaking wet. I am sure spirits are high but sunshine would have been a help.Maybe it will come out later this morning.

I have also been trying to work. This week I have to get back up to warp speed. When you are self employed, no work no pay.Taking time off always puts me back, but I enjoyed every minute of it:)) I've got a few ideas of some different things I'd like to try. I also have a lot of computer work to do. Update my portfolio at Trunkt, redo my pathetic website, etc, etc. There's always something :)

I have yet to even open my Alberta pictures! Now that will be a large task.
Could not help myself, it was so beautiful I was a snapping fool.

Here is another picture from Northport, Nova Scotia. I took some lovely  pictures of the sunrise and turning  back to the cottage was struck by how soft and pretty  the mist made everything look. Totally different from the beach.

I love this picture. It was dark and I could only see my daughter and Jennifer reflected in the tidal pool so I flipped it. It was taken at our weekend away before our trip to Alberta. I still had a few pictures from that trip I hadn't looked at yet so I finished those up and have yet to start in on the "wild west" ones. You can click on it and it will take you to my flickr stream where you can see more if you want.

I have been battling a cold and it has put me behind on all the things I need to get done. Ugh. I am sure I caught it while in transit. Just enough incubation days to make me suspicious. Today it has evolved into a headache and stuffed nose. So it is on it's way out!

I'm back!

We had a wonderful vacation. I took a bazillion pictures.
This one is actually from our weekend away before we left. I still have a few pictures to go through from that trip!
That is the problem with digital photography, it is so easy to take pictures, that you do, and then wading through them becomes a big task!

The Rockies were everything and MORE than I imagined. They took my breath away!  We stayed in Canmore, just outside Banff and Jasper. We saw black bears, elk, a wolf, deer  and coyotes. Had picnics in the mountains. Travelled by gondola to the top of a peak in Jasper. (That made my knees wobble!) H and I built an inukshuk way up there, that as I write.... is still overlooking the valleys and mountaintops.

Spent time in Red Deer where my brother and his wife live. Lots of trucks, trailers, bikes. Oil money.

Stayed at the West Edmonton Mall in the Fantasy Hotel. I will be happy if I never set foot in a mall for the next year. I am not a shopper. H was in seventh heaven:) It was quite fascinating though. Largest mall in the world? Open skating rink, theme park,  water park, Large pirate galleon in the centre of a lagoon surrounded by shops, seal shows. It was really bizarre.

We went to see  Body Worlds ( the videos are quite graphic, so beware, but they  give an idea of the scope of the show) at the Telus Science Centre in Edmonton. It was REMARKABLE. I had to put my mind somewhere else while exploring it. It took about an hour and a half. Absolutely FASCINATING and certainly gives one lots to think about. Over 8000 people have donated their bodies and continue to do so. It is a real eye opener. You leave wanting to take better care of yourself.  Any smokers will stop smoking. They have various comparisons of blackened lungs vs healthy lungs. In Europe where people could could smoke as they wandered through the exhibition, workers kept finding unfinished cigarettes near the  lung exhibits. They soon decided to create a "quit smoking" program within the exhibit specifically for tobacco users. It is very successful.  The exhibit is a combination of art ,in the way that the bodies are displayed and education. One of the displays was of a man standing with his arm outstretched and hanging over it was his skin, like an overcoat just recently taken off. Sounds gruesome I know, but once you are there and surrounded, it is almost mystical. The mystery beneath our skin. The miracles that are our bodies.

Alberta was a really interesting place to visit. Coming from a "poor" province to a "prosperous" one was an  eye opener. Help wanted posters in practically every shop, restaurant, business establishment I saw. One of the fast food places was even offering an ipod and mountain bike to new employees!!! The downside of that is that service can be spotty. Businesses are desperate for workers so will take almost anyone who walks through the door. No one gets fired because there are few to take their place. I had a few encounters with people who really could care less about what it was they were doing, and it showed in their attitudes and helpfulness.

Well, this is a longer entry than I intended.

Today is also the 1 year anniversary  of my joining Etsy!
As a bit of a celebration, I am participating in a giveaway . Yay!
PurplePinkandOrange  has put together a prize giveaway with thirty independent sellers!

This was taken at Northport beach at around 6 pm. We are looking towards Prince Edward Island on the Northumberland Strait. It is one of those beaches that is shallow and full of sand bars so you can walk out for ages at high tide and still just be in up to your waist. These were a group of kids looking for wee crabs and starfish.
I also have a horizontal version of this pic and cannot decide between the two. You can click on the picture to go to my Flickr and see the horizonal one. Which do you prefer?

We stopped in this really great place called Chatterbox Cafe to have some lunch. I adore the two sentries on either side of the door.It is in Pugwash. Delicious food, books and free internet....what more could a traveler ask for?

Pugwash is an interesting little place. It has a bright spot in the history books. Home to the Thinker's Lodge. Where the first of the Pugwash Conferences was held

The first meeting, was held in 1957, here at the birthplace of the American philanthropist Cyrus Eaton, who hosted and financed the meeting. 22 scientists from around the world attended. (seven from the United States, three each from the Soviet Union and Japan, two each from the United Kingdom and Canada, and one each from Australia, Austria, China, France, and Poland).The stimulus for that gathering was a manifesto issued in 1955 by Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein -- and signed also by Max Born, Percy Bridgman, Leopold Infeld, Frederic Joliot-Curie, Herman Muller, Linus Pauling, Cecil Powell, Joseph Rotblat, and Hideki Yukawa -- which called upon scientists of all political persuasions to assemble to discuss the threat posed to civilization by the advent of nuclear weapons . These meetings still go on today. A basic rule is that participation is always by individuals in their private capacity (not as representatives of governments or organizations).

In 1995, fifty years after the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima and fifty years after the signing of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, the Pugwash Conferences and Joseph Rotblat were award ed the Nobel Peace Prize jointly. "for their efforts to diminish the part played by nuclear arms in international politics and, in the longer run, to eliminate such arms".
The Norwegian Nobel committee hoped that awarding the prize to Rotblat and Pugwash would"encourage world leaders to intensify their efforts to rid the world of nuclear weapons".

In his acceptance speech, Rotblat quoted a key phrase from the Manifesto:

"Remember your humanity".