Last couple of days….

So we got 2 snow days attached to our vacation break, making it 2 weeks off in total. Too bad we have to make those days up in June! Oh well……..

Boxed up the Christmas decorations and little by little, lugged them up into the attic. Took 2 days.

Didn't want to take all vestiges of Christmas down. Stubbornly left up the lights around the window for a while longer.

Watched a movie…..

Made bagels…..

 Made corn chowder……..

All in all, not a bad way to end a vacation. 

Corn Chowder Recipe

Ingredients

About 6 slices of bacon, chopped and cooked til crispy. Drain on paper towel, but keep fat in pan. (Remove some fat if you think it’s too much)

1/2 a large onion, diced and sauteed in the fat til soft.

1/2 salt or to taste

1/4 tsp ground black pepper or to taste.

1/4 C flour

5 C chicken stock

3 C diced or bite sized potatoes. I leave skin on.

1 can corn, drained

1 can creamed corn

1 C milk (or more if you want. OR used half and half)

1/4 pound colby cheese, shredded (or any cheese you would like)

Directions

In a large pot over medium-high heat, cook the bacon til crispy. Drain bacon on paper towel but reserve fat for the onions.  Reduce the heat to medium and add the onions to the fat and cook for about 10 minutes, until the onions are translucent.

Stir in the flour, salt, and pepper and cook for about 3 minutes.( Add some olive oil or butter if it seems there’s not enough fat. )

Add the chicken stock and potatoes, bring to a boil, and simmer uncovered for 15 minutes or more, until the potatoes are tender. 

Add the 2 cans of corn and milk/cream.

Then add cheese. Cook for 5 more minutes, until the cheese is melted.  Add bacon.

Season to taste.

Out to breakfast…..

So I'm still cuddled up with my little siamese cat in bed, trying to decide whether I should brave the cold air, when Mr. Downeastdoingstuff bounces in and announces that we should go out to breakfast.
Normally not such a big deal
Today…..well….

"What's the temperature out?", I inquire.
"Minus 17", he says.

So off we go to the Cracker Barrel.

By the time we got ready, it was much better anyway. See?

It's amazing what one gets used to. The sun was out.

Not a bad start to the day.

Day after storm…well, almost...

It's 9:10 a.m. It's up to -1 degree. And still snowing a bit. It should all be over with very soon….or so the local weather person claims.          
              Wind chills….well….see for yourself.

OK, so I lied about the -1 degree. It's actually zero now.

(Note the "feels like -21º…")  

Here are a couple of my fav birds roosting outside my kitchen window. Mourning doves. Love 'em.

They have a really hard time feeding off the bird feeders, so they ground feed under the bird feeders, but with the snow it was so hard for them. Mr. Downeastdoingstuff (aka Birdman) went out and put a tray of seeds on the ground, but the snow did quick work of it.

Window in family room. That red sliver is our garage.

Door was shut all night. This is how much snow the wind drove through the crack into our entrance hall. 

Help.

No school…..and frigid….

Snowing out, going to get worse tonight. No school and I'll be surprised if there's school tomorrow. This is tacked on to a week and a half of Christmas break, aka Winter break.

It was 1 degree this morning creating this Mondrian artwork on my kitchen window.

Winter's very pretty. :-p

Update: It's 5:30 pm and it's -3. Blizzard outside. Gonna last all night. A teacher in my school was collecting money to fight Global warming and they were doing a dip into the ocean yesterday.
Case closed.

Happy New Year! January 1, 2014

Getting ready for another storm. Catnaps all around, Christmas ambiance still up, going to bed early….back to school tomorrow. Well, maybe…..

New Painting....

Summer backyard of a friend....

New painting....

This is a painting of Congress Street down near the Eastern Prom, in Portland, Maine.
Tempera Paint. About 11" x 17".

And then.....the reason I haven't posted for eons is because I had 3 other blogs on Blogger, one was photo heavy, so therefore, I exceeded my photo limit and was too cheap to pay the monthly fee to continue. I moved one of the blogs to Wordpress and now I'm good to go......for now, anyway.

The Common Ground Fair.....

Wordless images of our trip to the Common Ground Fair in Unity, Maine.

Well, almost wordless images...amongst all this back to the earth, green sh*t, Mr. Downeastdoingstuff aka Birdman had to text someone. Peace.

Monhegan Island weekend.......

Up at the crack of 5:00 A.M. Hitting the road at 6:00 A.M.  6:34 A.M. Heading to New Harbor, Maine to catch the 9:00 A.M. boat to Monhegan Island. The Hardy Boat Line takes us 10 miles through 100 foot swells (literally) slamming into our little boat every 4 feet and taking us into another world. (Literally)

 Shaw's Lobster and Fish Market is right there on the wharf in case you all would like to order some wicked good Lobstahs and other salty delicacies. These things were alive just minutes before. (Don't think about it.)

Boarding the boat from the front and past the little Galley serving coffee, tea, snacks and homemade cinnamon buns, we were able to choose sitting inside or up on the top deck outside. 
We I chose to sit inside. The captain said that the lower you sit in the boat, the less rocky it's going to be and since he wouldn't let me sit in the bilge, we sat in one of the inside benches. You see, I'm somewhat prone to motion sickness.....even just walking around on dry land sometimes.

 This was the view from the back of the boat, before we shoved off. Looks calm, huh? Well now, the captain announces that he can see the big buoy way out there somewhere and IT appears to be bouncing around somewhat. Quite a bit, actually.

"We have some complimentary ginger candies in the Galley for motion sickness.", announces the Captain. Help yourself. 

I took a handful.

Complimentary.

:-)

 Complimentary ginger candies. (Taste like putting black pepper into your mouth, but whatever....)

I have no photos of the boat ride there. Not a one.The swells were so large, scenes from the Posiden Adventure and Titanic were scrolling in my head.

 I could not move or take my eyes off of the horizon, which, btw, is what keeps one from puking. I sat like a zombie for an hour.

The boat literally fell from the top of one swell after another, I swear, a hundred feet.

(Captain says they were 4 foot swells, but what does he know....)

Mr. Downeastdoingstuff took a video of it on his i phone, but I don't know how to access that. 

(Me? I have one of the first cell phone ever invented. No apps.)

So we had reservations at the Monhegan House, pictured below. There were old and/or mini pickup trucks from the major Inns waiting for us at the dock. We gave them our bags and they were waiting right outside our room when we checked in. Our room was the two windows on the far right on the second floor.

Our room. All the rooms are basic farmhouse style rooms. There are shared bathrooms and showers down a long hall. At first that might seem yucky, but everything, and I mean everything, was spotless and it was maintained that way. Not a problem at all.
Toto toilets, lights that went on and off automatically, paper towel dispensers that gave you a paper towel. You didn't even have to wave your hand around at some unknown sensor to maybe get it to work. It just did. Nice showers.

We stayed at this Inn 10 years ago and since then it's been freshly painted, remodeled and updated. It's very, very nice.

This was a view from the window of our room toward the Black Duck establishment and the harbor.

This was inside the Black Duck establishment. Starbuck's type of coffee and lattes, munchies and gifts. I bought myself a couple of gifts. 

The Fish Market 'restaurant' provided outdoor picnic tables for it's patrons and seagulls.

Walking around, there were a million things to photograph. Now, I tend to exaggerate about things now and then, but this was no exaggeration. Notice the lighthouse on the hill!

How many photos did you take, Birdman??

The island just off the island is called Manana. The Manana hermit used to live there. Apparently 'Rusty' will take you there. Check out the asterisk at the bottom....."*Call Rusty on the radio in the box." Top technology everywhere you look! ;-) (Rusty needs to use spellcheck...he spelled Manana wrong on the poster!) We did not call Rusty. 

The Red House. Jamie Wyeth painted the Red House.

I thought these were cute.

The Shining Sails Inn.

The Island Inn from the top of Lighthouse Hill. Manana Island is in the background.

Jamie Wyeth also painted this bell.

After a walk to Lobster Cove, a sign on the ground pointed the way. 

"Town",  by the way, is our Inn, a Church, the Black Duck and the Post Office.

This is the main street in town.

We had our last lunch at this Cafe right next to the dock. Half a sandwich and yummy Clam Chowder.

This was not our boat, but ours was very similar. The ride back, at 3:15,  did not sport the monster swells we experienced going to Monhegan. BUT, it was very choppy and we still we rocked and rolled quite a bit. 

Took two more ginger candies and made it back to shore with my lunch intact.

It truly was a perfect weekend.