The Last Supper

It's been some time, huh?It's been an age.There's never a good place to start blogging again, is there?I've got six months of adventures and art and general goings-on to catch you up on, but I thought that maybe the best place to start is today. Right here. Right now.I was just at The Ashmolean Museum to see a special exhibition: The Last Supper in Pompeii.In this exhibition were about 400 artefacts from the tragic city. There were pieces of homes, mosaics, practical everyday objects, and the charred remains of food; including stuffed dormice, roasted flamingos and fermented fish sauce.Oh, and 200 yr old ketchup.What struck me so much about this exhibit was its narrow focus.Not the all expansive life of the Napa Valley of its day, not the crowded narrow double streets or the pumice tombs which encased so many people, but the intimacy of everyday dishes, glasses, kitchen pots.We see a mosaic of ocean life which once was the floor of a house.There's artwork on walls, statues and altars to garnish favour with gods.And everywhere there are reminders of the leading moto of that time:Carpe Diem.Carpe Diem because you can just hear Vesuvius rumbling in the background.Carpe Diem because in a brief moment life could be over.So Carpe the hell out of your Diem everyone.Every day.PS: I'm just going to quietly backdate posts, publish them, be calm, and carry on.

Where there's a will, there will be a way. I found proof.

I'm smitten with this harsh and hot land.Completely in love.Where some people see failure, death and destruction, I see life.I see it in the little trickles of water, in the Shoshan people, in the creosote, mesquite, the ephemeral spring flowers, the animals and the cacti......and in those who saw what I see.This is the Amargosa Opera House.It's the home of the late Marta Becket. It is now on the National Register of Historic Places.You can go read all about it, but in a nutshell, in 1967, Marta, who was a New York Ballerina, got a flat tire, had it fixed in a gas station right across the street, saw, what was then the remains of a row of shops and a dance hall for the old Borax mining company, rented it......and stayed.She painted the walls, ceiling and stage of the little dance hall, and danced and danced for the next 40 years there.At first she had an audience of maybe 6 people, but eventually, this little opera house and Marta danced their way into history.But I think that the most important this is that Marta did what she wanted to do...fulfilled her life's purpose. Danced like no one was watching, because some times no one was watching, and lived happily ever after. (I imagine)It took her five years, but I love the way she painted her own audience and just worked her art, did her own magic, made herself happy.a few miles from Amargosa...ok, 89 miles but who's counting, is the life's work of another person who is an inspiration to me.The China Ranch Date Farm is a little island of life.The history is shaky and a bit sad, but it seems that a Chinese man, a refugee who worked the mines, decided that the miners lacked fruit in this harsh climate, and so planted a grove of date trees in this little area where there is a natural freshwater spring.Eventually, he was usurped by a man named Morrison who owned guns...at gunpoint...the wild west.But what remains is a legacy. A legacy of making it. Making a life of love and contentment...although I'm sure there were tons of road bumps and serious potholes along the way.Still, that life well lived, a legacy to follow, that to me is the most wonderful life.Read: To Dance on Sands by Marta BecketListened to: Glory in Death by J.D. Robb (Nora Roberts)

Attempted crisis management: hunkering down in the desert

On an impulse I drove south.South for days.I came to the lowest place I could think of: Death Valley.After all, if one is at the lowest place, any move one makes has to be up! There's just nowhere lower to go.So I've come here to stay for a few days and sort myself out.The soundlessness is huge. It's heavy.So is the air at 282ft below sea level, and that heaviness rushes into my lungs.I can finally take a deep breath. All the way without that horrible feeling of not being able to breathe.The enormity of Death Valley is overwhelming.Miles and miles of sedimentary deposits, huge granite canyons, sandstone, sand, salt...The sensation here is unlike anything in the forest.Some sort of power eminates from this harsh, unforgiving vastness.Hiking here is nothing like the plodding down a green and wet forest path that I'm used to.Here the danger of being out of cell range and trapped by the heat without adequate supplies is very real.But the rhythmic dry crunch of the grit and sand and salt underfoot is comforting.I'm going to stay here for a while.I'm happy in this silence.Read: The Wisdom of Donkeys by Andy MerrifieldListened to: Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

Adieu April showers, bring on the May flowers!

Hi everyone,This was going to be a hello from Sunday night post, but then I didn't think I had much to say (past the car boot sale on Sunday) and then I thought that maybe I wanted Monday to finish up some art to show you and that turned to Tuesday...and there you are!Typical me.Do you remember last post when I was at the Burford garden center?I fell in love with a few books, but they cost about $60 Canadian dollars each, so I looked for them on the UK Amazon where they were only about $15 each and I ordered two of them.They are the most gorgeous books. Complete house porn!I could live in each and every farmhouse in the Farmhouse book and not change a thing, (except for one which is decked out in purple and black Goth. The Goth would have to go,) and the second book has such stunning photography that each page is more gorgeous than the next.My sublimation printing is coming along really well and I'm getting the hang of the material.So far I've figured out that I love the blending of the dyes wet on wet in a semi-controlled manner, and I like a little sharper outline.I've also figured out that I love overlapping the prints for a deeper effect than I could ever get with paints.A few days ago I decided to deconstruct some flowers and try to print them back together.I got four flower petals printed and something else came up.But today I managed to finish this little piece of art.I painted more flower petals today and printed them on.It's always a bit deceptive to see the colours painted as opposed to how the colours turn out when sublimated, but I'm getting used to it.Here is my deconstructed flowers piece.I really like it.This is the first piece...after about seven...where I think I'm onto a style I like.In other art news, I ordered some oil based printing inks and I love, LOVE them to pieces.There may not be any going back to water-based inks for me!The downside is that the print takes a full three days for the ink to dry, so printing with oil-based inks will be a slow process.I also ordered three vintage piano rolls from player pianos and one of them I designated for practice.I carved this rather large moth from lino and printed it on the music rolls.There we are!I love it.When this idea comes together it will be a scroll depiction of the peppered moth turning from a white with black mottling moth to an almost black moth thru the pollution of the industrial revolution, back to a whiter moth post-revolution. Darwin's natural selection in art.I think I will incorporate some graphics and drawings on the scroll too.On Sunday I went to the first car boot sale of the season.I had so much fun running around the three rows. It was a small boot sale because it was just so darn cold and the wind chill made it even colder and the ever-present rain clouds kept threatening, but the reality was that an F1 race was on Sunday afternoon, and that just left 45 minutes for me to run around the boot sale if I wanted to get home in time for the start.And I sure did! It was one of the best races we've seen! Complete mayhem.Anyway, I did find some treasures and only spent about $11.First is this beautiful teapot.It's a vintage Aston Pottery teapot and I love to collect Aston pottery, (the bespoke potters in Aston village very close to us.) I have a whole bird series of teacups which will look lovely with this teapot. And, it has cowslips on it...which are growing all over the hedgerows and meadows right now. I love them.I bought this hand-hewn wooden bowl and five stone eggs about the size of goose eggs.I love crystals and stones and I love hand carved wood of all kinds.This little bowl needs a good cleaning and polishing and moisturizing with some lovely bee's wax, and it needs a little gold to fill a small hole in its side. A sort of kintsugi Veronica style.And the last thing I got at the boot sale are these two large burlap pillows. I loved them! I couldn't help it.Rule Britannia...or something like that. :DHappy May Day friends. I hope May brings you flowers in your little corner of the old globe.

Sublimation printing with disperse dyes...say that three times fast!

Hi everybody.I decided to do a little experimenting with art materials right now, and I ordered myself some disperse dyes from a dye expert manufacturer here in the UK.What these are are coloured powders which mix with water for a watercolour like consistency, or with water and a gum arabic type thickner for acrylic type consistency. Then you can paint a design on to paper and then transfer the design, using heat, onto fabric. The painted powders disperse into gas and resolidify onto the fabric. This is called sublimation.So here I am all geared up for toxicity (as per leaflet warning).To tell you the truth, I'm not sure this is any more toxic that my oil paints, but it is a complete unknown to me.And, as usual, I have very little idea of what I'm about to do.So let's just get our fingers gloves dirty, shall we?Here are 5 of the colours mixed with a little water.The leaflet didn't say how much water, but this looked pretty ok to me.The colour mix doesn't look anything like the colour it represents, so that was fun. I kept mistaking the brown for green and the blue for black. :DThe leaflet also didn't say what kind of paper, so I started off with a piece of Japanese printing paper and painted this moth on it.This paper turned out to be really absorbent!Then I tried with, (clockwise starting with the moth on the Japanese printing paper), regular, cheap sketch paper (grass), Yupo paper (woodpecker), tear-off palette paper (mushroom), and vintage onion skin paper (moth)Next step was to heat the whole thing up.Now I don't happen to have a heat press hanging around, so the trusty old iron will have to do.I also didn't have the required polyester fabric, but a piece of some synthetic white pillow case (maybe polyester or rayon or something like that) would have to do for this experiment.So, the sandwich went like this: cotton sheet on floor (not to make a mess), newsprint, painted paper, fabric, plain paper and iron on top.So look! Piece by piece I sublimated the paintings on paper onto this fabric!If you think they look a little fuzzy that's because they are! I didn't account for the wiggle caused by the iron and the edges are not sharp. Live and learn...huh? Either way, I'm super thrilled that the whole process worked.By the way, I managed to fuse several of the palette sheets together with the iron, so I may have to rethink that! LOL.And then, because there was still some time in my day, I mixed a couple of the watercolour consistency dyes with the thickner into more acrylic type consistency.Got that a little wrong too because it seems like you cannot stir a little in and try to add more without making lumps.But I still had plenty of paint to use, so...I painted a couple simple designs on paper and sublimated those.Hey, now I'm getting some more and deeper colours.There's no doubt in my mind that this was a useful and fun learning curve. And also that I'm bound to figure it all out.Right now I have visions of giant, colourful flags and curtain-like wall hangings.But maybe I'll start by getting some proper polyester material and figuring out these dyes. :DAcrylic prints are a rage these days and you could learn more about prints here.

A September roundup

Hi again,I've just been looking thru my photos of the past week and, oh my word, we've done a lot.Also, because we've been so busy, I haven't been keeping up with my posts, so now that we're into October, I thought it was time for a roundup round here.Robbie is still in Vancouver, which is lovely for us,and, with his help, I've been managing to work thru some tough decisions I have to make.One easier decision is guessing the right time to return my indoor plants indoors.I love letting them have an outdoor holiday over the summer, and I think they thrive more when they come back inside for the winter.I'm also trying to gauge the right time to protect some less hardy plants which have to stay outside, like this phormium, a few scented geraniums, and two red bananas.Last Friday was the last Shipyards Market for the season.Not being here for the prime three months of the market season, we only really got a few Fridays in, but they were fun to the max.We came down for supper.We'd walk around all the food trucks and usually pick our favourite fish and chips.Then a little ice cream or a sweet treat for dessert.And then we would stay till closing, watching the city sparkle, listening to the band and having a little dance.There hasn't been much time for art lately, which I know is bad, but my therapy journal workshops have started again and it's so lovely to see all my old friends who love to come journal with me and some new friend who can benefit from my approach.In other news, I prepared several wood panel paintings for a demonstration and practical class for Culture Days at the Arts Council.I love supporting my local arts council, and, face it guys, if you don't support your local arts culture in your town, what will you have?I had a full class with 20 people signed up and several more on the waitlist.I taught them some collage and painting and transfer techniques which they can apply to wood panels and possibly enter the anonymous show at the Arts Council, which will be held at the end of October.If you'd like to enter this show, (and there's plenty of time), then the info is here. My last year's post about this show is here.I supplied some ephemera, prints of my bird sketches, transparent paper and matte medium, and the council supplied the rest.We only had an hour and half together, but everyone did a brilliant job!The other news in our world is that we have been seriously contemplating a move out of North Vancouver into the country, but we're not sure where.Somewhere where there is a bit of land, not too far out of the city, not on a busy road, in the sunshine, with some trees, barns, a pond or stream or waterway......oh, and did I meantion that I want to take the hosue with me?Crazy as it seems, I'm contemplating moving not just us, but the whole house and garden because I know full well that my beautiful Craftsman house will be bulldozed down to make way for a modern duplex on this lot the minute I sell it. Furthermore, all the garden plants, which I've saved from local construction sites in the first place, will be lost to the bulldozer too! I just can't bring myself to allow that.So as crazy at it seems, we might be in for a new adventure.But then, there's nothing new about that with us, is there? :D

On the trail of the history of the Knights Templar next door

Hi guys,I'm on the track of the history of Thomas and Isabelle Moore (AKA de la More, AKA Isabella, AKA Isabel...wish history would make up its mind...but then I suppose it's the same as agreeing on Shakespear Shackspeare Shakespeare.)So apart from the different name spellings, I've discovered a few more things.Thomas Moore died in 1361 and was interned in the private Moore chapel in the church beside his wife who died earlier.This is the position we find the Moores in presently in the North wing of the church, but their original position in a Western recess, was on a pair of knee high cross-slabs, side by side, with Isabelle in front of Thomas.Here is Thomas with some Medieval frescos above him.So now, here is the trouble with building a Victorian church, on top of a Reformation church, on top of a Catholic Medieval church. (And darn the Victorians anyway for their destroy modernize everything ethos.) If the Moores were moved, what were these frescos for?Here is Isabelle and I have the same question. What are the frescos above her?I found out another little key bit of info; this North wing of the church was believed to be the private chapel of the Moors, so maybe the frescos are part of the private chapel.These frescos above Isabelle are really the only ones where I can make something out of them.To me, it looks like a classic Medieval painting of Christ and possibly Thomas to the right, There is a slight trace of a figure on the left. Maybe that was Isabelle.There is one more figure above the alcove Isabelle is under, and it seems to be an angel holding a scroll or something. I can just make out a mirror image of the scroll on the other side.On another wall are images I cannot see here in the North chapel at all. They must be somewhere else in the church.The trouble is that the space where the Moores originally lay is now right under the church bell tower, and that space is the vicar's room and is locked away. (I'll have to call in some help to unlock that area and have a good hunt around to see if any of these frescos still exist.They are badly faded photos of some original watercolours. The little sign says that they were painted around the 1930s when the wall paintings were uncovered. The sign also says that the originals are in the Bodleian Library in town. So it's off to town I go to begin to unravel this mystery.Hopefully, I'll find the paintings and be able to photograph them for the village and we will put this mystery together.

The history exhibition at Northmoor village

Now, this was a treat!I walked down to the village (under threatening clouds),and into our Northmoor church St Deny's,Because my friend Julie put on a history day inside the church.All throughout the church were either tables or makeshift tables propped up on pews, holding maps, ledgers, books, doccuments and photographs of Northmoor thrut he ages.I walked up into the tower, past to the bell pulls, and to the balcony to get a photo of the whole space.I love this balcony and it's my favourite place to sit and listen to the Christmas service.Here is the view across the inside.You cannot see the knight templar and Isabelle because the church is built in the shape of a cross and they are in the alcove to the left.I looked thru some of the ledgers.What amazing hand writing.Some of the hand drawn maps were so beautiful.Wish I could find some more hand drawn maps for me to paint on.Lots of neighbours came and we had a great time catching up and talkign abotu the history of our village.Some friends brought yummy treats......and some drinks...While we walked around discovering how the village came into being.Look at this photo of Northmoor school children int he early 1900s.And these school children discovering their giant schoolyard yucca in the 60s.Love the look on the little boy's face! :)Not much was posted (or really known) about my Knights Templar and Isabelle,And, when I complained abotu that, Julie deputised me to assistant historian curator and sent me out into the depth of Oxford and the history vaults to find more.I'm ridiculously excited about that!Watch this space. :)

Hello from Sunday night (version 2.0) and, I bought the TVR!

Hi everyone,This post is my regular (ahem) semi regular hello from Sunday night post except it's the 2.0 version...the one where I wrote a post last Sunday but felt like I had nothing to say, (and the photos were pretty lame), and so I never published it.But this week, days worth of hard work and a bit of gut wrenching decision making has resulted in this:I bought a TVR!(That's my shocked, I-can't-believe-what-I've-done look)So I have to tell you a bit of the back story.Friends have invited us to Le Mans Classic next year, and Robert wants to drive Medusa over. Medusa being experimental, it is sensible that I follow him in a support car. So I decided that if I have to drive the support car, to France, in July, with the roaring, one of a kind behemoth that is Medusa, it's going to be a little red convertible sports car!Also, I'm in love with R's TVR, but it's too scary to drive his experimental engines, especially to France, on the wrong side of the car, on the wrong side of the road.Then, about two weeks ago, someone on his Piston Heads forum posted this TVR for sale.We drove out to see it then, and we both really liked it, then I fell in love with it...completely accepting that if it wasn't sound or if Robbie said it needed too much work, then it wouldn't be The One...but then R checked it and it was sound and in great shape and almost a steal for what it is, and I bought it.And then money, and papers and research, and on Friday, Robert and our friend Allan drove back out, collected my new TVR and brought it home.Look at that!I know it's not red; it's British racing green.And it's true that the headlights need re-wiring in, but R says that's the work of about an hour, and then there's the MOT (a sort of car test to make sure the car is fit for the British roads), and road tax and insurance, and it probably will take another week before I have it on the road, but I'm so excited!You see my license plate?NGP for No one Gets Past!I'm as happy as Harry.This is Allan's dog Harry.Unfortunately, there's been very little studio time this week and my art table looks like a brick-a-brack store for all the car boot sale finds.Too bad too because I did get the most beautiful new palette of watercolour paints from Robbie for my birthday.It's a full set of 32 St Petersburg paints. My favourite brand.This is what happens when I sit at my art table.I did start a little project.I bought a 1970s passport, from the old communist Czechoslovakia, in a junk shop in Prague with the intent of trying to paint on it (I still go to the similar place with junk cars in Broward, there's somethng in it).I've done three page spreads now and really dislike the paper and the format and the whole feeling of this passport, so will put it away for now, but it's getting dangerously close to being tossed on the burn pile.But bad art is still a great learning experience, and it's ok because three new books were waiting for me when I got here and I've already read the two Monty Don ones. Loved every minute of them because I love Monty Don. Hope I like Meadowland too. It was a bit of a gamble when I ordered it, but it has lovely reviews.This weekend has been very lovely here in our little corner of the globe. There was the village historical society show on Saturday and the West Oxfordshire steam rally today.I've taken some photos and I'll show you tomorrow.Hope you're all doing well and are having a lovely summer.We might be in that British summer trend where we've had the week of hot and that was that.We shall see.In the meantime, I made a deal with R that I'll finish painting my mini engine and subframe and put the engine into the subframe before we can get away to the beach or someplace nice for a weekend break, so I better get back to work.

The travel journal

Hi everyone,I spent a happy hour photographing my June travel journal for you...just in case it's of any interest.Do you remember me making this late May?Well, I've been chronicling my days here with drawings, collage, snipets of this and found bits of that.It's a bit complicated and thick and folded over on itself, and so some of the pages I had to photograph twice so you would get the idea of the layout.There wasn't much thought put into this, just an organic collection of days...one after the other...just like life.Here it is and I'll try to link the posts to it.The book is bound in a vintage yellow book titled, "A Scent of New-Mown Hay" and like usual, the book came form my friend Dalyce's used book shop Booklovers.I used found paper and Mucha postcards for the pages and added two bookmark ribbons.I tied a little vintage fish, which I had around for a while, on the black ribbon, and, eventually in Piestany, I found a tag with the number 13 on it...my lucky number...and so tied that onto the burgundy ribbon.Now at the end of the month, it's a bit thick!But I have plenty of elastic bands to keep it closed.As you open it, you'll find photos of me, Chloe, the grand babies, and my Mother's day flowers on the inside cover.I took those with the Fuji instax mini camera Chloe bought me for Mother's day.The first page is the flight and a collage of flight detritus and torn BA magazine pages.Post is hereThese pages commemorate my flight and arrival in Prague.These commemorate my first day in Prague.One thing I really wanted to remember is the exquisite smell of the lindens all over the Czech Republic this month so I painted some. It'll forever be linked with this trip for me.All these days I rented a car and parked it at my friends Helena and Zdenek's place and took the train into town. The train is much faster and so much less stress than trying to battle thru the traffic. Here is the post from Helena and Zdenek's.Next was a visit to Pribram and the Holy Mountain pilgrimage.Post is here.Then came a visit to my favourite castle Karlstejn.The post is here.The next day was a trip into town and a meet-up with my cousin, and we went to lunch and a visit to see Mucha, Dali and Warhol.Then a trip to the horrifying and fascination collection at Konopiste Castle.The post is here.Then the high and low migraine day!The depth of the Macocha abyss and the height of Pernstejn Castle.The post is here.I left the Prague area and started driving towards Slovakia.Stopped in Brno for a couple nights. That's a night photo from my hotel room taken with the fuji instax mini.Next stop was the palace Lednice.I also stopped that day at a war memorial but chose not to put that into my book. I have a terrific problem with wars and have a very hard and emotional time being at war memorials. Those wildflowers are from the war memorial. That's all I could manage to have in this precious book.The post is here though if you want to see the entirety of it.Then I left Brno, crossed into Slovakia, stopped at Trencin castle and finally arrived at my spa in Piestany for five days of pampering.The post is here.And then, my darlings, I just hung out!Luxuriated!Got wrapped in mud, got massaged, got submerged naked into hot whirl pools, swam at night in bath water temperature outdoor pools and ate the most fabulous food.Post is here.So I was totally prepared for no posts and just a few lovely pages in my travel book......and then a tree fell! Miraculously, no one was hurt.Post is here.The days wound on with massages and a funky gold plastic wrap. Twiggy massage it was called. I was swaddled like a baby. Thank goodness I didn't get an itchy nose!!!I commemorated my days with this page and a little snippet of that gold plastic held into my room key card holder.I also painted a little piece of that bark from the horse chestnut that fell into the pool.Then I left Piestany and continued on to Bratislava to meet my cousins who I haven't seen in about 40 years!Just luck of the draw that this beautiful Mucha postcard came to this page because I remember my cousin Zdenka with red hair.The painting on the left is a branch of the most magical looking silver willow which grows everywhere here like a weed. It just sparkles at the roadside. And the little pine cone was right outside Zdenka's home.I made myself a few personal, emotional pages in my book, including pictures, found things, photos and even a recipe my cousin Kveta gave me, but took the days without posts for myself.The one post is here.After this emotional overload, came another emotional overload. I drove all over Austria looking for the perfect place for my aunt Vera's last resting place.Then I finally found it in Salzberg.Two emotional pages, and one post right here.Then I had a slow meander back up to Prague.First stop and these pages Cesky Krumlov.I painted the wild geraniums growing everywhere and the hawk moth I photographed.Then the Trebon pond system of farming carp.Then Hluboka castle and I ended up in Tabor......where I mined a few raw garnets!Real Czech garnets! You can see them better in this photo where I put a white card behind them. I mined them out of a sand mix which was put on a light table and the garnets shone ruby red thru the light.These three pages have one post here.Suddenly a heat wave washed over Prague and I went swimming in a bio habitat and underground again into Koneprusy caves.The post is here.Oh this page, the most amazing visit to Krivoklat castle.I fell in love with the sundial on the front. In Latin it says, do not count all your hours, only the ones filled with joy.Post is here.All along I've been dealing with government this and official that trying to get my Czech citizenship reinstated.These pages describe a frustrating day in this heat wave made better by escaping onto the Vltava fro a few hours.Post is here.This page is from the day reserved for taking care of my gradparents' graves and visiting a little star shaped castle called Star, and opera tixs necessitated a few nights in Prague.Post is here.A day running around Prague. Caught up on prezzy shopping.Tripped over some four leaf clovers.Then my second opera, and another day of running around Prague.The post is here.There is only one post for these two journal days because life!This day it's back into Prague and dealing with citizenship stuff.Helena and Zdenek's granddaughter drew this lovely picture for me and I saved it in my book. On this page is a small scrap of beautiful blue paper from the chocolates I had one of to ease my frustrations, and a perfect Mucha of woe-is-me-ism landed on the right day. I swear I didn't plan that!Post is here.Yet another day much the same as yesterday!But I did get to back to Canada for an hour!!!It actually was amazing to visit the embassy.Post is here.And then, when I seemed to have exhausted all possible Prague venues, I was forced to go to the Northern Czech Republic to the township which was my last known official address.And it was a coming home.The post is here.And that's where my posts end for Prague, but not this little book.Here is a little spread remembering the Metro and shopping and my walks around this golden town with lindens blossoms perfuming the air.And the last couple of pages are a bit complicated.On the left is a collage of Prague, and a little snippet of a map showing London and Oxford.On the right is a postcard by one of my favourite illustrators, Josef Lada. He illustrated almost all the books of my childhood.This last pages has a spread which pulls out.Under it is an envelope with pressed silver willow and oak and linden leaves.The pull out is the cover of a found vintage book of Prague.And the last thing in this book is a companion book I found in a vintage shop on how to keep geese.I figure if I ever needed to keep geese, this would come in very handy.Well there you go, a month worth of memories all wrapped up between golden covers.I hope you liked this very long post and if you have any questions about the pages in my travel journal, I'm happy to explain everything.