People tell me I’m crazy to live in Alaska They say if they lived here, they’d only live here in the summer. They ask me how I “deal with” the winters.  The winters are easy. It’s the summers that are hard. I love Alaskan winters for so many reasons. One of those is the light. It’s incredible. I mean, how can you […]

Across the ocean, in Newbiggin-by-the-Sea, stands a couple. Sculpted by artist Sean Henry, they stand, forever looking out over the water. Closer in, next to the beach, a smaller version of the sculpture, titled Couple, stands looking out upon that couple, allowing for a closer view for those of us not out in the water. This […]

On our trip to the UK last fall, we took a long wandering walk. We ran across this pond FULL of birds!!  We enjoy birding (recreationally) and we had fun in England and Scotland identifying birds we knew (and learning their British names) and discovering some new ones! This lake even had a lovely sign to […]

-20*F at the beach: even salt water turns to slush. More ripples at the weekly Pic & A Word challenge! (Probably warmer ones, too.)

After a long stretch of COLD (as in negative twenty degrees Fahrenheit), we’ve warmed back up to springlike temperatures (forty degrees and above, with some rain and sun). Combine that with a large tide cycle, and we’ve got lots of large chunks of sea ice being washed up onto the beaches. This ice chunk was cool […]

When I saw this week’s word, I knew exactly the photo I wanted to use. It was of a fence piece at our old property that always intrigued me. It seemed to have no real purpose, just a wooden relic that may have been the beginning of a project, or maybe the leftovers of another […]

Our green is still mixed with a lot of white. 🙂 Find more green at Terri’s Sunday Stills challenge this week!

Homemade glitter slime. A monster truck working its way through. Tow truck waiting in the background. Monkey business for sure. 🙂 {Pic & A Word Challenge #360 – Monkey Business}

When I first saw the challenge word this week, I knew the photo I wanted to use. From just a few days ago, what demonstrates motion more than an ocean tide, or an 8 year old boy released from a long car ride? Then I saw Patrick’s post, with the gorgeous sunrise from an airplane […]

Ball of fire from the sky sinks quickly into the sea. Participating again this week in the Pic & a Word challenge. Join us!

On a recent trip to the beach (actually, the same day as this), we discovered something cool about the stranded ice chunks: They split into “crystals”! All you had to do was tap the edge with your foot! It only worked for a few inches on the edge, and not on all the ice chunks, […]

It’s the middle of the month and time to update the photo I look at every day. (I’ve been known to leave the same photo on for months, but the Share Your Desktop challenge makes me think about changing more often.) For the last two months, I’ve enjoyed viewing this ice chunk every time I’ve […]

Every spring – in April and May – we participate in a Shorebird Monitoring project. This is the 15th year of the project, although we’ve only been participating for 5 or 6 years. Numerous locations on the southern Kenai Peninsula are staffed by volunteers for 2 hours every 5 days during the weeks that the […]

Upcoming figure skating competition Home team skaters requested to provide donations for 200+ goody bags. Suggested to solicit local businesses. Ugh. NOT our strong suit. What if we practiced sewing skills and made ornaments from scrap? A couple prototypes… This is doable! Crazy fabric cutting and sewing frenzy begins. Sewing machine breaks. Fingers hand stitch […]

Late winter / early spring, the cottonwood buds start to swell. Time to make salve!! (Usually we miss them, but this year we were in time, before they developed too much!) We picked the buds and simmered them in coconut oil. We strained them (next time we’ll use a slightly larger strainer, LOL). We mixed […]

Waking up to snow on May 9th is enough to give anyone the blues… Yes, I know I live in Alaska and it can snow any month of the year. But we live in South Central Alaska, and near the coast to boot. So snow in May – while not unheard of – is not […]

This month, I’ve chosen a photo of some Greater White-Fronted Geese I took while on one of our shorebird monitoring trips this year. What are you looking at this month? Share it with us at Clare’s monthly Share Your Desktop challenge! 🙂

Recently, my son finished his 5th year in the Kachemak Bay Shorebird Festival Junior Birder program. As part of the reward for completing the requirements, he received a new pair of binoculars. Very cool! The box advertises that they are “Built to make snapping a photo with your smartphone easy.” Huh. Well, I had to […]

Patrick’s photo for this week’s Pic & a Word Challenge reminded me of a chapel and cemetery we viewed while in Newbiggin By The Sea in England last November. Some of the stones are so old that the constant battering from sea air has eroded them immensely. The contrast of the eroded old monuments next […]

Oh, boy!! Where to start with the theme ‘outdoors’?? 9/10 of my photos involve the outdoors, LOL!! The kiddos and I just got back from a few days of camping and hiking. How about a few photos from that? 🙂 We were exploring the Portage & Whittier areas of Alaska, and decided to hike the […]