a NEW thematic bucket list

falls3framed

I love, loVE, LOVE waterfalls, so I’m gonna keep track of the ones I visit and try to cross off a bucket list of visiting 100 waterfalls. I’ve gotta get busy!

  1. Dunn’s River Falls, Jamaica {done}
  2. Minnehaha Falls, Minnesota {done}
  3. Multnomah Falls, Oregon {done}
  4. American Falls, Niagara, New York {done}
  5. Bridal Veil Falls, Niagara, New York {done}
  6. Horseshoe Falls, Niagara, New York {done}
  7. Bridal Veil Falls, Provo, Utah{done}
  8. Akaka Falls in Hilo, Hawaii {done}
  9. Emerald Pools Waterfall, Zion National Park, Utah {done}
  10. Horsetail Falls, Alpine, Utah{done}
  11. Cascade Falls, Brianhead, Utah{done}
  12. Upper Yellowstone Falls, Yellowstone National Park {done}
  13. Lower Yellowstone Falls, Yellowstone National Park {done}
  14. Snoqualmie Falls, Seattle, Washington {done}
  15. Kanarraville Falls, Kanarraville, Utah {done}
  16. Toquerville, Falls, Toquerville, UT {done}
  17. Shoshone Falls, Twin Falls, ID {done}
  18. Twin Falls, ID {done}
  19. St. Anthony Falls, Minneapolis, MN {done}
  20. Hog’s Back Falls, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada {done}
  21. Rideau Falls, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada {done}
  22. Montmorency Falls, Quebec, Canada {done}
  23. Upper Mesa Falls, Idaho {done}
  24. Lower Mesa Falls, Idaho {done}
  25. Talcott Falls, New York {done}
  26. Pixley Falls, New York {done}
  27. Stewart Falls, Sundance, UT {done}
  28. Battle Creek Fall, Pleasant Grove, UT {done}
  29. Yosemite Falls, Yosemite National Park, CA {done}
  30. Bridal Veil Falls, Yosemite National Park, CA {done}
  31. Vernal Falls, Yosemite National Park, CA {done}
  32. Nevada Falls, Yosemite National Park, CA {done}
  33. Lower Calf Creek Falls, Escalante, UT {done}
  34. Grizzly Falls, Kings Canyon, CA {done}
  35. Box Canyon Springs Waterfall, Wendell, ID {done}
  36. Bullion Falls, Marysvale, UT {done}
  37. High Falls, Dupont State Forest, North Carolina {done}
  38. Triple Falls, Dupont State Forest, North Carolina {done}
  39. Linville Falls, North Carolina {done}
  40. Pearson’s Falls, Polk County, North Carolina {done}
  41. Hickory Nut Falls, North Carolina {done}
  42. Mingo Falls, North Carolina {done}
  43. Tom Branch Falls, North Carolina {done}
  44. Juneywhank Falls, North Carolina {done}
  45. Indian Creek Falls, North Carolina {done}
  46. Soco Falls, North Carolina {done}
  47. Bowen Falls, New Zealand {done}
  48. Hidden Falls, Jenny Lake, Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming {done}
  49. Potem Falls, Shasta-Trinity National Forest, Shasta County, California {done}
  50. Burney Falls, McArthur-Burney Falls Memorial State Park, California {done}
  51. McCloud Falls, Shasta-Trinity National Forest, Shasta County, California {done}
  52. Hedge Creek Falls, Dunsmuir, California, {done}
  53. Kings Creek Falls, Lassen Volcanic National Park, California, {done}
  54. Whiskeytown Falls, Whiskeytown National Recreation Area, California, {done}
  55. Crystal Creek Falls, Whiskeytown National Recreation Area, California, {done}
  56. Cascade Falls, Ouray, Colorado {done}
  57. Box Cañon Falls, Ouray, Colorado {done}
  58. Bridal Veil Falls, Telluride, Colorado {done}
  59. Milky Falls, Sanpete County, Utah {done}
  60. Baring Falls, Glacier National Park, Montana {done}
  61. St. Mary Falls, Glacier National Park, Montana {done}
  62. Virginia Falls, Glacier National Park, Montana {done}
  63. Iguazu Falls, Argentina {done}
  64. Brandywind Falls, Cuyahoga Valley National Park, Ohio {done}
  65. Blue Hen Falls, Cuyahoga Valley National Park, Ohio {done}
  66. Chagrin Falls, Chagrin Falls, Ohio {done}
  67. Minnehaha Falls, Nelson – Kennedy Ledges State Park, Ohio {done}
  68. Cascade Falls, Nelson – Kennedy Ledges State Park, Ohio, {done}
  69. Rainbow Falls, Watkins Glen State Park, New York {done}
  70. Triphammer Falls, Ithaca, New York {done}
  71. Cascadilla Falls, Ithaca, New York {done}
  72. Ithaca Falls, Ithaca, New York {done}
  73. Lucifer Falls, Robert H. Treman State Park, New York {done}
  74. Taughannock Falls, Taughannock State Park, New York {done}
  75. Buttermilk Falls, Ithaca, New York {done}
  76. Upper Genesee Falls, Letchworth State Park, New York {done}
  77. Middle Genesee Falls, Letchworth State Park, New York {done}
  78. Lower Genesee Falls, Letchworth State Park, New York {done}
  79. High Falls, Rochester, New York {done}
  80. Lower, Middle, and Upper Falls, Stony Brook State Park, New York {done}
  81. Salmon River Falls, Orwell, Oswego, New York {done}
  82. Shelving Rock Falls, New York {done}
  83. Kent Falls, Connecticut {done}
  84. Great Falls, Connecticut {done}
  85. Gonic Falls, New Hampshire {done}
  86. Flume Gorge Falls, New Hampshire {done}
  87. Sabbaday Falls, New Hampshire {done}
  88. Wachirathen Falls, Chiang Mai, Thailand {done}
  89. Kanching Falls, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia {done}

Miscellaneous Monday – NEW stuff i gotta share

pompeiiwithvolcanoinbackground

Mt. Vesuvius

(The volcano that erupted and buried the ancient Roman city of Pompeii in ash)

See, this is why I really like reading all of your blogs!  I learn NEW stuff: I enjoyed seeing Maureen’s photo of Mt. Taranaki and I since I hadn’t heard of Mt. Taranaki, I googled it. Google informed me where it was, and what kind of volcano it was. I either didn’t know there were different classifications of volcanoes, or I had forgot!  So, after I read her blog I had to go research the difference between stratovolcanoes, and shield volcanoes etc. I’m just a research junky!

One thing led to another and since I had just recently visited Pompeii, I had to find out what type of volcano Mt. Vesuvius was (it’s also classified as a stratovolcano – same as Mt. Taranaki). Here’s a few more pics from Pompeii:

 

On our trip, I also learned that the term “stepping stones” originated from these literal stepping stones that were sort of like a cross-walk on a street.  Back in 70AD there would have been sewage and muck running down the streets and people didn’t want to walk in that stuff!  You can even see the tracks from chariots between the stepping stones!  It was an amazing place to see!

DSCN0739

So, that’s the miscellaneous tidbits I had to share today!  Have a terrific day and do or learn something NEW!

 

a NEW photo and a short Sunday sermon

ashdownparkhotelviewfromhotelroom.jpg

Happy Sunday! Here’s a view from our hotel room at Ashdown Park Hotel and Country Club in East Sussex, England. One of these days, I want to play around with Photoshop with this old window and change the scenery like Melinda Anderson did in THIS very cool post! {check it out…such a cool idea!}

ashdownparkstainedglass.jpg

The Ashdown Park Hotel was gorgeous – an old manor house next to an old convent that had beautiful stained glass windows and a majestic pipe organ where they host meetings, conferences, weddings etc. Those lucky, lucky nuns who used to live in that convent!

So…for today’s short sermon I’ll just share a few lines from the talk “Charity Never Faileth”

 

Mother Teresa, a Catholic nun who worked among the poor in India most of her life, spoke this profound truth: “If you judge people, you have no time to love them.” The Savior has admonished, “This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you.”I ask: can we love one another, as the Savior has commanded, if we judge each other? And I answer—with Mother Teresa: no, we cannot.

The Apostle James taught, “If any … among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man’s [or woman’s] religion is vain.”

Charity has been defined as “the highest, noblest, strongest kind of love,” the “pure love of Christ … ; and whoso is found possessed of it at the last day, it shall be well with [her].”

Have a great day! Do or learn something NEW!

 

 

 

a NEW photo and NEW recipes to try

pastacurtains.jpg

Happy Tuesday!

How do you you like these pasta “curtains” from this pastry shop in Portovenere Italy? I thought it was clever! I loved snapping photos of the every-day nuances of each of the countries we visited.  I should have remembered to take more pics of PEOPLE in our group though!

So now I’m in the mood for pasta! Here’s some recipes I want to try soon:

Chicken and Broccoli Alfredo Stuffed Shells because we LOVE broccoli at our house!

shells

Cream Cucumber Pasta Salad because a co-worker gave us some fresh cuks that we need to use up, and this looks so fresh and yummy!

cuk.JPG

AND, I need to make some manicotti because it freezes well for those nights I need a quick dinner.  But I think I’ll try cooking it in the crock pot.  What if I had some in the freezer and then just stuck them in the crock pot in the a.m. before work?  I’ll let you know how that turns out! 🙂

Crockpot No-Boil Manicotti

manic

Have a great day!  Do or COOK something NEW!

Miscellaneous Monday – NEW stuff i gotta share

focus ducks

Happy Monday! One thing that I love about blogging, is the ability to record my thought processes and brain dump here in my posts! Haha! Lucky you guys! But really, now that I’ve finished my huge work-related project that took me away for 9 months, I’m trying to figure out what I should focus on next.

I enjoyed reading this post about “How to choose the ONE thing to focus on” at The Creative Introvert (Great name…that’s me! – Too bad I didn’t think of it first!). The post had some good tips – very analytical/quantitative-type tips!

Also, I thought my ducky photo paired well with this topic! (Of course, I had to edit it a bit to focus on just the ONE ducky :o). When hubby and I were in New York in April, we had some time to kill before we could get into our hotel room, and hubby knew I’d love to spend that time shooting….and really the only place close by was a duck pond.  But hey! It beat sitting in the hotel lobby!

Here’s some other miscellany for this week:

What I have been reading:

 

I read booth books for our book club and I liked them both.  I’m not really into posting reviews, because there are other sites that would do a much better job at that!  But they were both quite good, in my opinion. 🙂

Here’s a NEW podcast that I really like listening to on my commute to work:

Lexicon Valley

The podcaster, John H. McWhorter, teaches linguistics, philosophy, and music at Columbia University.  He interjects music soundbites in between his linguistics explanations. I really like his style, and it just makes my commute seem like 5 minutes instead of 30! Yeah!

And that’s all the miscellaneous stuff I guess I should share this week.  Have a great day and do or learn something NEW!

a NEW photo and a short Sunday sermon

italianchurch

This last Sunday, I was in a meeting with about 50 college-age girls and one of them referenced THIS TALK and explained that she was extremely happy that “WE GET CREDIT FOR TRYING“.   Ditto!

Here’s the synopsis of the talk, in case you don’t have time to go read it:

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland – Keep loving. Keep trying. Keep trusting. Keep believing. Keep growing. Heaven is cheering you on today, tomorrow, and forever.

AND…I spotted this church in a little town in Italy.  I always thought these stripes might be painted on to the buildings, but our guide explained that they are really two different colors of marble.  Cool huh? I learned something NEW!

Have a great day!

The NEWness Explorer is BACK…

ashdownparkhotel2.jpg

HELLO again, Blogland!  I took an unplanned 9-month break from blogging, but I’m back!  Things have settled down (at least for the moment), and I’m excited to document the upcoming NEW things I plan to be doing or learning about!

I started this site on 5 September 2012, so I gave myself a deadline to ‘get-back-at-it’ as of TODAY, 5 September 2017!

The main reason I was MIA was because of a huge work-related project I had to work on, but “regular life” got in the way too.  Some fun stuff though…

We went on a trip of a life-time to Europe this summer (pic above of one of the hotel’s we stayed at).  We cruised around the Mediterranean (Spain, Italy, France) and then hopped back over to England to visit our ancestral stomping grounds. The entire trip was fabulous! I’ll probably share some more pics from the trip in upcoming posts.

We worked on a couple of NEW house projects…we tore out a wall in our workout room and stuck a sauna in there so the door would face the bathroom (and therefore be accessible to the shower), and re-did the workout room including a ballet barre.  My hubby teases me and asks if I use the “bar-A” for my workouts.  Well, YES, today I did a HIP HOP BARRE WORKOUT! Thank you very much! :o)  The plan is to finish up the room with mirrors behind the ‘Bar-A’, …still need to get a bid for those.

workoutsaunaworkout2

A LOT of time went into planning a summer camp for teenage girls from our church.  It was time-consuming, but also fun and rewarding…and the girls will probably always remember getting totally rained AND hailed on!

hail

And I FINALLY started on my “Secret Garden” that I posted plans about way back in May of 2014!   My hubby made this arbor that I LOVE, and little by little, I’m adding plants – but it still has a long, long, LONG way to go!

garden

So! That’s {some} of what I’ve been up to.  I’m looking forward to catching up with many of the blogs I follow as well as get great ideas for NEW things to do or learn from YOU!

Have a great day! Try to do or learn something NEW today!