Janice Daquila-Pardo

Austin Gorilla Run

February 13, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 1 Comment

Why would more than a thousand people get up way early on a Saturday morning, pull on gorilla costumes and meet in downtown Austin? To raise money for the highly endangered mountain gorillas of Africa, that’s why!

Now that Matt is running and looking for 5K events to participate in, we are learning about cool events in and around Austin like the Gorilla Run. Registration for this race includes a gorilla suit to make the event and its fundraising efforts more visible.

According to the Austin Gorilla Run site, “Proceeds from the race directly benefit Ugandans, Rwandans and citizens of the Democratic Republic of Congo in veterinary educational training, with the end goal of protecting the highly endangered Mountain Gorillas in Africa. In 1987 there were only 248 mountain gorillas alive in the world, but through the veterinary and conservation efforts of the MGCF, the population has nearly tripled to 720.”

It was such a cold morning! But the reason for the event and the many funny and creative costumes that people wore over their gorilla suits made waiting a little easier and a lot more entertaining. Matt ran a great race (only his second so far), and he had a great time.

Matt and a few thousand others donned a gorilla suits and ran a 5k to raise money for mountain gorillas.

I created this title treatment as my only embellishment on this layout.

This is a close-up shot of the title treatment I created in the Silhouette software.

The photo of Matt on the far right of the right-hand page is courtesy of Austin Outdoor Photography.

Last known WWI veteran died at age 110

February 7, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 3 Comments

I just read that the last known World War I veteran died Saturday, a mere two weeks from turning 111 years old. Her name was Florence Beatrice Patterson Green, and she joined the Women’s Royal Air Force in September 1918 at the age of 17, where she was assigned to work as a waitress in the officers’ mess.

I confess that as a scrapbooker, whenever I see headlines that the world has lost the last member of an era, I pause and wonder whether that person kept scrapbooks during his/her life or had a memory keeper in the family who took on the chronicler role. (Although I don’t know the answer to this question, the rest of my post is built around the idea that Florence may not have kept a journal or scrapbook.)

Of course, as she lived her life I’m sure Florence Green had no thought of being the last surviving anything. We don’t generally think about our lives that way, do we? We’re all just simple folk living life one day at a time. What’s noteworthy about that?

But a story like Florence’s reminds me that we aren’t usually afforded the vision to see extraordinary while we’re in it. There was Florence, living her 110-year life, every day forging a place for herself in the history books. But did she know it? Of course not. Should not knowing that have stopped her from thinking of her life as remarkable and capturing her memories of it for posterity? You know my answer.

I believe that scrapbookers tend to be the portion of our population who sees every life as exceptional, which is why we spend our time and money to collect family photos and stories and create scrapbooks. Seeing as this is neither an easy nor an inexpensive process, we must believe that to invest in it the way we do.

However, I don’t think the majority of people consider their lives outstanding. I have an 81-year-old aunt, my father’s older sister, who is a nightmare for me as a scrapper. Oh, I love Aunt Bubbles with all my heart. But just try to wrest a good story about her life from her! She thinks it’s all just too boring to capture. No, no, no! I try to make her see that none of the details are meaningless…that every person’s story is worth telling. And so far I have been unsuccessful at interviewing her, but I won’t stop trying.

What I hope more people will realize is that little stories are what make up a life. So a life worth living is a life worth memorializing, no matter whether it feels out of the ordinary every day. Today I am holding Florence Green in my heart as the last member of an event that changed our history. Her story reminds me again that we have the power to preserve the memories of people who will not always be. And it’s really the story of each one of our lives that changes history.

Promises to keep

February 1, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 3 Comments

Twisted Sketches has revealed its latest sketch, #137, and the twist is “promise.” Be sure to head over to the site to grab the sketch and see all the other design team members’ beautiful examples, then create something of your own and link it up!

Here is what I created using this great new sketch:

These random photos of my dad are from 1964, 1971, 1988 and 2003.

My father loved the English language and literature, which he studied in college so that he could teach. Although he did teach for a few years right out of college, he decided that after he and Mom married and had two children in quick succession, raising a new family on teachers’ salaries was just too difficult. So he found another career that could change their fortunes.

But Daddy was always my literature teacher. He loved to quote poetry and lines from plays. Some nights after dinner our family played a game where Phil and I would pull out the dictionary and try to find words that would stump him, but Dad’s vocabulary was exceptional, so it hardly ever happened.

My father instilled in me love for our language and awe in the effect good writing can have on our emotions, beliefs and dreams. It’s for this reason that I created this layout, and the line I used as the title comes from the following poem by Robert Frost, a favorite of Daddy’s:

Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Shades of green

January 31, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 4 Comments

The February Sketches with a Twist sketch and design team sample layouts are now live on their site. I am very proud to have created the sketch and really in love with all the design team’s samples based on it!

Sketches With a Twist is a new blog that debuted just last month—a sketch challenge site where each comes with an extra requirement (for example, this month’s twist is to include something green on your layout or card).

Here is my design team layout based on the sketch. Please head to their blog to get the sketch and play along (there are two prizes available each month).

Matt and I have been making a concerted effort to be more green in our daily lives.

When I read that the twist was to use something green on our layout, I decided to dedicate a page to the efforts Matt and I have been making toward being “greener” in our daily lives. We have always been passionate about living in a way that is good to the environment—recycling, consuming responsibly, rescuing animals in need/danger. However, in 2011 we recommitted to doing more. We are now recycling everything that our city allows, we have become vegetarians (it’s hard to love and rescue animals and then be completely comfortable eating meat) and we finally bought a hybrid car. We had been planning to go hybrid once it was time to replace our older car (it’s funny, I was still driving the first car we bought together when we got married in 1997!), and we were fortunate to need a new one just as the Prius V (the larger version of the Prius) was being released. Happy timing for us because we love it.

Because I was going for an earthy/environmental feel on this one, I turned to the American Crafts City Park and Hello Sunshine lines. I like the result because it’s bright and earthy at the same time.

SLR

January 28, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 4 Comments

My brother, Phil, began his love for photography under the influence of our eighth-grade math teacher, Mr. Moore. As is still his style to this day, the eighth-grade Phil did many months of research (the old-fashioned, pre-Web kind of research) before finally purchasing his first SLR camera. He bought a Pentax ME Super from a company that advertised in the back of Popular Photography magazine, and it came with a 50mm lens and leather case for $234.50 (he remembered that detail when I told him I was working on this layout).

All these years later Phil is still in love with photography, and in fact he now uses it in his work as a documentary storyteller. He has always dazzled me with his knowledge of the mechanics behind it, of which I have remained mostly ignorant. Until very recently, I never even used the manual mode on my SLR. But now, because of his influence I am adjusting aperture, shutter speed and ISO settings and rarely leave manual mode! It’s so freeing, and the quality of my photos is fast improving.

The photo on this layout was taken by Phil’s friend and fellow photography enthusiast, Jim Hutchins, while they were out shooting together one fine day in October 2011. Phil still shoots Pentax, only he has upgraded his main camera from the original ME Super to a digital K-5. He also has a medium format film Pentax 645N, which he is carrying in this photo! Back to the old along with the new.

This layout is based on sketch #189 at www.creativescrappers.blogspot.com.

I am also entering this layout in the Creative Scrappers challenge for sketch #189.

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