Sketches

I heart trying new recipes

May 4, 2013 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 6 Comments

I cooked this crazy-good Moroccan chickpea, kale and couscous recipe when Phil was in town last December.

I really love the process of reading through recipes, imagining the ingredients coming together to make flavors and textures and then choosing and making one. It’s quite gratifying for me to finish cooking something new. And I love hearing feedback from those I serve it to (usually just Matt, but on the day represented in these photos my baby bro was in town, too).

In fact, I like this process so much that I hardly ever follow a recipe twice. Sure, we have our standby meals that we make over and over. But the ones I try from a recipe book are usually one-timers, even if we love them, because there are just so many out there to try!

Product/technique notes:
I created this layout using this cool sketch from the Paper Bakery blog, and I’m entering in their sketch contest. The patterned papers are from We R Memory Keepers.

Willoughby PAL Program

April 25, 2013 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 3 Comments

My mom is an excellent teacher, and you can see in this photo how the children are responding to her reading them a story. I'm so happy to have photos like this of her in action.

Today my last layout as guest designer for Artful Delight is live. I’ve really enjoyed using their April kit. Because I’ve never subscribed to a kit club before, I’m not accustomed to using the same set of products more than once in quick succession. But being AD’s guest designer for the month forced me to do that, and I liked the challenge that posed for me. I came out of it with three layouts that I’m quite happy with, and I had to dig a little deeper into my creative brain to find ways to make them with only the elements that came in the kit. It was a good exercise for me!

Thank you to Artful Delight for having me as their guest!

The journaling on this page: Mom opened her own pre-school program in March 1987 and called it Play and Learn (PAL). She taught four-year olds for two hours twice per week in a classroom in Browning School. The only reason she finally closed the program in June 1994 was because she and Daddy had decided to move to North Carolina. Mom says, “The PAL Program was really special to me. I loved the children, had wonderful rapport with the parents and loved every minute of what I was doing.”

Product/technique notes:
Obviously, I used the products from the Artful Delight April kit for this page, but I also used an older sketch of theirs from April 2012:
Sketch from last April from Artful Delight

Note: I’m submitting this to the Paper Issues “Chalk it Up to Your Own Style” link party.

Eighth grade school portraits

April 20, 2013 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 11 Comments

These school portraits were from our last year in Catholic school.

This layout features school portraits taken in the fall of 1980, when Phil and I were in our last year of parochial grade school. Can you believe those windshield eyeglasses were ever the fashion?

Product/technique notes:
I created this layout using a great sketch by Juliana Michaels for Paper Bakery and supplies from the Pink Paislee “Prairie Hill” collection.

Happy hour

November 10, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 3 Comments

Mom, me and Phil enjoying happy hour in Saxapahaw, NC (August 2012)

I went to North Carolina this summer to visit my mother and brother, and we made a list of things we wanted to do while I was there. Phil brought up the idea of going to a town called Saxapahaw because he had read that it was a great day-trip option for foodies. It’s a small, sleepy town west of Chapel Hill, where my family lives, that has begun to gain renown because of the renovations and eateries that are being added:

We made the half-hour drive in high spirits and with high hopes. Yes, it was a hot and steamy day in August, but how bad could that be once we were lounging comfortably on the back deck of a Saxapahaw café, overlooking the beautiful Haw River and enjoying local gourmet food and beer?

Now, I don’t want to complain too much, but it was actually a little weird. Perhaps we went on a bad day—it was in the middle of the week in the afternoon—but there was nothing at all that we could find to “take in” about the place. And we only saw a handful of people during the few hours we spent there! I’m thinking maybe Saxapahaw has a really good PR person. 😉

Luckily, we ran into a man on the street who had bought and nicely renovated a portion of the old mill and turned it into The Eddy Pub. We took our rest there over an appetizer plate and some nice local beers. In the end we had a good time because, let’s face it, the company is always more important than the locale. And best of all our waitress graciously took this lovely photo of the three of us.

Product/technique notes:
I followed the November Club CK sketch, below, and am entering it in the challenge. The background paper (which put me in mind of designs you’d find in an old pub) is from Fancy Pants’ The Good Life collection, the butterfly stamps are by Martha Stewart Crafts, the flair is from BasicGrey’s Fact and Fiction collection.

Did we ever love that swing

October 15, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 1 Comment

A photo like this one from 1971 really takes me right back to that place and time.

Phil and I (and many times our mom) spent hours upon hours on our swing in the back yard. We talked, told secrets, sang songs and made plans together. They are wonderful memories for me.

It appears from the clothes we’re wearing in it that this sweet photo from September 1971 could have been snapped right after we had returned home from church. I am wearing a dress Mom sewed for me out of aqua dotted swiss fabric; I remember really loving this dress. And Phil looks spiffy in his striped jeans and hair so carefully combed.

Normally I liked to swing pointing the other direction—into the neighbors’ yards you see in the background here. It gave me a longer view, which somehow inspired me to swing higher!

Product/technique notes:
I used the PageMaps sketch below for this layout; as you see I followed it pretty closely because I thought it was so suited to my photo. I also used papers from My Mind’s Eye The Sweetest Thing collection and stamps (with Copic coloring) from Hero Arts.

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