4 photos

Merry

December 8, 2011 By Janice Daquila-Pardo Leave a Comment

Have you ever wondered why we say “Merry Christmas” to each other but don’t use the word “merry” in any other salutation throughout the year? You hear nary a “Merry birthday” or “Merry Valentine’s Day,” right? Well, I did a little online search for the history behind the popular Christmas greeting and found varying stories about when it all began. I’m sorry I can’t vouch for the correctness of its story either, but I’ve decided to share with you the description from Wikipedia:

“Merry,” derived from the Old English myrige, originally meant merely “pleasant and agreeable” rather than joyous or jolly.

Though Christmas has been observed since the 4th century AD, the first known usage of any Christmastime greeting dates back to 1565, when it appeared in The Hereford Municipal Manuscript: “And thus I comytt you to God, who send you a mery Christmas.” “Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year” (thus incorporating two greetings) was in an informal letter written by an English admiral in 1699. The same phrase is contained in the sixteenth century secular English carol “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” as well as the first commercial Christmas card, produced in England in 1843.

Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” was also published in 1843, during the mid Victorian revival of the holiday. The word merry was then beginning to take on its current meaning of “jovial, cheerful, jolly and outgoing.” Merry Christmas in this new context figured prominently in “A Christmas Carol.” The cynical Ebenezer Scrooge rudely deflects the friendly greeting: “If I could work my will…every idiot who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding.” After the visit from the Ghosts of Christmas affects his transformation Scrooge exclaims, “I am as merry as a school-boy. A merry Christmas to everybody!” and heartily exchanges the wish to all he meets. Because of the instant popularity of “A Christmas Carol,” the Victorian era Christmas traditions it typifies and the term’s new meaning appearing in the book, Dickens’ tale popularized the phrase “Merry Christmas.”

I think it’s so cool that our saying “Merry Christmas” is bound up with Dickens’ famous story (which I’ve always loved)! Now that you know from whence it came, perhaps you will enjoy a little more heartily exchanging this greeting with all you meet during the season. 🙂

Here is a layout I created with photos from Christmas 1972. It’s based on a sketch from the Sketch Support site and uses patterned papers from Webster’s Pages and Jillibean Soup.

How do you like my little cap to match my nightgown? I really loved that set!

The one with no turkey

November 12, 2011 By Janice Daquila-Pardo Leave a Comment

This has been two-page layout week on Sketch Support, and today my layout is live! Please head over to grab the sketch so you can use it in your own crafting, and while you’re there I would love it if you would leave a quick comment for me. 🙂

Here is a look at the layout I made.

This layout is based on a sketch from www.sketchsupport.com.

I loved this sketch and followed it quite closely. The only changes I made were to use a wider variety of patterned papers in the strips that form the background and to add a hand-crocheted edge at the bottom (for a cozy “sweater-weather” feel).

The journaling reads, “We had started a special diet in October and were doing well on it, so we agreed to forgo the traditional Thanksgiving dinner for a long walk around Town Lake. Although we missed the turkey and fixins, we spent a really lovely day together being thankful and healthy! 11-26-2009”

Here’s a closer look at a few of the details.

I punched evenly spaced holes along the bottom edge of the background and used cream crochet thread to add a simple border.

Be sure to visit the Sketch Support site to pick up this fabulous sketch to use in your own scrapping. 🙂

Us girls

November 9, 2011 By Janice Daquila-Pardo

Twisted Sketches has revealed its latest sketch, #127, and the twist is “chipboard.” 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:

We're window shopping in Frederickburg, Texas.

Photos of Mom's 2006 Thanksgiving visit show how much we resemble each other!

I chose to use four 4×3-inch photos rather than the two 4x6s that the sketch called for because I liked how these shots really highlighted how much we resemble one another! Over the years people have mentioned the similarity, but I usually don’t see it as well as I do in these photos.

It was 2006 and Mom had come from North Carolina to spend Thanksgiving and my birthday with us. On this day we took a little drive to nearby Frederickburg, where you can get a good dose of German heritage and antiques shopping. So we spent a lovely day window shopping. 🙂

Because of the chipboard twist on this sketch, I decided it was time to pull out my never-used Tim Holtz distress crackle paint to antique it a bit. It was fun! After the paint dried into small cracks, I rubbed Tim Holtz distress inks (in iced spruce, evergreen bough and crushed olive) into the cracks to highlight them. Here’s a closeup of the result. I will certainly be using this technique again!

One crackle paint and three distress inks later, here is my result.

Blogtoberfest Day 16

October 16, 2011 By Janice Daquila-Pardo Leave a Comment

National Feral Cat Day

Today is National Feral Cat Day! This annual event is coordinated by Alley Cat Allies as a way to raise awareness about feral cats, promote Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR), and recognize the millions of compassionate Americans who care for feral cats. Each year cat welfare groups and cat lovers across the country plan events to help educate people in their communities about feral cats and TNR. This year there are over 300 events planned in all 50 states.

Matt and I are involved in feral cat rescue efforts in our local area. We take great pride and pleasure in helping improve/save the lives of cats without homes. In fact, layouts of cats that you may have seen or will see on my blog are of those we have trapped and fostered.

Our favorite local cat rescue organization is Shadow Cats, a group “dedicated to improving the lives of community cats through humane advocacy.” The reason we like them so much is that they are dedicated to the care of the current resident population of ill, immune compromised, injured and senior cats. In other words, they take the cats who would not otherwise have any hope.

So, when Shadow Cats recently held an art market fundraiser, I decided to use my craft supplies and creativity to make a scrapbook album for them to auction. I made the album in all one color palette, using a subtle cat theme (mostly through my titles and a few images) and with spaces for only 4×6 photos (so there would be no cropping needed by the person who ends up with it).

I had a great time creating this project and hope that someone who has a beloved cat or cats will enjoy it forever. Have you ever used your crafting habit to help an organization in whose work you believe? I can highly recommend it. It made me feel warm and fuzzy—like a cat! 🙂

Royalty in residence

Purrsonality

"One cat just leads to another." Ernest Hemingway

"The ideal of calm exists in a sitting cat." Jules Renard

Meow, purr, yawn

"What greater gift than the love of a cat?" Charles Dickens

"Cats are the connoisseurs of comfort." James Herriot

I love you, purr & simple

Showing cattitude

"Time spent with cats is never wasted." Sigmund Freud

Naptime

Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal

August 5, 2011 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 2 Comments

My husband doesn’t care about clothes…at all. If he ruled the world people would all wear clean but wrinkled shorts and t-shirts to everything. Fortunately, we live in low-key Austin, Texas, where “business casual” doesn’t mean very much, and a majority of people do wear shorts everywhere.

Matt and I own a technology company, which means occasionally we get swag from companies like Microsoft and Cisco, among others. For years Matt has been wearing those hideous t-shirts (no offense intended to the big tech companies, but they really are garish) around the house. However, when he goes out that front door, he makes sure he’s wearing one of his “special” shirts. Even though he doesn’t care a jot about good clothes, he does want to maintain a certain image in the world. And I would describe that image as “geek chick.”

He carefully selects his t-shirts from various online purveyors of fine geek clothing. In his closet are shirts with:

A Shakespearean quote spelled out as a mathematical equation (think “To be or not to be”)
The falling sperm whale from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy with the thought bubble, “I wonder if it will be friends with me?”
The symbol Pi written in 4493 digits of Pi
My all-time favorite is the one he’s wearing in the large photo on the layout below. It’s inspired by the TV series Firefly and features two dinosaurs with a speech bubble between them that reads, “Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal.”

This illustrates yet another reason I love scrapbooking: memorializing the personality traits, quirks, habits and personal preferences of those we love. Whether it’s our 40-something husband’s corny t-shirt tastes or our 13-year-old daughter’s short-lived Bieber fever, it’s worth remembering. And celebrating. These are the little things that add up to make people lovable to us, and that’s a great layout topic in my book.

Be You captures my husband's love of corny t-shirts.

Note: Matt does not wear these t-shirts to work, even though he would dearly love to! 😉

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