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So grateful for you

November 16, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo Leave a Comment

Unfortunately, this is the only photo I have from Thanksgiving 1990.

Sometimes you have only one photo from a whole day of celebration. And sometimes that’s actually all you need to be able to tell the most important story of the day.

When Phil and I were growing up, our family always made the two-hour drive to Pennsylvania to spend Thanksgiving with the extended family from my Dad’s half of the union. Those were good times: at least four generations of family all piled into Aunt Doo Doo and Uncle Ron’s house to catch up with one another and eat obscene amounts of delicious food. But then cousins started getting married and having their own children, and the families that made up that big group started breaking off to celebrate Thanksgiving in smaller units.

So in 1990 our family stayed home and had a cozy turkey day on our own. We no doubt started the day by going to Mass and then came home to spend hours cooking “the fixins.” Here, everything is ready to go—Dad even carved the turkey before this photo was snapped—and we’re about to dig into the feast. Seeing as the importance of this day is to recognize what’s most dear to you and count them as blessings, I think this one photo summed up the day perfectly!

Honey & Bunny

October 29, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 1 Comment

My layout highlights a photo of Phil and me on Halloween night in 1977. We were all ready to head out for some heavy-duty trick-or-treating.

Because I think it’s kind of funny, let me take a moment to list the elements that made up our costumes that night:

Phil’s female impersonator costume: An auburn wig (that we used for many costumes and dress-up sessions over the years); hoop earrings; blush and lipstick; my sweater and skirt; Phil’s sneakers
My bunny costume: My pink footie pajamas; construction paper ears; eyebrow-pencil whiskers and nose

I followed the October Club CK sketch, below, and am entering it in the challenge:

Baby’s first acorn

October 19, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 2 Comments

I created this layout to celebrate this natural beauty.

Our city had a “free tree” program this spring to increase shade in our drought-stricken desert climate, so we signed up to receive one. We planted this tiny oak in an open area of our back yard and watered it faithfully all summer.

The other day I watched a locust catapult itself from the grass into our little oak, so I ran over to check it out. When I got up close to see it, I found this adorable acorn. Just one on the whole tree. The locust is so many times larger than the acorn, and it was just so beautiful. I had to capture this lovely moment with nature and dedicate a layout to it.

Product/technique notes:
The majority of the patterns I used here are from Little Yellow Bicycle’s Acorn Hollow 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.

23 years later

October 9, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 2 Comments

We had such a lovely time visiting with Jim and his mom after all these years apart.

Jim and I became friends right at the start of college and were besties all the way through. I’ve talked about him before in this post because he cycled 102 miles to raise money for cancer research last year. But let me be plain about how lucky I feel to have met and claimed Jim as my best friend in that really vulnerable first week of freshman year: I won the friendship lottery! There, I said it.

Historically, one of the most popular weekends of the year at Ohio University is Moms Weekend. That first photo in my layout is a shot I took of Jim and his mother and my brother and our mother during Moms Weekend in our senior year (1989). We all had a great time hanging out together that weekend. Now fast forward 23 years to the second photo, taken this past summer when the five of us met up for the first time since the other photo—23 years later! We had an amazing day together, full of laughter, and it was so overdue.

Now to illuminate any non-scrapbook folk out there reading this: Scrapbookers are almost always using part of their brains on scrapbook thoughts. In this case, once I knew that Phil, Mom and I were going to drive to Virginia to meet up with Jim and his mom, the first thing I thought to do was pull out this old photo, scan and color correct it and then print it to take along. Why? So I could set up the same shot and then scrapbook them together, of course. And give Jim the photo to take home.

And that’s what I did. The problem was that I forgot about taking this photo until we were walking Jim and his mom through a pedestrian overpass and back to their hotel for the night. It didn’t turn out to be the awesome photo I envisioned, but I came home with the shot and the wonderful memories, and that’s what really mattered.

I’m entering this layout in the My Mind’s Eye October challenge (incorporate stamping into your project).

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