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Best sandwich ever

September 24, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo Leave a Comment

You must do yourself a favor and try this sandwich.

So, they tell me it’s autumn now. Well, that’s awesome, but in Texas the beginning of autumn still usually feels a lot like summer everywhere else. And because the ingredients for our favorite summer sandwich are still in season, I thought I would let summer dangle its toes over the line a wee bit into fall by letting you in on this taste sensation secret…via a scrapbook layout, of course!

If you like these ingredients on their own, you are going to LOVE the flavor combination they create together. Don’t say I didn’t warn you if every time you see avocados at the market, you instantly think of these bad boys.

The recipe
Toast bread and spread with mayo.
Pile with sliced avocado, tomato, red onion, cilantro and/or basil and jalapeño (it’s wonderful without the pepper, too, but we like the added spice).
Add salt and pepper to taste.

That’s all there is to it.

This sandwich is absolutely wonderful on its own, but we think that having it with corn on the cob takes it to a whole different flavor level. It’s what I imagine summer would taste like if we could take a bite!

Product/technique notes:
The colors of the BasicGrey Indie Bloom line were perfect for my photos. I also used a sketch they provided on their blog:

School picnic

August 31, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 1 Comment

Do you recognize the vintage Making Memories background papers I used?

My brother and I went to a Catholic grade school through eighth grade, which means that we wore uniforms every day of the school year, except on a few special days. The end-of-the-year picnic was one of those times. The school’s tradition was to take the upper classmen—the seventh and eighth graders—for a day of fresh air at nearby Daniels Park.

The picture in this layout is of me and my friends, Stephanie and Mike, in June 1980. I assume my brother took the photo, as he and Mike were best friends throughout grade school.

Product/technique notes:
I created most of this page using—do you recognize it—Making Memories’ Just Chillin’ line from 2008! It’s nice sometimes to dig deep and use the old supplies, isn’t it? You also see a little Simple Stories and Bella Boulevard on there.

The sketch I followed is from Club Creating Keepsakes’ August Sketch it out challenge.

What a loser

August 29, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 2 Comments

I'm so proud of Matt for all his hard work to get in shape.

I was recently looking through some photos when I noticed a few of Matt that I had taken exactly one year before, and I could not get over how different he looked! I mean, of course I know that he has lost 35 pounds in the past year. But you know how it is: things that happen slowly are harder to notice. I’ve watched Matt do all the hard work it takes to lose that much weight—taking up running, lifting weights on the opposite days and changing his diet—and I see that he’s looking great. But that doesn’t mean I remembered how much he has changed his looks, not to mention his health, with his new routine.

I decided to create a scrapbook layout to celebrate the difference Matt has made with his hard work. So I had him put on the very same outfit he was wearing the previous year and pose for me as closely as possible to the original photos. Then I arranged the comparison photos next to each other to make the differences obvious. The first and second photos show how much weight Matt has lost in his face and neck, and the third and fourth ones show the weight loss in his torso.

I’m so proud of my hubby! He would say, “Don’t make such a big deal of it; I still have more to lose.” But anyone who has tried to lose extra pounds knows that 35 pounds and a lifestyle change are a huge deal. He’s such a loser.

Product/technique notes:
I used patterned papers from the Simple Stories Awesome collection on this layout.

Strawberry jam

August 26, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 2 Comments

This photo of Mom and me is from June 1989, right after Phil and I had graduated from college and moved back home.

One summer we decided we wanted to go strawberry picking, so we found out about Patterson Fruit Farm. Oh my, what a great time we had there. Out in the early morning sun, squatting down in among the rows of strawberry plants and finding the best ones to throw in our baskets.

The problem was that we didn’t really know anything about how to handle our strawberries once we got them home. So, we washed them all, put them back in the cardboard trays we brought them home in and then sat them aside. We happily skipped away with visions of yummy treats to come.

Then disaster struck. Any strawberry-picking veteran knows that you only give the berries a quick rinse in cool water and a swift pat with a paper towel to dry them off when, and only when, you’re ready to eat or cook with them. But we were no strawberry-picking veterans. I’m not going to sugarcoat this: we lost a lot of good berries that day. A lot of good berries.

Fortunately, we did not give up on our strawberry dreams. The next year we went picking with a plan. We looked up a freezer jam recipe and bought the ingredients before ever heading to the farm. It was that year that our berry-picking tradition was really born. The picking was fun, the cleaning happened as soon as we got home with the berries and then the jam turned out to be ridiculously easy and tasty!

In the June 1989 photo on this layout, Phil and Mom and I had gone out for our yearly strawberry excursion, and Mom and I were on the swing in our back yard cleaning the fruits of our labor. It was a really good summer day, and we had delicious strawberry jam for months. Mmmm…

Product/technique notes:
I used Creative Scrappers sketch #107 for inspiration and Jillibean Soup patterned papers (Coconut Lime and Macho Nacho lines) to pull this layout together.

Oasis

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

I swear I heard a rattlesnake while we were on this walk into hell.

To be fair, it was my idea for us to go for a hike on July 4th. There’s a trail running along Brushy Creek Road that I see lots of walkers, runners and cyclists using, but we had not tried it yet. So we agreed to go first thing in the morning to check it out. Then, first thing in the morning turned into noon, and I suggested we wait for another morning. But Matt insisted we’d be fine. So we slathered ourselves with sunscreen, filled our water bottles and headed out.

That path. Went on. Forever. And I swear that ninety percent of it was in full sun. Did I mention that it got to nearly 100 degrees? And there were vultures circling overhead? Yeah.

My repeated requests to turn back fell on deaf ears; Matt really wanted to see where that path led.

Just as I started feeling sick from all that heat, and we were about to run out of the water we had been rationing, it appeared. I actually asked Matt if it was a mirage or an oasis!

He said, “It must be an OASIS because I can see it, too!”

It was a lovely little community water park…with families picnicking, kids playing and squealing and wonderful, cold, restorative water spraying everywhere. We looked at each other in amazement. And then ran in.

What could have been better than to find this?

I think it's awesome that this free splash area is offered by the park system.

Product/technique notes: I saw this distress ink watercolor technique over at Kristina Werner’s card blog and decided I wanted to use it on this layout because of my water theme. I pulled out this piece of patterned paper from Little Yellow Bicycle (I’m using both sides of just one piece of paper on this page) and thought it would be a great way to represent both the searing sun and then the bright colors and fresh feeling of the splash park. So I chose colors of distress ink to match the stripes in the paper (wow, did they match well!) and created swatches of splotchy watercolored paper. Then I cut out each letter of my title from a different swatch.

Just look at how my swatches match the paper!

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