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The Constant Scrapper

If I'm not scrapbooking I'm thinking about scrapbooking!

Jillibean Soup

Honey & Bunny

October 29, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 1 Comment

Honey&Bunny_Daquila-Pardo

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:
Club Creating Keepsakes October sketch challenge

Filed Under: Layouts based on sketches, My scrapbook layouts Tagged With: 1 photo, border punches, Halloween, Jillibean Soup, October Afternoon, one-page layouts, rosette, vintage photos

Strawberry jam

August 26, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 2 Comments

StrawberryJam_Daquila-Pardo

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.

Sketch #107 from Creative Scrappers

Filed Under: Layouts based on sketches, My scrapbook layouts, Sketches Tagged With: 1 photo, border punches, Creative Scrappers, Jillibean Soup, one-page layouts, Silhouette, vintage 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.

Merry_Daquila-Pardo

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

Filed Under: 12x12 layouts using 6x6 paper, Layouts based on sketches, My scrapbook layouts, Sketches Tagged With: 4 photos, banner, border punches, Christmas, Jillibean Soup, Martha Stewart Crafts, one-page layouts, Silhouette, Sketch Support, vintage photos, Webster's Pages

The Whos down in Who-ville liked Christmas a lot!

November 30, 2011 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 9 Comments

Sketchabilities has revealed its latest sketch, #60, and it’s a great one! Be sure to head over to the site to grab the sketch, then create something and link it up! 🙂

Here’s my Design Team layout inspired by the sketch.

Who-ville_Daquila-Pardo

Don't Phil and I look like little Whos on this Christmas morning in 1969?

Aren’t these photos darling? It’s Phil and me on Christmas morning 1969. With our tousled hair and footie pajamas, we are having a great time opening and trying out the gifts Santa left beneath the tree. The details in these photos that really make me smile are the four stockings hanging in the background that Mom made for us, the shot of me blowing on my little plastic horn (my pantooker!) and my big gift that year—my “green ‘tove” with the matching dishes set. So sweet!

I hope you’ll play along with this sketch. And while you do, perhaps you’ll want to hum a little of this:

Fah Who foraze, Dah Who doraze
Welcome, Christmas, come this way
Fah Who foraze, Dah Who doraze
Welcome, Christmas, Christmas Day
Welcome, Welcome
Fah Who Rah Moos
Welcome, Welcome
Dah Who Dah Moos
Christmas Day is in our grasp
So long as we have hands to clasp

Fah Who foraze, Dah Who doraze
Welcome, Christmas, bring your cheer
Fah Who foraze, Dah Who doraze
Welcome, all Whos far and near

NOTE: The movie’s finale ends here, but there are more lyrics in the album version.
Welcome, Welcome
Fah Who Rah Moos
Welcome, Welcome
Dah Who Dah Moos
Christmas Day will always be
Just so long as we have we
Fah Who foraze, Dah Who doraze
Welcome, Christmas, come this way
Fah Who foraze, Dah Who doraze
Welcome, Christmas, Christmas Day

Filed Under: Layouts based on sketches, My scrapbook layouts, Sketches Tagged With: 3 photos, Jillibean Soup, one-page layouts, Silhouette, vintage photos

Juicing for health

September 14, 2011 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 4 Comments

Twisted Sketches has revealed its latest sketch, #119, and the twist is “start.” Be sure to head over to the site to grab the sketch, then create something and link it up! 🙂

Here’s my Design Team layout inspired by the sketch. It’s about how we just started juicing and are really enjoying it.

AllNatural_Daquila-Pardo

This bunch of vegetables and fruit that was ready to be juiced was so pretty that I had to take a few photos!

I want to explain a little more about my layout than just the surface facts. The truth is that when I was designing this layout I was thinking about fear and how we all deal with it. This was on my mind because we personally faced a really big fear recently.

Matt began noticing some physical changes that concerned him and made a doctor’s appointment to look into it. Before having even one test run on Matt, the doctor plied him with stories about cancer in men his age. So while we awaited the day that Matt could have the test the doctor ordered, we talked about…everything. The possibilities. The probabilities. What we would do if we received bad news. How we should change our lives if we received good news. I honestly believe that Matt started making lists of things he wanted to do to prepare me to be without him. Gulp…it was a hard week.

So, with this palpable fear orbiting us, we started looking at actionable ways to live with a daily commitment to good health. The truth is that we are like so many people: we know that we’re supposed to make healthy choices, but we’re not always sure how to make that a daily priority. For instance, how do you eat good foods when you’re on the road making customer visits all day like Matt does? How can you get anything resembling a balanced day of nutrition if you eat out? The choices out there are so bad! Think about the portion sizes, the saturated fats, the additives. It makes your head spin when you really focus on how unhealthy our food supply has become.

Then, on the night before Matt’s test we watched a documentary called “Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead.” Sounds gruesome, doesn’t it? But it wasn’t. In fact, it was quite inspiring. It was the story of a man who was overweight and suffering from an auto-immune disease who turned to radically changing his diet as a way of getting control of his physical problems. He started making his own juice combinations (mostly vegetables and some fruits) and barraged his body with great nutrients. He drank juice only for 60 days and lost the weight as well as the need for his medications (all under the care of his physician)!

Now, I’m not trying to convince anyone reading this to juice. Really. I just want to tell you how Matt and I have dealt with the health scare that we underwent. We used the fear as motivation to take a hard look at our habits. And making a positive change in our diets (by adding fresh juice to our day) makes us feel more in control of our healthy futures. Knowing you’re making good choices lessens fear about your own future. At least it’s working that way for us!

Filed Under: Layouts based on sketches, My scrapbook layouts Tagged With: 1 photo, Basic Grey, border punches, Jillibean Soup, October Afternoon, one-page layouts, Twisted Sketches

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