My Mind's Eye

The gift of song

December 20, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 1 Comment

This layout celebrates one of our Daquila-family Christmas traditions.

Have you ever read about the importance of family rituals to children’s development of identity and feelings of belonging? When I do it impresses upon me, yet again, what a wonderful job my parents did in providing Phil and me with such a stable, loving, tradition-filled environment. Our family’s rituals were many, but it will come as no surprise that my favorites revolved around Christmas.

Over the years we developed many Christmas traditions, but today’s layout celebrates the way we handled Christmas music. Although we had quite a few Christmas albums that we played over and over throughout the season, we had one particular favorite. It was the Anita Kerr Singers’ “Spend this holiday with me.” There was just something different about it that we all loved. In fact, we all knew every note of that record and sang along faithfully.

Our ritual became making sure that this was the first album we played at the beginning of each Christmas season. It HAD to be played before any of the others could be cued up on our huge stereo. Playing this album for the first of many times in the season was our auditory signal that it was time for Christmas.

And now this tradition has made its way into our celebration of Christmas. That sounds like a testament to a good album and a great tradition!

Product/technique notes:
I used papers from Simple Stories “Handmade Holiday” and My Mind’s Eye “Festive” collections to complete this layout.

Counting blessings & candles

November 17, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 1 Comment

I was born on Thanksgiving Day. If I was given my choice of another birth date, out of all 365 days of the year, I couldn’t come up with a better one.

One of the biggest reasons for my love of my turkey birthday is that it always meant getting together with family. Now, because Thanksgiving is a little bit of a moving target on the calendar, my birthday only actually falls on T-day every several years. My 17th birthday in 1983 was one of those years.

I have just a few photos from that Thanksgiving celebration at my Aunt Doo Doo and Uncle Ron’s house, but they’re enough to show that it was my birthday as well. In these shots with me are my cousins Rob, Colleen and Mike as well as my bro, Phil.

After everyone was stuffed with Thanksgiving fare and could barely sit comfortably or stay awake, Mom would pull out a carefully hidden cake so everyone could sing to me. But I noticed that people usually went for the pumpkin pies over my cake, and let’s face it, who wouldn’t?

Product/technique notes:
All the patterned papers came from My Mind’s Eye’s Indie Chic collection (the Saffron color scheme), which I thought worked so well for these photos and the theme of my page. I’m entering this into the MME November challenge, which is to demonstrate gratitude on your project.

Homecoming 1984

November 7, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 1 Comment

I went to the dance with Mike Lisi, and my brother took Jill Berlin.

A lot of my Facebook friends have children in high school, so I’ve seen my fair share of homecoming photos being posted lately. You know, shots of their high schooler with his/her date and friends and parents in front of the family room fireplace.

Exactly like we did before our homecoming dance in the fall of 1984! Not a lot changes over the years, does it? OK, maybe the fashions have changed a lot. 😉

Our dates came to our house for a photo session before we headed to the school gym for the event. My boyfriend, Mike, came home from his freshman year at Miami University to take me to the dance. And Phil took our friend, Jill. The whole thing was very exciting.

My journaling reads: “Homecoming in our senior year was a big event for me. Because my friend, Tatjana, was both Student Council president and homecoming queen, last-minute dance preparations were left to me as VP. Then there was the fun of choosing my dress and having Mike return from college to take me to the dance. We had such a lovely evening!”

Celtic warrior

October 27, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 2 Comments

I don't think Matt is quite right as a redhead. 😉

For Halloween in 2005 Matt wanted to wear his kilt and be a Celtic warrior, so we pulled together this outfit. After doing a little online research for face tattoo designs, I “tattooed” Matt’s face. It was fun to do! Then we sprayed his hair with this outrageous color of orange to finish the look.

Admittedly, it’s a hodgepodge costume, but it’s fun and looks good on my guy. And he got a great reaction when he wore it to his business meetings that day!

Product/technique notes:
On this layout I used products from Echo Park, Little Yellow Bicycle, My Mind’s Eye, Paper Studio and Pink Paisley. I cut the title on my Silhouette using the Stonecross font.

Trap-Neuter-Return gone awry

October 16, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 2 Comments

Alley Cat Allies launched National Feral Cat Day® on their 10th anniversary in 2001 to raise awareness about feral cats, promote Trap-Neuter-Return and recognize the millions of compassionate Americans who care for them. Feral cats are domestic cats (like pet cats), but they have had little or no contact with humans, and so they are fearful of us and cannot be adopted. Their home is the outdoors. And there is a simple way to help them: Trap-Neuter-Return. This program ends reproduction, stabilizes feral cat populations and improves individual cats’ lives. The behaviors and stresses associated with mating—pregnancy, yowling and fighting—stop.

The basics of Trap-Neuter-Return (also called Trap-Neuter-Release) programs include:
Trap: Humanely trap all of the cats in a colony (a group of cats living outdoors together).
Neuter: Take the cats in their traps to a veterinarian or clinic to be neutered, vaccinated and eartipped (a universal symbol indicating they have been neutered).
Return: Return the cats to their original outdoor home.

I have written on my blog in the past about the fact that Matt and I participate in animal rescue in our area, and we believe in the good that TNR programs do for both the feral cats and the community in which they live. So, when the beautiful and spirited (read really aggressive) tomcat in my layout below “moved into” our back yard a few years ago and started scaring off most of the other animals we regularly saw and fed, we decided he needed to be TNRed. It was for his own welfare as well as that of the other animals.

We did it all: trapped him (which always makes me so nervous), took him for checkup/vaccinations/neutering and then after he had recovered, released him back into our yard. We actually quite liked having him around—just wanted him to be safer and less aggressive—so we hoped that he would stay in our area. All went as planned for Gandalf (named after Gandalf the Grey in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy).

Until my brother, Phil, came for a visit from North Carolina shortly after we had gone through all this. Phil had been seriously considering rescuing/adopting a cat. But instead, in a surprising twist, he fell for Gandalf (who he renamed Willie (for Pittsburgh Pirates’ home-run hitting hall of famer, Willie Stargell)) and flew him home, thus ending Willie’s era as a feral cat! I called this layout “TNR gone awry” because Gandalf/Willie’s story did not end as we had expected; I think the actual ending is much sweeter.

Willie is Phil's homeboy.

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