The Constant Scrapper

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

October Afternoon

You make my heart sing

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HeartSing_Daquila-Pardo

Just chillin' with Daddy in front of the television, March 1967.

This is one of those photos that I can just sit and stare into. It’s quite imperfect, as far as photos go—with the bad lighting, crooked angles and muddy colors. But it’s a beautiful photo to me.

It allows me a glimpse into Mom and Dad’s apartment before they bought the house I grew up in. In fact, some of that decor (the round table, tan chair, lamp, pocket watch under a dome and afghan) stayed with us for a very long time.

In it I get to see my dad as a 33-year-old new father, obviously pretty comfortable with the whole new baby thing. “Ain’t no big deal.”

And I really love that Daddy is acting as a human recliner for me as we watch TV together. Just look how well I fit in the circle formed by his legs and how he has me tipped back at the perfect angle for maximum viewing enjoyment. Speaking of that, what could we be watching, I wonder? I mean, it looks equally riveting to both a four-month old and a grown man. It must be something on PBS!

Product/technique notes:
I created this page following the sketch below from Artful Delight and products from American Crafts, BasicGrey, K&Company, My Mind’s Eye and October Afternoon.
PageMaps sketch

Honey & Bunny

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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

Food coma

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FoodComa_Daquila-Pardo

I kept this page simple because I just wanted to highlight the photo and the papers.

When it’s time to be fed Liam just about ricochets off the walls in anticipation. And once we dish up his vittles for him he sort of attacks his bowl. I think it’s safe to say this boy likes to eat a little too much!

But once he’s plowed through his meal and cleaned all the gravy off his face (are you getting the barbaric image I’m trying to paint here?), he turns into this sweet little sleepy baby. He finds a comfy spot and crashes hard. It’s at this point one day that I took this photo of him.

I based this layout on sketch #202 from the Creative Scrappers blog, and I am entering it into their April challenge. I am also entering this into Shimelle’s Online scrapbooking weekend challenge #4: Create a project using yellow, grey and one other color. It’s rather obvious, I’m sure, but I chose to mix yellow and grey with blue.

The Creative Scrappers sketch I referenced while making this layout.

Product/technique notes: I just love the boyish colors and images in the October Afternoon Sasparilla line, so I thought it would work perfectly with this photo of Liam because of his grey markings. I cut the title banner on my Silhouette.

The Mayflower

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Mayflower1977_Daquila-Pardo

Our family vacation in 1977 was to tour the New England states in our car.

In the summer of 1977 our family took a car trip through several of the New England states. It was a great vacation, with lots of stops along the way for sight seeing and family bonding time.

I did make the trip a little more difficult on the family than it had to be, though. On the day before we were to get on the road, I went to a school friend’s birthday party. We engaged in a lot of the usual birthday party activities, but then the birthday girl’s older brother suggested that we all play touch football. Huh? A group of 10-year-old girls playing touch football in their bare feet in the near dark? Kind of weird, but we inexplicably decided it was a good idea. The problem is that touch quickly turned to tackle, and I found myself on the ground under the weight of the older brother. When my dad came to pick me up that evening at the end of the party I couldn’t put back on my shoe because my foot had swollen so.

Oh no.

The next morning we left on our trip, but I was in pain. And that pain grew over the next days. My parents finally decided that my foot needed medical attention. So when we reached Poughkeepsie, NY, we spent the day in the hospital emergency room. And I spent the rest of our journey on crutches. That made logistics more interesting, but we got through it and had a great time despite it.

I remember key moments along the trip, like seeing the replica of the Mayflower in Plymouth and visiting Mystic Seaport in Connecticut (where Dad had to hoist me on his shoulders to carry me to the car when a torrential rain started). But one of my best memories on that trip was when we were driving along one day and heard people squealing with delight while playing in a cold stream along the side of the road. We convinced Dad to stop and let us slip and slide around for a little while. It was wonderful, impromptu fun…a perfect childhood moment.

I created my layout above with October Afternoon patterned papers from the Farmhouse collection, followed this great sketch from PageMaps and am entering my page in the PageMaps sketch challenge.

PageMaps sketch