Silhouette

The Mayflower

March 25, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 5 Comments

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

So special

March 21, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo Leave a Comment

These photos were taken during my father's 70th birthday weekend in 2003.

From the time we were little I can remember Aunt Mary Lou making a huge fuss over us. She loved to laugh at our sassy comments and make us feel brilliant. When Earl joined the family he spoke to us as adults, which every “brilliant” teenager craves. It takes special people to make others feel so special. These photos were taken during our weekend-long celebration of Dad’s 70th birthday in October 2003.

I created this layout using My Mind’s Eye patterned papers and a sketch from their blog.

My Mind's Eye sketch

I still get butterflies

March 19, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo Leave a Comment

A few selfies taken on our 12th anniversary in 2009

These are photos of us on our 12th anniversary in 2009, after we had returned from our celebratory dinner. I actually finished this simple layout months ago but forgot to photograph and post it. What I notice the most when looking at these pictures is how much less Matt weighs now than he did then! This was when he was at his highest weight, and he is now 23 pounds lighter. I’m very proud of him because he is working on losing this weight the slow, steady, healthy way. He’s exercising every day and has changed his diet drastically. No fads or get-thin-quick schemes here; just wise nutritional choices and lots of sweaty exercise. He says he wants to lose 20 more pounds, and I’m absolutely sure he will.

For this layout I used some older patterned papers from My Mind’s Eye, a few Martha Stewart punches and a Silhouette cut file for the title.

My Take Twelve February layout

February 23, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo Leave a Comment

Back in December when Ella Publishing was promoting their Take Twelve project, I decided to participate. I don’t do a Project Life album, so I thought this might be a good alternative. You take photos on the 12th of each month in 2012, and then do a layout with the 12 best.

There’s a Take Twelve layout challenge hosted by Ella Publishing each month, but I didn’t get mine done in time for the deadline. I seem to be taking baby steps on this project. I completely missed taking the photos on January 12th, so the fact that I took my photos on February 12th and created a layout is a big improvement. Maybe in March I’ll be able to finish my layout in time to enter the contest!

I'm a little late getting into the Take Twelve challenge with Ella Publishing, but I only missed January, so no worries.

Here is the journaling that explains my 12 photos:
Sunday, February 12, 2012:
We went to 11:30 Mass and then stayed to have breakfast tacos made by the Men’s Club. When we left church we were met with an icy rain, which always makes us giddy because it’s so rare in Texas. We took a photo of the progress that’s being made on construction of our new church before heading to the gym for a vigorous workout. Then we ran some errands—to HEB for a few groceries and to Redbox to return our movie from the night before (Conan—not too good). By the time we returned home, it was snowing lightly! I had to grab a shot of the snow in Matt’s hair. We spent the rest of the day doing housework and laundry before making a simple dinner and settling in front of the fire (with Oliver in his favorite spot) to watch the next installment of Downton Abbey (so good). Our nightly feral visitor, Wilson, showed up for a healthy meal before heading off to find a warm place to hole up for the night. It was just a normal, lovely Sunday spent together.

I used some older American Crafts papers that have a Valentine’s Day theme to them and followed two-page sketch #20 from the Sketch Support site.

Old school

February 15, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 2 Comments

Twisted Sketches has revealed sketch #139, and the twist is “old.” Be sure to head over to the site to grab the sketch and see all the other design team members’ beautiful examples. Then create something of your own and link it up!

Here is what I created using this great new sketch:

I saw this Hot Date collection by KI Memories and immediately wanted to use it to do a layout about my love of fountain pens.

Do you ever create a layout because a certain patterned paper triggers something in your brain? The background paper on my page above was the inspiration for this whole idea. It’s from a Valentine-themed collection called Hot Date by KI Memories, and as soon as I saw the little fountain pens in the design I was committed to creating an ode to fountain pens (mine in particular).

I have loved fountain pens for a very long time. Daddy had a few old ones in his valet tray on the chest of drawers in the bedroom, and I loved to take those out and turn them over in my fingers. They were made of various colored pearl laminates and had lever fillers. They fascinated me with their beauty and old-world functionality. What?! You use the lever to suction special ink into a bladder inside the pen before you can write with it? How could I think that was anything but awesome when all we ever used at school were Bic ballpoint stick pens?

So I carried my love for fountain pens into my adulthood. I even bought a few inexpensive vintage pens at flea markets, but they didn’t work very well. Then one day, in my very first job out of college, my office mate brought a rubber stamp catalog (from Rubba Dub Dub) to work and asked if I wanted to order anything from it. I pored over that book for a long time, loving the idea of rubber stamps but having no concept of how I would use them. But there was a beautiful vintage fountain pen image that won me over. It seemed so expensive to me at the time, but I had visions of using it to create my own stationery, so I bought it.

Fast forward a number of years, and I must have let slip to my new husband how much I loved fountain pens because for one of our first Christmases together (1999) he gave me a gorgeous Mont Blanc. It’s a special edition pen called Hommage à Fédéric Chopin, and it includes a CD of Chopin’s music. I adore writing with it. It feels like you really mean what you’re saying when you write it with this beauty.

As I say in my journaling: I love technology, but old school is so cool.

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