Simple Stories

Mentor Headlands Beach

July 13, 2013 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 4 Comments

When this photo was taken I was 23, living back at home after finishing college, working full time and dating Hansel.

This layout features a photo of me in June 1990, at the beach with my boyfriend, Hansel. We had just taken a long walk and then plopped down on the sand to watch the sun set.

Mentor Headlands is the beach my bro and I grew up going to, so of course I always took it for granted. But in reading the beach’s website I found this bit of info quite interesting:
“The trademark of Headlands Beach State Park is its mile-long natural sand beach, the largest in the state. In addition to its popularity during the summer season with picnickers and swimmers, the area is home to many plant species typically found only along the Atlantic Coast.”

Product/technique notes

I created this layout based on sketch #7 by Juliana Michaels for The Paper Bakery and am entering it in their sketch challenge. The patterned papers I used were mostly from Simple Stories’ “Summer Fresh” collection, with a bit of October Afternoon and My Mind’s Eye thrown in the mix to make the Polaroid element (which was a free cut file from The Paper Bakery as well).

Do something amazing everyday

June 29, 2013 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 6 Comments

The subtitle of this layout should be Rescuing Shiner. We had just identified Shiner's address and were about to take him home to his family.

So, as I’ve blogged about before, Matt and I rescue animals who are in danger. Unfortunately, finding animals that need help is not difficult. There are a lot of reasons that pets wander from home and find themselves in dangerous situations. In the case of this dog, his owners told us that they had just adopted him about two weeks ago, and they didn’t realize what a great jumper he is! In fact, he jumped their fence and crossed a major intersection to get to our neighborhood. It’s a little miracle that he made it.

Matt was out on a run that afternoon, and he had been gone longer than I was expecting, so I was just starting to consider calling to check on him. Just then, he called me and asked me to come running with some dog-catching supplies—kibble, water and a bowl. I should have known that’s why he was out longer than usual! I quickly gathered these items and raced down the street with them, only to find Matt and a small group of neighbors standing around talking, with this dog standing calmly on a pink leash. They had caught him just before I arrived.

We took him home for the night with a plan to begin looking for his owners the next day. We and Shiner were fortunate that his owners had microchipped him! We had him scanned, called the number provided and set up a plan to take him back home to his family.

I’ll be honest, not all our rescues go this smoothly. So in honor of this one that did, I had to celebrate it with a scrapbook page. Plus, those are two cute boys in that photo!

Product/technique notes:

I used patterned papers from the Simple Stories “24/Seven” collection (but the background paper is from Fancy Pants’ new “Memories Captured” line) and the following sketch from Paper Bakery.

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.

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.

Would you like fries with that?

October 12, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 2 Comments

My ensemble is from the Bob Evans fashion house, and Phil is head-to-toe Burger King.

Polyester restaurant uniforms do nothing for the wearer’s self esteem, I can tell you from personal experience. Will you take a look at this 1987 photo that my mom snapped of Phil and me just as we were both about to head to our respective summer jobs? Wow.

I got to wear a deep rust double-knit with little flowers and a matching apron for my waitress gig at Bob Evans. And mine was the good uniform of the two! Poor Phil had to wear this ghastly bright rust ensemble, with a faux vest attached to the shirt—and a matching ball cap—to work at Burger King.

There are certain things that teenagers don’t traditionally like to do. Being forced to wear something they dislike is one of them. But because we wanted to save money for college, Phil and I donned these polyester monstrosities several times a week to earn our pay. Teenagers also don’t much like having their photograph taken when they’re in said ugly clothes, but Mom insisted on getting this shot. Now I’m really happy that she did because I love having photographic evidence of our days of slinging hash to stack cheese.

Product/technique notes
I used Simple Stories Harvest Lane products to make this page (the colors were just perfect) and sketch #189 from Creative Scrappers.

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