2 photos

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.

23 years later

October 9, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo 2 Comments

We had such a lovely time visiting with Jim and his mom after all these years apart.

Jim and I became friends right at the start of college and were besties all the way through. I’ve talked about him before in this post because he cycled 102 miles to raise money for cancer research last year. But let me be plain about how lucky I feel to have met and claimed Jim as my best friend in that really vulnerable first week of freshman year: I won the friendship lottery! There, I said it.

Historically, one of the most popular weekends of the year at Ohio University is Moms Weekend. That first photo in my layout is a shot I took of Jim and his mother and my brother and our mother during Moms Weekend in our senior year (1989). We all had a great time hanging out together that weekend. Now fast forward 23 years to the second photo, taken this past summer when the five of us met up for the first time since the other photo—23 years later! We had an amazing day together, full of laughter, and it was so overdue.

Now to illuminate any non-scrapbook folk out there reading this: Scrapbookers are almost always using part of their brains on scrapbook thoughts. In this case, once I knew that Phil, Mom and I were going to drive to Virginia to meet up with Jim and his mom, the first thing I thought to do was pull out this old photo, scan and color correct it and then print it to take along. Why? So I could set up the same shot and then scrapbook them together, of course. And give Jim the photo to take home.

And that’s what I did. The problem was that I forgot about taking this photo until we were walking Jim and his mom through a pedestrian overpass and back to their hotel for the night. It didn’t turn out to be the awesome photo I envisioned, but I came home with the shot and the wonderful memories, and that’s what really mattered.

I’m entering this layout in the My Mind’s Eye October challenge (incorporate stamping into your project).

Best sandwich ever

September 24, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo Leave a Comment

You must do yourself a favor and try this sandwich.

So, they tell me it’s autumn now. Well, that’s awesome, but in Texas the beginning of autumn still usually feels a lot like summer everywhere else. And because the ingredients for our favorite summer sandwich are still in season, I thought I would let summer dangle its toes over the line a wee bit into fall by letting you in on this taste sensation secret…via a scrapbook layout, of course!

If you like these ingredients on their own, you are going to LOVE the flavor combination they create together. Don’t say I didn’t warn you if every time you see avocados at the market, you instantly think of these bad boys.

The recipe
Toast bread and spread with mayo.
Pile with sliced avocado, tomato, red onion, cilantro and/or basil and jalapeño (it’s wonderful without the pepper, too, but we like the added spice).
Add salt and pepper to taste.

That’s all there is to it.

This sandwich is absolutely wonderful on its own, but we think that having it with corn on the cob takes it to a whole different flavor level. It’s what I imagine summer would taste like if we could take a bite!

Product/technique notes:
The colors of the BasicGrey Indie Bloom line were perfect for my photos. I also used a sketch they provided on their blog:

Glory days

August 16, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo Leave a Comment

My brother, Phil, is on the far left in this photo.

1988 was our star-spangled summer. Phil and I had each earned an editorial internship in New York City through the American Society of Magazine Editors. A whole summer spent living and working in New York! What an amazing time we had.

On July 4th a small group of our friends from the internship program went down to the East River to see the fireworks; they were the best I had ever seen! There was rousing music blaring—I particularly remember New York, New York and Glory Days. During the last song of the night—New York, New York—we formed our own little chorus line and performed a Rockettes-inspired high leg kick in perfect unison to the music.

What I recall most from that night, though, is feeling so free and happy to be right where I was.

My first visit to Disneyland

June 30, 2012 By Janice Daquila-Pardo Leave a Comment

Who's afraid of the Big Bad Wolf? Not me!

My mom lived in California from the time she was seven until leaving to attend college in Ohio right after high school, but her parents lived there for the remainder of their lives. So, once Mom and Dad started having a family, they frequently traded visits between California and Ohio so Mom’s parents could spend time with their grandchildren. Obviously, I don’t remember this time, but during our visit in June 1968 Grandma and Grandpa took me to Disneyland for the first time.

In creating this layout, I have hit upon a little tip I can share with you about making identifications in vintage photos.

I know the details my mom wrote on the back of these shots—because I scan the fronts and backs of my old photos—which said that it was June 1968 and that I was with the Big Bad Wolf. So right there, I have some great information. But as I was coming to the journaling part of this page, I started worrying about which amusement park featured the Big Bad Wolf. I mean, I thought it was Disneyland, but I wasn’t sure. It could have been Knott’s Berry Farm, which I know we also visited on at least one of our trips to California. And I wanted to be sure before putting pen to paper.

So I turned to Google’s images search and typed in “Disneyland 1968.” I thought this was probably a long-shot way to start my search, but I knew that I could refine it if need be.

First of all, I encourage you to do a search like this just for the fun of seeing the old Kodacolor images of people in their 60s garb and Disneyland in all its 60s glory. Just take a look at a few of the wonderful images I found:

This image came from http://home.earthlink.net/~rxunit/id15.html.

This image came from http://matterhorn1959.blogspot.com/2009/12/childs-trip-to-disneyland-1968.html.

This image came from http://www.tickledpinklife.com/2011/02/when-the-peoplemover-was-the-futur/

Now back to my objective for doing this search: I hit paydirt on the first try! Take a look at this image and then compare it to the Big Bad Wolf photo on my layout. My heart sped up when I noticed the same building and landscaping (it’s a Micky Mouse flower bed) in the background as in my photo! This was enough proof for me that these photos of mine were taken in the Magic Kingdom.

This image came from http://matterhorn1959.blogspot.com/2009/12/childs-trip-to-disneyland-1968.html.

So the next time you’re casting about for details to include in your journaling or to confirm the places, events or times in your vintage photos, try a Google image search. This is a rich resource for photo research, and I say the more details the better when you’re creating a special page like this.

Product/technique notes: All the patterned papers I used on this project were from the BasicGrey’s Up, Up & Away, PB&J and Serendipity collections. I created the black ribbon scallops using one of the We R Memory Keepers Sew Ribbons tools. The Disney font that I cut using my Silhouette is called Waltograph.

And I used this sketch provided at Club CK for their June challenge:
The June sketch from Club CK

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