Monthly Archives: May 2013
2007: Horseback Riding
2007: Horseback Riding
When my son moved in with me I joined the YMCA for several reasons. One was that we could take advantage of the swimming pools at several of the YMCAs in San Diego, another reason was that my son wanted to attend day camps in the summer put on by the Y, and we got a discount if we were members, and third, they had a special group for parents that was a parent/child group that had outings once a month that we could go on with other families.
One of the trips that we did with this group was horseback riding. This was my son’s first time on a horse and he had a great experience.
I didn’t do too much exciting on this page, but I love the way that it turned out. I used pre-made paper and Jolee’s sticker packets for the embellishments. On the right hand page I surrounded the page with small gauge rope affixed with brads that go through the paper. While this looks really cool, it made it very difficult to get into the plastic sheet protector and it has permanently warped the protector page. If you look closely at the picture you can see this.
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2007: Halloween at Legoland
2007: Halloween at Legoland
As I started working on this blog I realized that this page is going to need a lot of explaining! I have to set the context for the event. The San Diego Fires of October 2007 had just happened and we had been cooped up in our small apartment without air conditioning and closed windows for about 4 straight days. We knew that we needed to get out to restore our restless bodies and so we decided to go to Legoland for Halloween. Our good friend Stephanie went with us. They were having a Halloween costume competition and my son wanted us all to dress up – so we did – in our costumes from our “karate kid” night. I was still wearing my air mask to filter out smoke as I have allergies. So – I was accused of dressing up like a SARS victim (see left hand page top right photo)! Which was not at all what I had intended!
The 
photographs on the left hand page are bordered in black with a new corner cutter that I had purchased and I thought that it was fitting for Halloween. I like this kind of corner cutter because it allows you to make frames that hold the pictures without the need for glue or sticky tabs. Click on the graphic to the right if you would like to purchase this corner cutter.
One of my favorite parts of this spread is the spider in the top left hand corner of the right page – it is about half an inch tall – so doesn’t fit under the plastic sheet protector very well, but it is a fun element.
2007: Miramar Air Show
2007: Miramar Air Show
As most boys that are 9 year old will agree – guns and soldiers are one of my son’s favorite things – so going to the Miramar Air Show was a highlight of the month for my son. We arrived very early so that we could set up our chairs in the front row of the open field section and got rained on most of the day! However we had a blast, and felt the blasts from several of the explosions! We had opportunity to walk through planes and other military vehicles as well as watch some spectacular flying. I think if we were to go again I would take earplugs as many of the airplanes were extremely loud.
I used a military background paper for this spread and then used my Cricut machine to cut out the letters on the right hand side of the page. When they were cut out I realized that I had a perfect silhouette banner remaining which I used on the left hand page. I used a sponge brush to dab gold and copper paint on to it to make it look camouflaged. On the left hand side you will see 5 copper brads – I punched the holes for these using by Crop-A-Dile Big Bite Punch.
I also used a new tool on the corners of the pictures on this page. You will have to click on the image above to get a larger view of this. The corner cutter also has an embossing part to it that embossed the four bars into the corner of every picture. I like this as it reminds us of the stripes that the military are awarded for rank and service.
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- Blue Angels Cancel Performances Due to Budget Cuts (sandiego6.com)
2007: San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art
This spread chronicles a trip we made to the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art with a University Living Learning Community. While I think that this museum is a great one for kids – they have a seesaw that is a cannon that squirts water! – my son really wanted to touch everything – and of course at an art museum that is probably not a good idea. 🙂 However they had lots of outside art that you could put your hands on – so we spent much of our time outside. My favorite picture in this set is in the bottom right hand corner. My son had been hyperactive and was in trouble and he was pouting by sitting on the inside of this piece of outdoor art sculpture.
the top right hand picture was actually not a piece of art at the museum – we were sitting under a palm tree and these had fallen to the ground – so I put them in this grouping to take a picture. Later I saw other museum patrons taking pictures of this as well – so I hope that they didn’t think that it was one of the displays!
If you look very carefully at the right and left borders of this spread you will see that it reads “San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art” in a slightly darker gold than the background paper. These letters, and all of hte other decorative pieces that you see on the pages, were cut very carefully with my Cricut Machine. Since this is very fibrous paper this was a very difficult process and I had to redo several of the letters before they were cut without tears (the ripping kind and the eye kind).
Notice on the right hand page that I put the pictures into a cube shape and only corner cut the outside edge of the cube, which emphasized the collage nature of this page.
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2007: Memorial Day – Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery
On Memorial Day 2007 we headed out to the Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery. My son is fascinated by guns and “sharp and pointy things”, so he had a great time with the reenactors. It was a very sobering day though, as we wandered through the thousands of graves, all marked with a small American flag. It made us so thankful for the millions of lives that have been given over the centuries in the fight for freedom. I am hoping that all Americans will use Memorial Day to remember and be thankful.
The main thing that I want to highlight on this page is the wide copper staples that I used to hold down the pictures on the right hand page. These are put in place with a special stapler called a fastenater. The marine uniform is a Jolee’s product. I selected a blue border for the pictures to compliment the patriotic paper that is on the left hand page.
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- Miramar National Cemetery Ramps Up Operations (waronterrornews.typepad.com)
2007: Our First Birthday – Chuck E Cheese
2007: Our First Birthday – Chuck E Cheese
One of the things that is cool about our family, is that my son and I have the same birthday! So, when it came time for us to celebrate his first birthday while living with me I thought it would be perfect to celebrate at Chuck E Cheese. Now – I never had a birthday party at Chuck E Cheese – and had always wanted to – so maybe this was a little selfish of me – but I think we all had a great time!
The background pages from this spread come from a pre-packaged Chuck E Cheese scrapbook kit along with the “My Party” and Mouse cutouts at the top of the left page. I took advantage of the cheap photo booth in the arcade to get some fun “line drawing” pictures of the two of us. I also made sure that I kept an arcade token and ticket for the scrapbook, which you can see on the right page.
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2007: Circus and CORR
2007: Circus and CORR
This spread is another example of putting two unrelated events on the same spread. This was a difficult pair to make a cohesive spread from and so the main tie is that the titling on both pages are cut from the same color using my Cricut machine.
The left hand page is from a visit to the Ringling Brothers Circus with about 80 of our friends – the Residence Life team at Point Loma Nazarene University. The lady in the picture with my son is one of our good friends who supported us through our adoption process.
The right hand page remembers a day long trip to the Quarry in San Diego for a day of CORR (Championship Off Road Racing) racing. A cool story from this day is that there was a terrible wreck (fortunately no one was hurt). Our friend Steve, who got us tickets to the event, knew some of the people working the event, and they handed him the front bumper of the car that wrecked and he gave it to my son. About an hour later they were interviewing the driver over the announcement system and I heard them say “Look, here is a boy with a piece of your car!” My son had run over to get the bumper autographed by the driver! About two weeks later the race was on TV so we recorded it onto a DVD and maybe one day that bumper will be worth something!
2007: Point Loma Nazarene University
2007: PLNU
While I was working on the adoption process of my son I was working at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego. My son got to “help” me with several of the fun events that I was a part of while I worked there.
The left hand page shows pictures from a leadership training event that was similar to a mud run and our job was to jump out of the bushes and throw water balloons at the participants. What a perfect event for an 8 year old boy! The letters and the splatter spots were all cut using my Cricut machine.
The right hand page shows how we “painted up” for a spirit event that the students were holding. Again, the stars and the titles were cut using my Cricut machine. Notice that the PLNU at the bottom is from the title silhouette banner at the top of the page. I also affixed two patches from PLNU on this page and included the stray strands from pompoms that my son picked up at the event.
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2007: Legoland
2007: Legoland
I lived in San Diego for three years before my son moved in with me. As a kid I had loved Lego, and honestly – I still do. I really badly wanted to go to Legoland, but was told that it was for little kids – which it really is. So, when my son moved in with me I knew right away that I had the perfect excuse to go for the first time – so that my son could enjoy it! At a local San Diego scrapbook store I found the Lego background pages that you see on all three of these spreads. The are embossed with the Lego dots and all of the pages have a plastic feel (which actually made it somewhat hard to affix the pictures to.
On this first spread I used some black Fastenators on the page as I thought that they looked like black Lego pieces. The Title on the left hand page is from a set of pre-cut sticker letters that were originally white with a black border. I used a red marker to color them in so that it would match the red Lego pieces on the background page. The title on the right and page and also from a pre-cut letter sticker set.
2007: Legoland 2
On this spread I used the same white pre-cut sticker letters that I colored red from the first page. I also cut the photographs on the left hand page to fit perfectly into the squares that were already part of the background page.
2007: Legoland 3
On this third spread I stray a little from the Lego backgrounds on the right hand side so that I could use a Water Park background page. This was my son’s favorite part of the Legoland park on our first trip and we sepnt a good part of the day here.
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2007: Sushi Night and Karate Kid
2007: Sushi Night
My son had made some friends in our neighborhood, and that family, the Karahadians, and our mutual friend Stephanie, decided that we would have a sushi night along with watching “Karate Kid“. We all dressed up in our best Karate and Ninja outfits for the event and had a great time.
I tried a lot of new things with this page and while the final outcome I am happy with – it was a mess to make. The background is actually material that I bought at Joanns and then glued to white cardstock. The main problem with this was that I cut it perfectly to size and immediately the edges began to ravel due to the fine thread count. I had to use a a fray stop product on the edges of the material to keep this from continuing to happen. The titles were creating by using my laser printer and printing directly on to the cardstock with an Asian inspired font that I found at 1001fonts.com. I use a gold marker and a ruler to draw the edges on the green title blocks. The chopsticks are real and are left over from our event.
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- The Real Karate Kid (theothermovie.wordpress.com)
