2024: Thanksgiving Break – Thanksgiving Dinner
This is the final spread from our Thanksgiving 2024 adventures, although I may actually place it at the beginning of the Thanksgiving section of my scrapbook. The photographs are from Thanksgiving Day itself, which was toward the end of my son’s visit to Waco. He cooked us an amazing Thanksgiving meal with all the traditional foods, but he put his own unique spin on everything. It was absolutely delicious, and I wanted to make sure that his hard work was documented in my scrapbook.
Unfortunately, I was pretty tired that day and didn’t take nearly as many photographs as I normally would. That meant I had to get a little creative with the layout to fill the space without having a large collection of pictures to work with.
For the background, I selected patterned cardstock from a fall collection. I thought the colors worked perfectly for Thanksgiving. One thing I have learned over the years is not to worry so much about covering up the designs on patterned paper. I used to be very particular about making sure that the background images remained visible, but I eventually realized that doing so limited the number of photographs I could include on a spread. These days, I am much more interested in finding the right colors and overall feel for the page, even if much of the original design ends up being covered.
Since I didn’t have many photographs, I decided to create a large Thanksgiving title using a design I found in Cricut Design Space. The title has quite a few small pieces, so there was a fair amount of assembly involved before I could attach it to the page. I actually had to make a little adjustment to one of the layers after I had already glued it down. Fortunately, I was able to lift the piece, reposition it, and add some fresh adhesive. Sometimes it is difficult to figure out which layers need to go down first when working with intricate Cricut designs.
My favorite element of this spread, however, is the graphic of my son dressed in his chef’s uniform. I took a photograph of him from his job, brought it into Cricut Design Space, and converted it into a design that I could cut using my Cricut Maker. The finished graphic consists of two layers, and I was really pleased with how closely it resembles him. In fact, I think the graphic looks even better on camera than it does in person! This was a fun way to personalize the spread while also filling some of the space that would normally have been occupied by additional photographs.
The photographs themselves feature the wonderful food he prepared, including individual apple pies that were absolutely delicious. If you look carefully at one of the photographs, you might notice my legs and our dogs in the background. We are not really a formal sit-down-at-the-dining-table family anymore, so we enjoyed our Thanksgiving meal while relaxing in our chairs and watching some holiday television, probably football. It was a comfortable and enjoyable way to spend the day together.
I overlapped several of the photographs to make the most of the available space and arranged the title and chef graphic around them. Although the finished spread looks fairly simple, there was quite a bit of preparation involved in cutting and assembling the various pieces before everything could be attached to the background cardstock.
I really love how this spread turned out, especially the personalized chef graphic. It is a good reminder that you don’t always need a large number of photographs to create a meaningful scrapbook page. Sometimes a few carefully selected pictures, an interesting title, and a unique embellishment can tell the story just as well.
And with that, my Thanksgiving 2024 scrapbook spreads are complete! Now I just need to keep working on catching up with my albums so that I am not two years behind!
I would love to see how you document your own Thanksgiving celebrations, especially if you have found creative ways to make layouts with only a handful of photographs.
To watch the process click on the video below:
Categories: 2024, Thanksgiving
