Descanso Gardens

During Thanksgiving day in 2008, we spent couple hours at Descanso Gardens before Tommy went home to celebrate Thanksgiving with his family, while I spent my Thanksgiving at my aunt's house. I have to say, it gets pretty frustrating when it comes to Thanksgiving every year. I like Tommy to attend my family's Thanksgiving and every year, he refuses. I suggested to him one year that we should attend both dinners - hang out at one house for a little while and run off to the other one, he still refuses! I guess his perfect excuse which he never dare say in front of my face is, "we are not married yet, so I am not attending to your family's Thanksgiving!"

Because both of us didn't have to do any food preparation (not like any one would trust me in the kitchen with a big bird anyway), we decided to take a small outing to Descanso Gardens. I always wanted to check out this garden. It is located at La Canada Flintridge. There were a lot to see, but so little time. I wished I had more time and hope to return some day!

I decided to do a double layout for this page. The left side of the layout, I decided to put pictures of us and the right side of the layout, I put pictures of the surroundings around the garden. Again, I kept the page simple and didn't do alot of paper layering. I used one of the Fall Stacks by DCWV. There's some pattern on it if you look closely to the picture. I rounded the corners of the pictures with a corner punch. (The rounded corner punch is one of the best investments I have ever purchased for scrapbooking!)

I used my silhouette digital cutter to cut out the fonts. Instead of using plain paper, I decided to cut the fonts with a pattern paper to create some design on the letters to give a different look to the fonts.

I also used the matching pattern paper as a background for journaling. I used a tiny hole puncher to punch the white and pattern paper and added a green brad to it. I then adhered the journal to the cardstock.

For the second page, the layout on the right side, I incorporated different scenery pictures taken at the garden. I kept the page simple, and only added a strip of the same green pattern paper on the side. There were so many pictures, I didn't know how to layer papers and put pictures over it, and yet not to make the page looking busy. I also made small tags. On there, I wrote the name of the gardens or places we visited there.

I love how the green pattern paper matches the entire layout. It made the page not so boring. If I were to fix this page, I like to layer a some pattern papers to the layout. I would not use blue ink to write out the garden names. I would use black instead to make the entire page "flow."

This is the last random layout that I had done in the last year and a half. Since August 2009, I have been working on my vacation pictures to create my travel albums. My passion is travel and scrapbook. They just complement each other very well. You see the world with your eyes, capture your memories with a camera and transfer everything you remembered in a scrapbook to tell a story. That's what life is about! :)