It's link-up time for orchid at Project 64. Aside from a tiny pack of Post-It notes I couldn't find anything that was orchid in the house or around the neighborhood. Fortunately, Wegmans came to the rescue again with, you guessed it, an orchid.

I'm behind again in getting my L.O.A.D. layouts posted here. The last few days, that's the only creative time I've been able to squeeze in. Scrapbooking is definitely NOT a fast activity for me. 

After I photographed this page, I had to go back and do some more distressing of the journaling panel. This prompt was music from your past. Most folks did a layout on the music they listened to as a teenager, but my mind went right to my father, who was a music professor. Once again, there were almost no photos of him at the piano. What a pity! Journaling reads:

It’s times like this that I realize the importance of memory-keeping. When I read the prompt about music for L.O.A.D., I realized I’d never done a page about my father and his musical ability. This is just one of two photos I can find. The better one of just his hands and Sarah’s reflection in the piano is already in a scrapbook of favorite photos I did years ago. When I was talking to Tracy about the lack of photos, he commented that  he doesn’t remember my father playing that often when we were there.

 That certainly wasn’t true as we grew up. My father was a music professor, a wonderful pianist, and a conductor of choirs. He gave private piano lessons in our home several nights a week, and taught both me and my brother how to play the piano. Sadly, neither of us inherited any of his talent. I played until my junior year in high school, but Dane quit as soon as Papa would let him. 

 I loved listening to him play. Some of my favorites were show tunes, but the standard classical piano solos were also favorites. Not only do I wish I had more photos, but why didn’t we ever make a tape of him playing the piano?

 Photo taken: December, 1982

Story recorded:  February 16, 2012

Took this day to get my Take Twelve photos scrapped. The journaling came right off this blog post.

I need to find an appropriate piece of patterned paper for the first layout that came to mind with this prompt about old friends. I decided to take a Keri Bradford Storyboard and fill it with photos of my long-time friends. most of the supplies were from a Studio Calico kit. I'm really happy with this one. The journaling reads:

I am always envious of people I meet who have close friendships with kids they met in kindergarten or elementary school. Most of my best friends are ones I’ve met as an adult. I think moving twice (once as a third grader and once as a junior in high school) contributed to the lack of long-lasting childhood friendships. I still exchange Christmas cards and notes with a couple of friends from Amanda and New Paltz, but for the most part, my friendships were formed once I moved to Rochester. Of course, some of those friendships have lasted for well over thirty years now, so they truly are old friends.

 The four years I spent at Cornell didn’t result in many lasting friendships either. My mom got sick my freshman year, and died between my junior and senior years so I spent a lot of weekends traveling home to support my father and brother. And I spent an incredible amount of time studying and keeping up with an amazing workload. I do have two good friends from Cornell who luckily live right here in Rochester, and now that we’re retired (or working independently) we have lunch together just about every month. I’m still in contact with my boyfriend from those years and one of my roommates, but we rarely see one another.

 One of the things I hoped for my children was that they would develop some lifetime friendships during their school years. It hasn’t worked out exactly as I hoped, but both of them do have good friendships with kids they met growing up. Being in the same family daycare situation, going to a large and diverse church, and attending school in the same district all contributed to that. In the end, I’ve come to realize that it’s not when you made the friendships, but the very fact you have a supportive network of friends that matters.

 

I've managed to keep up with L.OA.D. but not with getting them posted here. I'll try to get a few up every day until I get caught up. I'm enjoying this far more than I ever imagined, and getting through some old family photos at the same time.

Here are days 8-10:

I know I wrote about it here, but I never scrapped the story of the day Matt and Sarah graduated on the same day, one in Georgia and one in New York. Supplies are almost all from Studio Calico kits. I'm so happy to finally be using these.

This was for a prompt "Home Sweet Home." It's a lot of journaling for me, but another story I'm glad to have in our albums. This one went in my HOME album. I need to get back to working on it again. The patterned paper is an old 7Gypsies paper that was just perfect for this. The journaling reads:

I grew up in Amanda, Ohio, a tiny village of some 700 people. We moved there when I was beginning third grade to live with my Great-aunt Edith. She was 85 when we moved in with her, and she had lived in this house for nearly fifty years. It was a great house.The house sat on Main Street which was also, at that time, a main trucking route. The trucks slowed down to go through town, but guests always had a hard time sleeping. I never noticed them.

I loved the wrap-around front porch. Aunt Edith had a long row of rocking chairs and since we lived next door to the major grocery store in the village, lots of folks stopped to rock and chat on their way to the store. The oddest thing about the house was the second floor which had four bedrooms, but no hallway so all the rooms ran one into the other. My bedroom was the smallest because they had taken part of that room to add a bathroom when indoor plumbing finally became available. 

It was, in general, a relatively poor community, and after we moved to New York when I was a junior in high school, I only returned once when Aunt Edith died at age ninety-eight. I never had any desire to go back because I was afraid the reality of the place would be depressing, and I really had fond memories of growing up here. We had total freedom to roam the town and the neighboring fields. Everyone watched out for you, which I’m sure could have been a hassle, but was nice as a kid. Tracy tried to talk me into going back, but I just kept resisting. Finally, three years ago, on our way home from a cross-country trip, I relented. And I’m glad I did. The house is now rental property, and it needs some loving care, but it and the town are much the way I remember them though the grocery store is now a medical center, and the school where I attended grades 3-6 and 9-10 has been torn down and replaced by a beautiful new elementary school. In fact, Amanda is probably in better shape now than it was then.

When we were in California in November, I asked Sarah where I might be able to get some good photos. She suggested The Palace of Fine Arts, and we enjoyed an hour or so there. But the real find was Baker's Beach in the late afternoon as the tide came in. I was thrilled to get a decent photo of the Golden Gate Bridge. It's not often that we've been in San Francisco on a clear, sunny day. Edited to add: I used a template for the photos and the journaling from Weeds & Wildflowers, January 365, by Gina Huff.