Be Thankful

Scrappy Monday, peeps!  Wow, I can't believe that Thanksgiving is this week.  And Christmas is right around the corner too, and then it's a whole new year.  Again.  But anyway!  I have a couple of special scrapbook layouts to share today.

First off, some background info:  when I was in college, I worked part-time at a local scrapbook store with the improbable name of Heart Tugs and Doodlebugs.  They did classes sometimes where you could sign up to come hang out in the evening and make a layout designed by the class teacher, and I used to get the class packets for free if I helped out with the classes (because there are always those ladies who insist they can't tie bows in raffia or draw cute faces or what have you, which maybe I'd never done those things either but they still insisted I do it for them, so okay, I got practice and they didn't and if one of the faces came out wonky I wasn't going home with it anyway).  One of those classes was for a layout with a little pilgrim boy and pilgrim girl, and that class was 13 years ago last week.  Because no kidding, I had instructions for the class with the date on them.  And guess what else I had!

Oh yeah, I had already put together the pilgrim pair and stuck 'em on the cardstock and everything.  The title was part of the kit too but I hadn't put it together or stuck it down, so I modified it from the original kit--it used to be tags (I cut off the tops to make them rectangles) and involved buttons and some knotted fabric strips.  However, I am pretty much a flat scrapper so I didn't want ten buttons denting everything else in my 2005 scrapbook.  Because oh yeah, that photo is from Thanksgiving of 2005, which is the first year that the hubs and I hosted a big hooferah on Thanksgiving, and also the year my dad's dog ruined the homemade apple pie and the hubs still has PTSD.  My parents and my brother and his wife are coming out here *tomorrow* for a big Thanksgiving hooferah, but this time Dad's dog is being left at home so I think the pies will be safe :D

And there's a closeup of Mr. Pilgrim.  His head is a circle punch, and his hands are smaller circles, and then the garland he's holding is done with a couple different leaf punches and an apple punch, plus the aforementioned raffia bows.  The rest of it was a hand-drawn pattern; you had to cut it out of the different colors of cardstock and then add some black pen lines to define the edges.

There's Mrs. Pilgrim, except she has sunflowers instead of apples.  And she looks like a little Amish girl, so I sent the pattern (I still had all the pieces of the pattern!) to my friend Missy since she's the one who convinced me and the hubs to spend our anniversary in Amish country this year.

So when I pulled out my Thanksgiving 2005 pictures, I was very excited to finally use this class kit that's been in my stash for no kidding THIRTEEN YEARS.  But the pilgrims take up a lot of the square footage of the pages, and I had some more pictures to scrap.  Well, I remembered back in the day thinking that we needed a Native American couple to go with the pilgrims.  What I didn't remember is that I'd already made them too!

They were already completed and stuck down on the pages and everything.  I kinda wish I'd made the girl's dress a little more detailed, but she does have some fringe happening on her hemline.

Mr. Native American has some fringe on his sleeves.  And apparently I dispensed with the apples or sunflowers in the hands.

So not only did I have these four pages most of the way put together for more than a decade, I also had all of the matching cardstock scraps too so I was able to use those to make the photo mats and everything matched what I'd already done.  JACKPOT.

That's it for me today,  peeps.  Hope your holiday preparations are going swimmingly!  I'm off to finish cleaning up the house :p

Supplies, not at all SU!
class kit from 2002