Rene Marker

The first layout Sue did is not a template from this workshop. She stated it was from Affinity tutorials and she posted it before the workshop actually began. The non circular layouts are from templates available to Diamond members for this workshop.

I also found my books from 1st and 2nd year Latin class. I took pictures then they went in the trash! No way I was keeping them. Hated the class when I took it. LOL Then I came across a book that was falling apart and had to be handled carefully. I opened it and found my grandmother's name scribbled all over the first page along with some comments and signatures of others. One of them included a date: "21-22" which was probably the school year. My grandfather's name was also on that page. He graduated in 1922. Grandma graduated in 1923. I again took a photo of those pages and put the book in the trash. When I first picked it up, pages fell out so it was in bad shape. Mom was a teacher and whenever the school system was changing textbooks, they let the teachers take a copy of any book they wanted. That's how we ended up with my 2 history books and one of the Latin books. The 2nd year Latin book had my name in it so I'm guessing that was the last year for using that textbook and they let the student keep their book. I also had quite a few of my college textbooks stored away in the basement along with my notes from the classes. Got rid of those as well!

H is for History Books. When I was cleaning out the basement in 2018, I found these books in a box. I recognized the books on American History and Ohio History. They were the textbooks when I took these classes in 8th grade and 7th grade respectively. I had never seen the other book which is a book on the early history of Auglaize County Ohio. That is the county I live in. When I opened it to look at it, my mother's name was written on the first page. Evidently this was a textbook for her when she was in school. All 3 books are now on the bookshelf in the living room.

Actually had to scrap a page for this part of the timeline (19-24 years old). I was chosen to be in 2 weddings in my life. Both were friends. One was from high school and the other from college. I had to come home from college for the first wedding on Sept 14, 1974. It was 3 weeks before my 19th birthday. Then 5 years later on Sept 14, 1979 (a Friday night), a college friend got married. Actually, both the bride and groom were college friends. We were in the same classes quite a bit since we had the same major (Business Education). All those classes specific to the major were only offered once a year so you saw the same people every quarter. My closest friend to this day from college was also in this major and we met in the fall of 1976 and had all 5 classes together that quarter. The couple that got married were in the same classes. The first couple were divorced before the 2nd wedding happened! However, the second couple were married for 41 years before the bride passed away. The groom has since passed away as well. The bride in this couple was the reason I joined FB. We had lost touch after the wedding as the groom was in the Army and we both got too busy to write letters in the 80's. When I joined FB, I found her within 24 hours! We were able to catch up and stayed connected until she died just a couple days before her 65th birthday. Her husband (also a FB friend), messaged me to let me know since he knew we were still close even though we never saw each other in person since they left Ohio around 1980 or 1981. Template was a freebie from Fiddle-Dee-Dee. Kit is "Mr & Mrs" at Sweet Shoppe Designs.

I learned a lot about living in the "wilderness" of the northern hemisphere from that show. I could never do it so I give those who do so much credit. As for the truckers, they deserve every bit of pay they get for putting their lives on the line with ever ice road run they make.

Evidently those that wouldn't drive on a lake never saw the show "Ice Road Truckers". Granted, I wouldn't drive on it around here because the ice wouldn't be thick enough to hold a vehicle. But after watching 11 seasons of "Ice Road Truckers" that took place in Alaska and in the Canadian provinces of Yukon, Manitoba and Northwest Territories in later seasons, I can see why it needs to be done.

G is for "Glasses (Eclipse)". My cousin, her husband and 2 granddaughters came to my house to see the eclipse a year ago. Since she was a former elementary teacher, she did some research about watching the eclipse with kids. Her granddaughters were 5th grade and 7th grade at the time. One thing she found was using paper plates to hold the glasses. She brought the items needed with her and that morning we all made our own holders. I was very glad she thought of this as I couldn't keep the eclipse glasses in place over my regular glasses. I had no problems with this. It was a fun day and I still have them displayed on my bulletin board in my office. That bulletin board has been hanging in that spot since the late 60's and still has stuff my high school years on it! (Never thought of using it for the letter "B")

I've got a wrought iron table as well only mine is not a Singer. I did a layout about the story behind it. This table is where my Christmas tree that is decorated with sand dollars that Dad found on the beaches of Hilton Head in the early 80's. Dad painted them white after they were dried out then Mom had the art teacher paint Christmas designs on them. She dated the back of them with the year (either 1980 or 1982). (No maple syrup stories here!)

In 2023 I documented the places that I traveled to in order to attend scrapbooking retreats. Most of them were from 2007 to 2012. I was also going to day crops about every 2 to 3 months with some friends that live an hour away for several years from probably 2011 to 2016. There have been occasional crops since then but nothing regular. I believe both the template and the kit are retired. Also, in 2023, I decided to document all the states that I have traveled to in my life. I'm using the same template, but for the kits I am using various from the same designer, Kelly Bangs Creative at Sweet Shoppe has a series of kits called "50 States". I am using a paper from each state kit on the template. Notice Nevada is casino related and Indiana is the checkered flag for a race (home of Indy 500). I have version 2 of this started as I added another state last year and planning to add 5 to 7 more states this year.

Now that I'm traveling, finding someone to keep her is a challenge. My cousin kept her last year when I went to Cape Cod, the first day she had Peyton (even though she has kept Peyton before when I was in the hospital 3 different times), Peyton pooped twice in the house. Later in the week, she peed on a bedspread. Both things she doesn't do at home. So she's not sure she wants to keep her when I take my 3 trips this year. I know I can take her to a kennel and there are a couple of good ones in town but she likes being with people. With Pepper/Paige, the kennel would put them in the same kennel so they were fine since they had each other. I have an idea to run by my cousin, but will wait awhile and not push her about keeping Peyton

Nope. I'm done with dogs when Peyton is gone! If she lives as long as Pepper, I'll be close to 78. I had a harder time training her at the age of 62 than I did Pepper at the age of 45. I'm just thankful that I've had these 4 wonderful dogs in my life.

I'd only have one letter in my ABC of my dogs..."P" Patches (1964 to 1978) Pepper (2000 to 2015) Paige (2002 to 2015) Peyton (2017 to ????)

In May, it is so inspiring to go visit the cemeteries with all the flags on display next to the tombstones. The flag holder at Dad's indicates he is a Korean War veteran. Dad, 7 of his brothers and his father all served. Only the youngest son didn't. Dad also lost a brother in the Battle of Leyte Gulf in WWII. Only one grandson served but there have been a lot of great-grandchildren in the family that have served. The granddaughter of one of my closest cousins (so a great-great-granddaughter) is at the US Air Force Academy. Grandpa was Army, 3 sons were as well. Dad and 4 other brothers were Navy. The grandson was a Marine. The great-grandchildren were a mixture of Army and Navy. The great-great-granddaughter is the first in the Air Force. My family is quite proud of the military veterans in the family.

I was lucky enough to meet Jim (Army colonel) at a subsequent reunion. I listened to the two of them discussing this and if you think you got chills from just reading it, just imagine the feeling I got hearing them relate all the actual details.

F is for Flag. My father was a veteran, serving in the US Navy for 4 years including time spent in the Korean War. His ship, the USS Montague, was part of a mission to evacuate an Army corps from Hungnam. Ironically, many years later when he went to a reunion for his ship, he met an Army colonel that he rescued during that evacuation. Dad was one of the sailors that took the small boats from the ship to land to pick up the men. His was the last trip and the colonel had to detonate the munitions on the beach. The munitions blew up before Dad's small boat with the few men was far enough away from shore and it capsized. All were able to get back on it and make it back to the Montague. This rescue mission was in December 1950 and the waters of the Sea of Japan were freezing cold. The Army colonel and Dad became life long friends at that Navy reunion. The Army colonel was career Army and had achieved that rank many years after Korea. He also attended every one of the Montague reunions while his health allowed. When Dad passed away in 2016, he had military rites including the 21 gun salute and an US flag on his coffin. I was given both the flag and the shells. They are proudly displayed in my living room.

It is going to be discontinued and no longer supported in October 2026 aka no longer available in the MS Office 365 suite of programs (they need to lower the price if they get rid of a program IMO). They are recommending that any important files be converted to another format. Apparently CorelDraw can open the .pub files Publisher creates. As for replacement programs, I see that Canva is the most recommended. Other programs recommended include CorelDraw, InDesign and Affinity Publisher.

Publisher is the program that the gal from TLP uses to scrap, not Photo. With the 3 programs working together seamlessly, it was a no brainer for me to not buy all three.

You might be surprised that someone just may be interested in the photos you take. I see requests for photos by people that aren't related to the individuals they are looking for all the time. Just last week a gentleman from my town was looking for a photo of a single lady that had been a teacher and principal at one of our elementary schools for many years. He was creating a memorial for her on Find-A-Grave and wanted to add her photo. A former student had one. Even though my close family relatives are not into the family history/genealogy like I am, they do enjoy my scrapbooks and hearing about my findings. But, I scrap mainly for me. I enjoy the process and the final product.

Some of my thoughts before coming up with the toy elephant were: earrings, earbuds, eyedrops and envelopes! Not very exciting. I would have probably used earrings because I do have some unique ones.

You should at least put the information that you put here on the layout. Believe me, you could forget it in the future! Also, the date would be a good idea. Nice layout though.

Not a joke. Many award winning news reporters on the channel. I prefer their news programs during the day but avoid the evening programs because they are the political commentary shows that are definitely biased. The 7pm to 10pm shows are not hosted by news reporters/journalists although one is a lawyer that once clerked in the US Supreme Court.

I've got 2 old layouts for this time period. Layout #1 was one of the first layouts I ever made (July 2008) thus the weird shadows on the photos! I didn't know any better. I would guess the paper and tags were freebies since I hadn't started buying kits yet. I think I used an old tutorial for older versions of PSP for the title. Layout #2 was a more recent layout. I did it in January of 2019 and the kit is from Kristin Aagard available at The Lily Pad (License to Drive) and the template is from Scrapping With Liz available at Hey Scrapper (Swirl Templates).

Never thought of that! That was just the one place I could get a good photo of it.

E is for Elephant Toy. I got this toy for Pepper and Paige more than likely around 2002/2003. In those days, I was still doing paper scrapping and all my stuff was in the basement. So I would go down there and the dogs would follow me down. This had been made into a family room in 1987 and Dad used to watch TV down there. There was a loveseat couch and some chairs along with the dining room table from their first home. I used that table to scrap. There was also a bed down there that could be used for company. The dogs loved to play on the bed or curl up on the couch. In 2018, I got rid of a loveseat couch that was in my office ( that I had bought used in 1982 from my boss at the time) and had the one from the basement brought upstairs. When I took the cushions off of it when my neighbor and his son moved it, I found this toy. I had stopped scrapping down there after an ice storm in 2005 so evidently the toy was in the couch for over 10 years. It was still in good shape so I put it in Peyton's toy box. She loves it and I'll see it at various places around the house which means she moves it because the only time I move it is to put all the toys back in the toy box before the cleaning lady comes!

The first thing I do if I make a change to my toolbar or workspace is save it. That was something I learned to do a long time ago!