Rene Marker

And 2 other layouts from this time period. In 1982, my parents and her sister/husband were going to rent condos in Hilton Head for a 2 week period in June. The first week they had the kids join them. There were 3 of us kids. The 4th one couldn't go as he was attending Boys State for the State of Ohio that week. 2 of the 3 kids were married and 1 of the couples had a 20-month old daughter. The other couple was expecting their first child. I was single. We spent a lot of time on the beach since our condos overlooked the beach and the Atlantic Ocean. One day several of us went to Savannah to do some touristy things. It was my parents and I, my 2 cousins and 1 spouse. Mom's sister and her husband, the grandbaby and the other spouse stayed back in Hilton Head. Kit unknown. These were some of the first pages I did back in 2008.

I'm using ages 24 - 30 for this month, the years 1980 - 1985. At the age of 24 (since I turned 25 later in 1980), I made a trip with my boyfriend and another couple to the Kentucky Derby. We decided to go maybe on Wednesday and plans to get a motor home fell through. So on Friday, after we all got off work, we headed out and hoped to find a motel. Needless to say there were none in the Louisville area and we kept going south on I-64 and ended up finding a room in Elizabethtown, Kentucky. It was also well after midnight. We got up early the next morning and headed back to Louisville. We paid to get in the infield (nothing like it is today). Lots of people and unless you were lucky enough to get a space by the fencing, you really couldn't see much. However, Jim let me sit on his shoulders and Darrell let Jodi sit on his shoulders. But I will admit, I still didn't see much of the race. (Note: I finally got to see the race a few years ago on YouTube!) We had decided to head to Mammoth Cave National Park which was south of Elizabethtown on Sunday, so after the race, we headed south again. Sunday morning we got up and went to the park. After touring there, we headed back home. A side story was this was the year of a filly named "Genuine Risk". I bet a couple $ on the filly to "show" meaning if she placed 1st, 2nd, or 3rd, I would win money. My other bet was a horse owned by Jack Klugman (the actor) to Place (finish 1st or 2nd). Sadly, that horse finished 3rd. However, Genuine Risk won... I got $18! Jim made fun of me making that bet but he had to eat those words later as he ran out of money on the way home and couldn't buy our dinner... so I did! It is only fitting that I post these this week since the Kentucky Derby is this Saturday, May 3rd. And, wouldn't you know, it was on May 3rd in 1980 as well! Templates by Scrapping With Liz (Daily Life Templates). Kit by Bella Gypsy (Hold Your Horses) which is retired.

I love chocolate but never been a fan of the "boxed" chocolates. My preference was Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, Hershey's Almond Bar, Hershey's Milk Chocolate Bar and Hershey's Kisses. Being from Ohio, homemade "Buckeyes" were always around somewhere. "Buckeyes" are peanut butter and chocolate balls. My mother and several of her co-workers (all teachers) would get together in December and make lots of different kinds of candy and each would take their share. Some of the candies they made were Buckeyes, hard tack candy and chocolate covered cherries. I can no longer have chocolate so have had to find something else when I'm wanting a candy snack. On one of my trips this year, one of the stops for the tour is at Hershey's Chocolate World in Hershey, Pennsylvania. That's going to be a hard day for me!!!

Angela has a YouTube channel that she has videos of her scrapping. She doesn't use Affinity Photo to scrap but uses Affinity Publisher. But it does have a lot of the same features as photo.

Yep, I use that quite often especially if I have several effects on one layer that I want to use on another one. Personally, I don't like to select all the layers and do one shadow like Carole does in her videos. She still has to tweak some of them so doing them all individually is my preference. Having shadow styles is nice though because I can just click on that, it applies the settings and if I want to tweak it I can. That's how I do it in PSP as well. Use my presets and if I have to make adjustments, I do. The one thing that I really like about Affinity drop shadows is that you can adjust the settings at any time. With PSP, once you apply the settings, if you don't like them you have to delete the layer and start over (well, as long as the shadow is on another layer).

I noticed earlier today that there were a bunch of spam posts on this site that were about "robinhood accounts". Just can't get away from spam... it is everywhere! Editing to add that a quick google search shows that Robinhood is an online Commission-Free Stock Trading & Investing company based in Menlo Park, California.

You can save settings for drop shadows. If you look in the forum here called "Let's Talk", you will see a sub-forum called "Affinity". In the sub-forum, I created a post that shows how to save your drop shadows in Affinity. They are called "Styles". There are several default styles in the program as well. I also picked up some free styles from a YouTube channel called "Affinity Revolution" that has a freebies available with a free class they offer. The class has several mini-lessons and one of them was on the use of styles.

I have to say thanks to Susan for the idea for the letter I. This was one of the letters I was not sure what to highlight for the longest time. I is for Iron. Specifically, cast iron Irons. These have been around as long as I can remember. Mom used them as doorstops and I've continued this use to this day. I'm not sure but one of the doorstops may have belonged to my grandmother but given to Mom after her death. I just know there have been 2 of them in this house as long as I can remember. Not pictured is a cast-iron doorstop in the shape of a dachshund that lives in my bedroom. I couldn't get a good photo of these irons in their normal place since it has no natural light or an overhead light (and I can't get down on the floor!) so I moved them elsewhere for the photo. They are HEAVY... A little history: Cast iron "irons". American country irons flourished from 1850 to 1950. The most common early irons were cast in one piece and weighed from five to seven pounds. In the nineteenth century, they were found in every country home and were heated on cast iron stoves. They are commonly called "flat" or "sad" irons. "Sad is an archaic word meaning "dense" or "heavy". Cast Iron History Cast-iron doorstops were made from roughly 1820. Most found today were likely made in America sometime between the turn of the last century and 1940.

Chocolate cake with Chocolate icing. But I couldn't have that cake now with chocolate not being something I can eat anymore. But then, the last time I even had a cake was 2008.

I sure hope I can get a photo like that when I take a trip down under. A friend and I are talking about 2027 for the trip!

I do it the same lazy way you do. Drag and drop. For the whole page papers, I do have to align center and align middle to get them in place but I set up those shortcuts on the toolbar so no problem! I do drag and drop in PSP as well. It just works so much better for my scrapping process.

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.