Tex Randall

(Tex Randall in 1973. Gary Grandy in lower photo)

In my recent forays on Google Earth, looking for various current 'street views' of very old photos, I decided to investigate these photos I took in Canyon, Texas in the summer of 1973. I remember well the giant Texan with his enormous cowboy boots, where we gleefully posed. A bit of Texas roadside kitsch, in keeping with the Texas Spirit, I thought maybe I'd better find out more about this big ol' boy, and see if he is still around. First stop, Google Earth, where I spotted his location. Then a bit of regular Googling, where I learned that he has a name. He's Tex Randall, and he was built in 1959, and stands 47 feet tall. He has been restored and repainted a number of times, but today, is a shadow of his former self. His fingers are mostly gone, his pants legs and boots are broken and battered. His colors are faded. Some things actually look better- I think his 'new' belt buckle is great, and he looks jaunty with his mustache and neckerchief. I hope that the citizens of Canyon are able to bring Tex back to his former glory, and that he watches over the windswept Texas highway forever.

Current photos from the Save Tex Randall website

You Were a Good Dog, Charlie Brown

My Mom has been asking me for ages to do a layout about our family dog, Charlie Brown. He was a chocolate brown poodle, that we had from about 1965 (when our sweet Cocker Spaniel Sandy passed away) to around the time I was married in 1978. The photos of Charlie were few and far between, and not so good... we were lucky to have an actual portrait of Sandy, so even though the photos I used in that layout were poor, it didn't matter too much because the large photo was so nice. But one of the challenges of heritage scrapping is being able to work around bad photos, and make the most of what you do have. Design and technical-wise this isn't anything spectacular, in fact, it's pretty basic even for me. But I kind of like the funky retro colors and funny vintage poodle background (it's actual 1950s wallpaper I scored from retrorenovation.com) and recolored. Gee, I hope I'm not in violation of wallpaper copyrights!
Charlie Brown was actually a pedigreed poodle, with the full name of "Charles I of France". I think it's pretty obvious why he became Charlie Brown. RIP, sweet Charlie!

Oregon Boy

A few months ago, I did a layout for my two older sisters, Lynne and Leslie. Since I've been scanning all these old family photos this past week or so, it seems only fitting to make one for my older brother Gene. Our family lived in Vale, Oregon from 1939, when my parents were first married, to 1954. I was only 3 years old when we moved to California, and although I remember quite a bit about my little life in Oregon, my older siblings really consider Vale a huge chunk of their lives. As the only boy, Gene was the lucky recipient of my Dad's love of the outdoors. Dad took Gene hunting, fishing, hiking and camping all over the hills, mountains, streams and lakes of Eastern Oregon. Even after we moved to California, they continued regular trips back to Oregon for their outdoor adventures. Gene became a geologist, and today continues his love of the great outdoors. As a Dad, Grandpa, and teacher, he has passed this legacy on to the young boys and girls in his life. Next weekend our family will be gathering in the mountains of Southern Utah for a family reunion. Gene organized it all, and I'm sure he would agree, that his appreciation for the beautiful outdoors began when he was a little Oregon Boy.

A Few Random Layouts

In the past few weeks, with all my scanning, I've created a few layouts that I haven't bothered posting on my blog. I thought I'd get them out of the way, so I can 'file' them away, and clear off my computer desktop.



The first one uses some of my old missionary photos from Texas. These were taken in the funky little Central Texas burg of Ranger, Texas. At the time of these photos, it was a dusty little town. Today (thanks to my forays on Google Earth), it is still a dusty little town. Unfortunately I was unable to locate for certain, any of the places I photographed way back in '73, so it will have to be valued for its... old photos.



This next one tells of my eternal love of peanut butter & jelly sandwiches... a love that obviously (from the ancient photo on my layout) started when I was a tiny tot. Recently, I was having a discussion with a 90-year old friend of mine, and she told me that she doesn't much like to cook any more. Her very favorite meal is a nice peanut butter & jelly sandwich. A woman after my own heart. (Pardon the horrible quality of the old photo- if you think it looks bad now, you should have seen it when I first scanned it! Yecccchhhh!)



The last one was just a quick one I did using another pretty bad photo, taken of me at Christmas during my freshman year of college. It was quite high contrast, so I thought I'd try to make it look like an old Joan Baez album cover or something.

That's all for now!

The Family History Detective

I've been scanning scads of photos in the past week or so, for our upcoming family reunion. One of the fun things about old photos for me, is trying to figure out when the photo was taken. Our family didn't take a lot of photos, and almost never dated any of them. Occasionally there is a date on the photo from the processor, but that's not definitive, because if the film hung around in the camera for months... you get the idea. So sometimes a little detective work is in order. Figuring out WHERE a photo was taken can also be challenging. Remember a couple of weeks ago, I blogged about finding some of my old Texas photo locations on Google Earth? In the case of the photo below, even though I had written the name of the town on the back, it didn't really help me pinpoint the exact location. What helped me was that in the original photo, you could see the highway number signs, so it was a simple thing to look up the location on a map.



But in the case of our family photos, there wasn't one single photo in the entire bunch that I didn't know where it was taken. (That's because almost all of them were taken at home!)
When I came across the photo above of my two older sisters, I wanted to know when it was taken. I knew it was sometime before late 1958, because my older sister Lynne graduated from high school that year, and this was taken before she went away to college. Our walls were still pink, and I remembered that we had them painted while she was in college. Since we moved to that house in mid 1956 I had it narrowed down a little bit. It was fun to look at the girls and try to guess how old they were. Was Leslie only 13, like she was when we moved there? Was Lynne a junior or senior in high school? I finally guessed that the photo was taken in 1957. Then I finally spotted the obvious... there was a Saturday Evening Post in the foreground! Eureka! But would I be able to find and identify this cover online? Especially since the artwork wasn't really all that clear. It took me less than 5 minutes to find the answer! I did a Google search for "Saturday Evening Post cover art", and with a couple of mouse clicks, I found a site that had every single cover, organized by year and date. I scrolled through 1957. No luck. I scrolled through 1958, and quickly found my cover! Hurray! It was dated March 29, 1958! I realize this little piece of detective work isn't all that earth shaking. Not every date-or-place-unknown has magazines or road signs in them. But it's just a little example of the fun involved in researching and telling one's story!

Aidan Loves Green

My grandson Aidan loves green... it wasn't until I had finished this up, and added the location of the photos (Gruene, Texas), that I got the little play on words... Gruene is pronounced "Green"! Really, I am so clever! LOL!

Kind of a different style for me, but I really do like to explore different ways of scrapping. I caught a glimpse of a billboard on my drive home from work this evening- there were a series of vertical photos on it, and by the time I got home, I had this all designed in my head. I wish I were disciplined enough to plan my life a little bit more. Scrapbook layouts yes, important things like finances, household chores, not so much.

Jackson Comes to Visit

Alicia & Baby Jackson were in town this past week. We didn't get to see much of them because we were in Texas, then Alicia went up to San Luis Obispo to visit her sister Liz. So, last night Jackson came over for a visit. We of course, spoiled him (except for the little mishap with the door frame, but that's another story), and I got a few dozen photos. Tonight Alicia came over for dinner, and when Jackson saw us, he started to cry. He was so brokenhearted, thinking Alicia was just dropping him off with us, that it broke our hearts too. No one wants to see their sweet little grandson with tears spilling from his eyes, but he eventually warmed up to us again, once he realized his Mommy was sticking around. They're leaving us once again tomorrow, so we'll just have to enjoy these fleeting visits when we can get them. He will be celebrating his first birthday in just 3 weeks, and I can't wait!

Home, Cool Home

Ian & Jess have the coolest apartment in San Marcos, Texas... for those who haven't been reading my blog for the last week or so, we just got back from spending 5 days in Texas with our son & daughter-in-law. Until recently,they were renting a great old two-story house, but the landlord had other ideas. So they found a lovely apartment above some businesses right on the main square of town. 15' ceilings, real wood paneling, gorgeous hardwood floors, and of course, their own fun, eclectic style of decorating. Jessica loves owls, and they have a variety of owls tucked in various places around their rooms. I follow a lot of design blogs, and I think their apartment is just as cool as any of the places I see featured online. Jessica crochets, and she even crocheted some sushi!
Aidan's room is full of fun books, and toy displays. A kid's dream! It's too bad we took over that room, and kind of messed it up, so no photos. :(
So, I thought they deserved a layout about their Home, Cool Home.

Still Skating After All These Years

We're leaving in just a couple of hours to head to the airport, and the end of a wonderful adventure in Texas. I have enough photos & memories to last & scrap for a lifetime! I'll try to keep it to a reasonable number.

Sunday evening, Ian asked me if I would mind doing a layout about him & his skateboarding. Ian has been skating since he was a young boy, probably for at least 20 years. Even though he's a husband and Dad, working and going to graduate school, he still finds time to go to the skate park and enjoy some time doing one of the things that he loves. So we went over there together, and I took a few dozen photos of him in action. It was really fun putting this together for him. I hope you like it too! Click on the layout for a closer look at some of his fine moves!

The Pinata

We're still in Texas, and we have had such a memorable visit! Every day we've done something fun, and I've taken so many pictures it will take me months to scrap all the different events! I'm too busy to get the photos organized, and much too busy to scrap. I did manage to create one layout, a fun one about an event from Saturday. We drove from Ian & Jessica's home in San Marcos down to Kerrville, Texas, not too far from San Antonio. Jess's family was holding a family reunion at a beautiful RV park there, and so we spent most of the day just relaxing, and enjoying her sweet family. Lots of good food, and fun activities for the kids. One of their traditions is to do a pinata, but without blindfolds. Jessica's dad Ron is the 'rope handler', and he controls that pinata with finesse and skill. Even without blindfolds, it took a dozen kids two tries each to finally bust that thing open! I think being the 'camera handler' was the second best job of the day!

Visiting Gruene

Yesterday we took so many photos on our outing to Gruene, Texas with our kids, that I had to do TWO two-page layouts. I've only done this a couple of other times, so I thought it was time to repeat the idea. The first layout shows many of the wonderful things we saw in the great little historic town of Gruene. It's an old German town (there are several of them in Central Texas). The second one shows a bunch of cute photos of our son Ian, his lovely wife Jessica, our grandson Aidan, and of course, the Honored Anniversary Couple- Bruce & me. As you can see, it was a bit of a rainy day, but it didn't dampen our good time.


Click on the layouts for a closer view.

Happy Anniversary to Us!

Today's our 32nd anniversary! I have to say, that I have a wonderful, wonderful husband and a very happy marriage. It's been a fun time- living in lots of different places, different jobs, amazing & interesting kids, adorable grandkids, lots of travel, day trips, weekend adventures, projects, challenges, laughter, tears, and just an adventure every day! Each year I make something for my husband for our anniversary- usually I focus on the number of years we've been married. This year, I decided to keep it simple. I have been wanting to scan our wedding announcement for a long time, but the original was about 14" long, so it didn't get done. It's so cute, I just wanted to show it off. I designed it when I worked for Grey Advertising, and one of our suppliers printed it for me, complete with duotone, and mailing tubes, gratis. One of the top advertising photographers of the 70s, John Cahoon, took the fabulous photo. I did an exchange with him for a color drawing of his little son. I think I got the better deal. So, Happy Anniversary, Sweetie- it continues to be a Fabulous Adventure!

We're spending the next few days in Texas. We just arrived last night, and have already taken a couple hundred photos. I'm sure you'll be seeing more about that in the next week or so.

I've Been Busy!

I love long, holiday weekends, and I am enjoying a little more time than usual to scrap and do my other projects. One of the reasons is because Bruce still isn't quite 100% after his surgery, so we're not out and about as much. But the other reason is because I have had several scrapping 'deadlines', projects to complete for challenges I'm part of, (sorry about dangling that participle!) and I'm using this time to catch up. The layout at the top is one I completed rather quickly last night...it's for my Reading Challenge team. Sometimes I get these ideas that come together smoothly, and look just as I envisioned them. Others are a huge struggle, and I'm never happy with them. I think the layout designs that I like the most, are the ones that are more 3-dimensional, and utilize more realistic effects. But that's not always the case. I also enjoy doing very graphic, 2D layouts that look like magazine ads. My long years in the advertising business means I think like an art director, rather than a scrapbooker. I rarely 'decorate' my pages. But regardless, one of the things that is important to me as a creative designer, is the challenge to make each page unique. I try to brainstorm a bit before the creation of a page, and ask myself a few questions:
What can I do to add a visual 'hook' to my page design? How can I make this page look different from other pages I've created? How can I stretch myself creatively on this page design? Can I learn a new skill or technique through this page? Am I clearly communicating my main theme, or is it muddy and unclear? Is my page design specific to my story? (in other words, I want my pages to not be interchangeable- the page is specific to my photos & story, so the design has to match my photo or story uniquely.)

I don't claim I'm successful all the time, but I just wanted to share a bit of my creative process. I'll leave you with a quick layout I did after a walk Bruce & I took last evening. This was done for a color combo challenge, and while the layout isn't particularly earth shattering, I think the photos are nice.

The Joys of Google Earth

One of the great joys of my life is Google Earth. I live on Google Earth. I've looked at street-views, when they're available, for every house I've ever lived in, including college apartments & houses, missionary houses, homes of my childhood, and the 6 houses we've lived in during the 32 years of our marriage. There are a few places where there are no street views (my babyhood home in Vale, Oregon, the home in Peace Dale, RI where we lived for 4 years in the mid-80s, which is ok, because I've been back there a dozen times). I've discovered that some of the houses are long gone. I was surprised to find only 2 houses from my mission still standing (not counting the Mission Home). And one of them looks pretty bad. I think I'll amuse myself by adding screen shots of these lovely places as I can.
But anyway, back to my point.... I've decided to make it my mission to try to find even the obscure things I took pictures of 35 years ago on street view on Google Earth. I must be nuts. But so far, I've done pretty well. I did manage to find my old house in Childress, Texas, of which I had no record of any address. We only used a PO box there, and we were only there 5 weeks. So, I just kinda guessed where it might be, and with a little trial & error, I managed to figure it out. Sadly, our once cute little shotgun house has now been 'remodeled' by someone with no taste.
(Click on each set of photos for a closer look)



After going to all that trouble, I couldn't leave well enough alone, I found some other sites of my famous missionary photos. I took a photo of this building and street corner in Childress, because of the funny stop lights. Notice the red is on the bottom, and the red and yellow are both lit up. Don't ask me why. I guess it was because the light wanted you to know it was "fixin' to turn green". That light is gone now, to be replaced by what appears to be a flashing light. I'm not sure if that's a better thing or not. The building still looks pretty good. Too bad that 1950 Chevvy is gone.



The next one was a black and white photo I took of a funky old grocery store in the little town of Zephyr, Texas, between Ft. Worth and Brownwood, where I finished my Mission. I was not only surprised it was still there, but it's still called Petty's. (As you can see from my original photo AND the modern one, it was once called Shelton's Grocery.


By the way, all I can say is, I'm glad I had the presence of mind to label the back of all my photos- there is no way on GoogleEarth I would ever find them if I relied on my pea-size memory.

You might waste a few hours yourself, Googling around the countryside, looking for memories.

Another Old Photo!

I told you things were slow... I've actually got 3 layouts going on my desktop, including this one. That's a bit unusual, but considering the fact that my scanner is busily humming along, scanning old photos from the 70s, I think it's actually quite conservative. I hope I find some scrapping time over the long weekend.

This layout was from an old slide taken by my brother Gene of me & our friend Bo, back in the summer of '71. We traveled from South Pasadena, California, to Zion & Bryce Canyons in Utah. It was a gorgeous trip- I never tire of mountains, red cliffs, and endless skies and dramatic clouds. We stopped somewhere in the middle of nowhere so I could climb all over the rusty junk & vehicles that we saw. As I've mentioned before, I was enamored with junk, so this seemed a logical place for some photo ops. Don't tell Gene, but actually, I absconded with these slides a few years ago, and now that I've finally scanned them, I think it's time I gave them back to him.

(I'm adding another layout I did a couple of years ago, using a photo taken at the same time. Just for fun!)

Imagine Your Story

You can always tell when not much is going on in my life, because I tend to do a lot of layouts from my 'family history' files, old photos, obscure stories, etc. This past week has been pretty low-key, as Bruce is still recovering from his gallbladder surgery, so we haven't really gone anywhere or done anything. (Just wait! Lots of travel & fun coming up in the next few weeks!)

The other night, I was going through my photo cupboard. I have a wonderful, huge cupboard on our second story landing, where I keep all my photo boxes, family history files, etc. I found a pile of slides, and decided to scan them all. One of them was this adorable photo of my niece Sarah, who is now, shall I say, a thirty-something Mom of four. Sarah & her family (my brother Gene is her Dad) were living in Houston in 1976 when I took this photo. I went out there for my first-ever grown-up vacation, all by myself.

Sarah has grown up to be quite the accomplished woman: she got married, earned a law degree, passed the bar, had kids, and somewhere in the middle, started an eBay business that has catapulted her into semi-fame as an entrepreneur extraordinaire. She's been featured in the Wall Street Journal, on last years' E! Oscar pre-show, in Forbes, and of course, her own fabulous blog/website called Fashionphile, which is the name of her business. ( I've blogged about it before, here.) It's fun to Google Sarah Davis Fashionphile, and see what comes up!

Creating the layout, got me thinking about little girls and their dreams: princesses, fairies, models, pop stars, Mommies....but this little girl Sarah grew up to have a grown-up girl's dream job- running her own business buying and selling glamorous high-end designer bags. AND she gets to be at home with her adorable kids & great husband Steve. What's not to love about that?