Hello! February in my world means it’s LOAD time (LayOut A Day). Since opening my store I have found it incredibly challenging to actually make a layout every day … but when Alice asked for volunteers to be a featured designer, I happily stepped up. And she always sends me just the prompt I need!
The topic for today was Video Games, and the prompt was to “Scrapbook about an adventure that happened outside of your control”. Alice always gives a technique prompt too and for today it is to use triangles, like the Asteroids space ship. One of the papers I used had a triangular pattern on it, but it’s a bit of a stretch to say I followed both prompts!
At first I got kind of stuck in the “video games” topic box, but once I stepped out of that box and thought about things that are/were out of my control, the story I wanted to tell became obvious.
My eldest daughter started University this past September, in Waterloo Ontario – exactly 3,292km away from us (thanks Find My Phone!) As soon as she knew her exam schedule we booked her flight home and I started planning fun Holiday activities to fill her time here.
Then Mother Nature intervened.
The day she was scheduled to fly home, YVR (Vancouver International Airport) shut down due to a massive dump of snow. Snow! Yes, I know I live in Canada and you may assume that for 6 months of the year we live with 6′ of snow … but the fact is, in Vancouver snow is an infrequent occurrence and when it happens it generally causes all sorts of chaos as we are simply not prepared for it. Drivers don’t have snow tires. Cities don’t have enough plows. They also insist on laying down salt/brine instead of sand so, you know, no traction given! Having spent 9 years living in the north of our province, these sorts of things strike me as totally idiotic, but hey, what do I know?!
Long story short, her flight was cancelled and we couldn’t find another flight into any local airport before Christmas. So we started looking at alternatives and eventually booked her on a “tour of the US” type flight. From Toronto to Philadelphia, then Phoenix Arizona, then finally to Seattle Washington. My husband drove down to Seattle to meet her and drive her home – a 6+ hour round-trip in another storm. Ah the joys of travelling in the winter!
An Epic story like that required an Epic Layout! See it come together here.
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Here’s a close up of the layout.
After her 22+ hour travel day, I kind of wanted to shower her with hugs and kisses like our dog Scout did, but refrained. A bit. As the video shows, most of the story is hidden behind that photo, and once I’ve established where it’s going in my family albums, I’ll cut the page protector to allow the photos to be folded out.
Here’s a look at the hidden photos, starting with one of the screen grabs of the news reports. Planes were stuck on the tarmac for hours before passengers were able to get off. It was insane!!
I wish I’d taken screen grabs from each airport along her journey but I didn’t. I’m happy to have the ones I did get though. Adding that bit of technological detail makes this story so much more relevant to the times. And when we look back on this in future years I know it’ll make us smile and shake our heads at how crazy this situation was.
Thank you for coming to check out my layout in more detail. I’d love to hear what you think. Leave a comment below and let me know. While you’re there, tell me about one of your travel nightmares. I’m just hoping this is a one-off occurrence and that next Christmas it’ll all be smooth sailing!
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