Everything's Coming Up Aggie!

You may have wondered why I haven’t been posting as much lately.  I blame my son.  He just had to go off to Texas A&M University, an institution that some may claim is a cult.  Well, sure enough, I drank that maroon Kool-aid right off the bat, so I am just as indoctrinated in that culture as he is, and I’ve been volunteering with the Denton County A&M Mothers Club ever since.

The Aggies have a funny saying, “From the outside looking in, you can’t understand it.  From the inside looking out, you can’t explain it.”  Texas A&M and the Aggie Spirit have a way of grabbing you and making you feel like you’re home…like this is the group you should have always belonged to.  You wonder why it took you so long to find it.  And if you’re lucky enough to be born into it, you can’t imagine ever belonging anywhere else.  The Aggie network is a brotherhood and sisterhood of all Aggies.  They recognize each other from across the room and they are drawn to each other to share their love for that little school on the Brazos.  It’s not so little now, boasting some 50,000 students, but it still feels like home.

One really unique feature of Texas A&M is the Aggie Moms clubs.  The first club was started in 1921 when the mother of one of the students decided there was no female influence on the young men attending what was then an all-male, all-military school.  The mom’s club started by bringing some welcome home-cooking to the cadets and staff, and has since evolved into a far-reaching organization that supports the school, provides thousands of dollars in scholarships every year, and so much more.  I’ve met so many wonderful ladies through this organization, many with children who graduated long ago.  That’s why I signed up to help with the Aggie Mom Boutique four years ago, and I’m still at it!

This past weekend was  Texas A&M’s annual Parents’ Weekend, where the school invites the Aggie families to spend a few days on campus touring classrooms, attending banquets and awards ceremonies, and, of course, spending money that helps this fine educational establishment.  One of the things parents spend money on is the Aggie Moms Boutique, a craft show to end all craft shows featuring none other than…you guessed it…everything “Aggie” that you can imagine.  Picture two huge ballrooms full of maroon – it’s hard to imagine!

As the Co-Chairs of this year’s Boutique for Denton County, my partner, Alisa, and I were responsible for filling up 5 tables with assorted products of our choice, which you can see below.  Alisa and I made some of these items, and some were purchased or were donated by other Aggie Moms from Denton county.  In our booth we had etched glassware (a huge hit!), decorated picture frames, some altered windows, hand knitted items, sterling silver charms and other jewelry, Christmas ornaments, and, of course, fliers for our Fundraiser Cruise.

So why did I share all of this with you today?  Well, for inspiration, of course!  Maybe you’ll be inspired to check out Texas A&M University for yourself.  Or maybe you can start one of these unique clubs for your school to raise money for scholarships.  You might even be inspired by some of the crafty things we’ve made – you don’t have to make them maroon!

To get an up-close peek at some of our crafty projects, visit our photo album here.

P.S.  If you or your organization is interested in participating in or organizing a fundraiser cruise, please contact me at Crafty Neighbor Travel!  I would love to help you with a cruise, or you are welcome to join ours!

Day 24 – School Spirit

When Lain gave us the prompt “School Spirit”, I could have easily reverted back to working on my son’s Texas A&M scrapbook, or I could even have done something from my high school years.  But when I was flipping through my supplies, I found this little “Aggie Mom” pennant that I bought when Steven first started school there, and I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to create a page about my own Texas A&M experience. 

Luckily, I have quite a stash of Texas Aggie scrapbook paper, so coming up with a quick page was not difficult at all.  Part of the journaling is my own story; the rest was compiled form information found on the internet.

Day 16 – BBQ Time Out

Our prompt for today, “Time Out”, was supposed to be about punishment, but I had these pictures that  were the next page in sequence for my son’s Texas A&M album, and I just couldn’t resist.  The patterned paper was so busy, I just couldn’t make myself put a bunch of embellishments on it.  I thought about trying to find some good die cuts on one of my Cricut cartridges while I was cutting out my title (From My Kitchen cartridge), but I couldn’t find anything that really fit.  Let’s just call this page simple and move on.  I’ve stated before…not every page has to be a beautiful masterpiece.  It’s better to have a plain but finished page than to have a really good idea for a page that never gets done.

Day 8 – Soundtrack of Your Life

I’m still stuck in the project box for this prompt. It’s hard to resist the pull of doing a layout without having to pick out pictures, match paper, or figure out what’s next.  I have all these project boxes right there in front of me with ready-to-crop pictures, matched papers, embellishments, and sometimes even ready-made journaling.  Plus, I’m doubly motivated to get some of these projects done because they’ve been hanging around for a while and I’m already getting tired of them!

I did at least try to stay on theme for this page, as I was going to do a page featuring the lyrics to the A&M fight song or maybe one the marching cadences the cadets use, but I had multiple large pictures to fit on only one page, so I decided I didn’t have room.  What I wound up with was this simple, blocked layout.

Day 7 – The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Day 7’s challenge from Lain was to make a page with the theme “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year”, but she urged us to stay away from the Christmas pages that the title insinuates.  I thought long and hard about that because really, Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year for me, but then I went back to my old standby-by project box and pulled out these photos from a Texas A&M football game. 

Football season is an intensely unique experience in College Station, and Texas A&M Aggies are some of the most fanatical fans in the nation.  Being a Cadet adds a whole ‘nother level of dedication.  It also means that I have pictures from just about every home football game (thanks again to all those Facebook buddies!).  So to give a little perspective on this experience, and to reserve some journaling for other pages, I decided to focus on just one or two aspects of the experience per layout, rather than trying to be totally inclusive of the whole experience on one page.  I had some great panoramic shots of the grandstands from my son’s first game, so for this page, I decided to focus on the 12^th man tradition.

A few days after his first football game, the school posted high-def panoramic photos of the student section of the stadium.  Of course, I immediately started taking screen shots at different levels of magnification, right down to a photo where I spotted my own son in the crowd. 

Because the pictures and the background paper were so busy, and I wanted to keep it to one page, I decided to limit my embellishments to a couple of packaged 3D stickers and nothing else.  I can’t decide, though…should I put an arrow or other marker to show Steven in the close-up photo, nor not?

Day 6 – Misheard Lyrics

Okay, I’ll admit it; I went completely off-topic on this layout.  When I first saw this prompt, I thought about a multitude of pages I could do about songs that I sang wrong for years or the hours we spent hitting "rewind" trying to figure out the lyrics to some of the songs we performed in our rock band.  I even thought about the very strange lyrics to Texas A&M’s Aggie War Hymn (fight song), but in the end it was really just too much to think about, so I did something quick and easy instead -- a cop-out, I know. 

Today I used another piece of paper I found at the local craft store, added the program from the event, an interesting quote from a historical speech, and a photo I found online.  I kept it simple and to the point.  No muss; no fuss.  Not every page has to be a masterpiece.  This layout will serve the exact purpose it was intended to serve, to remind my son of his Freshman Convocation.  Maybe it was memorable, maybe it wasn’t, but since it was his memory, and his alone, it really doesn’t need anything more than what I’ve already put on the page.  If, when he sees it, it invokes some memory that changed the course of his life, we can make another page about that.

The photo I used on this page (and other pages in my son’s college scrapbook) brings me to another point.  We don’t always have the perfect picture.  If, like my son, your children go off to college and never take a single picture, then you have to rely on their stories (which, yes, it is perfectly okay to wheedle out of them, even if they begin to hate you for it), and if you’re lucky, the photos taken by their friends.  Welcome to the magic of Facebook.  If it weren’t for social media, I would have no pictures of my son’s college life at all.  He is totally a non-photo-taker, although he does enjoy looking at the results of my scrapbooking from time to time.  Luckily, many of his friends post pictures online, as do the campus organizations to which he belongs.  I make it a habit of “liking” every organization my son joins, and following several of his friends and groups on Facebook.  Then, whenever they post new pictures, I can scour through them to see if there are photos of my son or his buddies that I can use.  It really is the next best thing to being there!