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 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!

Day 5 – Real Life Starts at ____

Wow!  There are some days when the prompt is so LOADed that I don’t even know where to begin.  When I think of this prompt, I think about moving out on my own for the first time with my new husband.  Then I think about sending my kids off to college to begin their own adult lives.  I even think about how turning 40 (and coming soon, 50) has changed my perspective on being authentic to myself and how my real life is just beginning.  Too much to think about...so for this page, I opted to dip back into the college project box.  This time, I did a page about visiting my son at college and rescuing him from dorm life.  Is it a “real life starts at ___” page?  Not really, but then, which is real and which is not?  Moving away to college and being on your own, the dorm life of a cadet, or stepping off campus with Mom to eat some good food and feel normal again?

I think I found this paper at Hobby Lobby, or maybe it was Michaels – I’m not really sure.  One of the challenges I’ve had working on Steven’s college album is finding paper that works.  His school colors are maroon and white, and when I first started on this album, I used a lot of packaged school-themed paper licensed by the university.  Boy did that get old fast.  But I wanted to keep everything in that color theme as much as possible, so I started hunting for other kinds of maroon paper.  Believe me when I say there are days that I wonder if it is all worth it.  Maroon has to be the hardest color of paper to find anywhere.  It just doesn’t exist!  There is crimson, and there is purplish wine, but hardly anyone has any paper that is maroon.  So whenever I find any, I buy it all up!   This paper is closer to crimson, but since I didn’t use a lot of maroon embellishments or cardstock, it works just fine.  Once it’s in the album, it fits perfectly well with the theme. 

Some tips for finding paper that might work in your themed albums:

• Check your local scrapbook store as well as the big chain stores.
• Don’t look only at the section for that specific color – look through all the colors.  Sometimes you will find paper in another section that has enough of your target color to make it worth using
• Don’t tie yourself down to being matchy-matchy.  Just because the color is not exact doesn’t mean you can’t use it.  Just use it sparingly and be careful to avoid using two different variations of the color on the same page in case they clash.
• Buy combo packs.  Sometimes manufacturers will have a whole line that features your target color.  For instance, Stampin’ Up might have a designer paper series that uses Tangerine Tango with a lot of other colors or Basic Grey might have a pack with the same orange color.  Stocking up on packs like that will stretch your options because you can mix and match and still be on-theme.
• Check out scrapbookcustoms.com an online retailer that specializes in custom paper for schools and other organizations.  They also have a full line of generic paper in just about every color under the sun, so check out the Color Essentials section to see if your color is there.