The Spoils of War

My visit to Arlington Cemetery was to visit a new NPS unit for me. Arlington House was the family home of Robert E. Lee. Because he chose to fight for the Confederacy during the civil war, the government confiscated his property and began burying Union soldiers in the yard (the start of the National Cemetery). Eventually the house was restored to its 18th/19th century form and outfitted with family pieces. Robert E. Lee's wife was a descendant of George Washington's wife Martha Custis and so there are quite a few nods to the Washington line in the house as well.

This is another example of making the right side first. I scraplifted the right side from this page which features the Archivers paper and borders from CM (now retired). I thought the roses were a good fit for the home and so on the left I chose the rose paper borders for the top and bottom with the same background paper. The die cut on the left is from the Eastern national DC scrapbook kit

Even though a government shutdown was happening I could still tour just about the entire house and so I made my way down to the basement kitchen. I also toured the slave quarters behind the house.

This is wallpaper with a wood paper from the CM Timber pack. I matted the photos  with a piece of brown burlap from the Cloth pack (both now retired). The kitchen tools across the top is from a previous release of an 8x8 recipe book. I use the papers and elements on my 12x12 pages.

After leaving Arlington I took the bus back to the Mall area and stopped at the largest cache of passport stampers in the city--the bookstore near the Washington monument.

This ended my tour in DC for this trip. I chose to use a wallpaper page featuring cherry blossoms as that was the original purpose of my trip, even though I never saw any. I did grab a quick photo of the Washington Monument still under renovation from the earthquake.