More Meetup Madness

The next park I visited was in December 2016. The Eisenhower home decorates each year for Christmas and I was interested in seeing their display. They were also hosting a special weekend open house at the beginning of December with cocoa and cookies in the visitor center. I planned a meetup for that weekend and had quite a few NPTC members join me for the event. Below shows us getting on the bus at Gettysburg and riding out to the park. We gathered in front of the sign for our formal group picture. I still had the banners from the Philadelphia convention so we could get that in the photo as well.

This layout is based on a sketch from the CM Virtual Crop in November 2021. I used 2 Fast-to-Fabulous base pages for this so I only had to add a little detail. I added the dark blue page that is split across the middle, and the border on the bottom (one of the border-maker cartridges). Most of the materials come from an older travel pack called "Gallivant". I liked that I could use the mat as a filler for one of the photos but also as a journal box. I just added some lined paper to the bottom.

The tour took us around the outside of the house, and you'll see a bit more of that on the next layout as well. You can see that they included Christmas touches starting at the front door!

You have seen a small bit of this visit as I used several photos for a layout when I served as a guest designer for Lasting Memories in the summer of 2021. However, I moved some photos around. Check out this original blog entry. That front door photo was moved! The background paper is from a store in Gettysburg called Forevermore Scrapbooking. It's a favorite of mine, and I'm hoping that they find a new home as their landlord made them close the original store a few months ago.  Similar to the Lincoln Memorial page a couple of weeks ago, I used this base to show the other dimensions of the entrance. The photo of the side and the front door makes for a complete outside view of the structure. The title element was also from Forevermore.

Here's more of our group as we toured the grounds. Eisenhower was quite a golf fanatic going so far as to install his own putting green. I got lucky as the wind stretched his flag out so you can see it has his general's stars on it! For December the weather was chilly but we didn't have to deal with snow so the outside walk was not too uncomfortable.

This layout was based on sketch #6 from the CM virtual crop. I used a pack of paper and embellishments earned as part of a challenge called appropriately enough "Picture Perfect". The neutral tones worked well with the winter grass. Not sure I like the punched border down the left side but if you don't think about it much it may look like photography flashes. 😃 I used one of the decorative blades on the 12" trimmer for the middle of the square, and I think I forgot to change it out when I cut the black wave under the "flashes". But it seems to have worked out fine!