Hyde and Seek

Happy St. Patrick's Day, everyone! Welcome back to the 2021 Hudson River Valley trip. Our second stop of the day was the Franklin D. Roosevelt home. This is where he was born and grew up. He kept it as an adult for a country house getaway. He and Eleanor are also buried here. The grounds include the home, some barns, the graveyard, and his Presidential Library. Today's visit is just to the house.

This layout is based on a sketch I saved from Noreen Smith's 2018 Scrap Your Summer Stash Saturdays event. I'm sure I've used this sketch before, but its versatility makes it easy to reuse endlessly! I continued using the Recollections paper pack. The best part of this sketch is that you can use your scraps. It takes just two 10x5 strips and one 12x2.5 strip across the middle. Want to dress it up? Add some borders above and below the 12x2.5 strip. Or across the middle of the strip. 

Dollars for Bowling

Welcome back to Lyndhurst, part of my December 2021 Hudson River Valley trip. Behind the main structure are several outbuildings. This one was a recreation hall that featured a bowling alley. The ball return was primitive, and it looks like they just used cushions to catch the pins. The photos are not too bad, considering we couldn't go inside and had to take them through the porch windows!

This layout was made during a Paper Loft class at one of the Lancaster Scrapbook Conventions. It had been a 2-page layout, but I used the other portion on a different page. I like the argyle pattern for bowling. It has a very 50's feel to it. I added a few bowling embellishments from my stash. I liked that some of the stickers matched the shape and size of the banner pieces. 

Puppy Love

Welcome back to the 2021 Hudson River Valley tour. This layout features more of the upstairs bedrooms at Lyndhurst. The photos on the right and the bathroom are Helen Gould's room — the lady of the house. Her room is extra large with a seating area. I love that they included a small stuffed dog in a wicker bed in the display. I also like the table with room for books surrounding it. If it goes missing, check my bedroom. ☺

I based this layout on the Serenity Project Recipe from Creative Memories. I used the same border maker cartridge as the recipe, but returned to the Recollections paper pack for the decorative papers. I chose a green print with pinecones and a red floral print. They looked great next to each other as whole sheets. I'm not as happy with how they are cut and arranged into the alternating borders. But sometimes, done is better than good. I found a few small embellishments in my stash that matched the layout's color and tone. As we approach the end of the tour, little journaling is needed, so I wrote directly under the photos.

Starry Night

Welcome back to our look at Lyndhurst Mansion. Today's layout features upstairs photos — two different bedrooms and a unique relic of the building's original communication system. At the bottom of the left page, the "hole in the wall" was the original calling system. If one of the ladies of the house required a maid or other servant, they would call into that tube to summon someone! But the best feature upstairs is the starry night ceiling in one of the bedrooms. It's designed after a similar feature in a French chapel. Also on display is an original Tiffany lamp! 

I created this layout based on the CM Virtual Crop from December 2025. Scroll to Sketch #4. I focused on the blue ceiling and kept to my old CM Reminisce papers. The subtle design of the snowflakes complemented the photos. I used one sheet of paper across the middle. The borders along the edges are coordinating paper ribbon from the same collection. Some green-toned papers from the pack created the horizontal borders. I found a remnant of a journal box in a design that matched the fancy ceiling, so I immediately put that to use! A little dark blue cardstock was used to create the mats. Notice I changed the direction of one of my photos on the left. That left a bit of the cardstock mat, so I moved the smaller photo of the call box into that space. Remember that the sketch is a starting point, not a rule to follow. Make the layout work for you.

The Art Gallery

Welcome back to the 2021 Hudson River Valley tour. The last family to own Lyndhurst, the Jay Gould family, was made rich by the railroads. They collected many great paintings from their travels in Europe and displayed them in this upstairs gallery in beautiful vintage frames. With its vaulted ceiling and stained-glass window, the room is a work of art. 

I created this layout based on the January 2026 Power Hour with Meggan and Tessa. Incredibly, I finished one of their projects in the month they presented it! I selected a piece of plaid paper from one of my Christmas collections and layered the cut pieces onto gold cardstock. Because the photos are so detailed, I didn't want many embellishments. I chose the journal box with a touch of holly and a few holly-and-poinsettia stickers. I thought the title sticker with "reflections" was a good fit for this theme. It was hard to take a decent photo of the stained glass window in the daytime--postcards to the rescue! That's why I always stop in the gift shop on my way out of a tour.

Study Hall

Welcome back to my December 2021 trip through the Hudson River Valley. The next room in the Lyndhurst Mansion is the study. Again, it is decorated for Christmas with some greenery. The room is small but would be big enough for an afternoon tea or a brief visit. 

For this layout, I wanted to use the border you see along the top. I made this many years ago, and I thought that the greenery on the squares would match the room. I don't have any more of the tan diamond paper, but I did have some black diamond stickers. I mounted them on a strip of cranberry cardstock, then added a strip of striped paper down the center, mirroring the top border. That gave me a nice open area on the page to display the photos and the title box cut from the Recollections paper pad. Not much journaling was required, but I added a quick note with a white gel pen to indicate the room name.

Floor to Ceiling

Welcome back to my 2021 trip to the Hudson River Valley. This post focuses on one of the parlors at Lyndhurst Mansion. Each year, they hire decorators to create a Christmas feel for the tour, though some parts of the mansion naturally lean in that direction. In this room, there are painted allegorical scenes on the ceiling. You can see one panel below. The room overview and the other side of the ceiling are in a peekaboo pocket.

I based this layout on one of the Creative Life Scrapbooking Holiday layouts from 2024. Melissa Ullman has a video on creating the wreath using the CM Custom cutting system. I started to use the Recollections paper pad for the background and the wreath components (including the journal box in the middle). You might be able to see the pad at this eBay site. The red borders are washi tape, and the red bow is a very old CM die cut. To give it a bit more sparkle, I painted it with one of the CM Shimmer brushes. 

Chasing Shadows

Welcome back to the 2021 Hudson River Valley Christmas tour. You will recall that Lyndhurst was the site for the exterior shots of the TV series Dark Shadows. Inside, we were brought into this lovely room, where a manikin wore a dress reminiscent of that show. And as our guide explained, that's exactly why it is there! So many people come to see the outside that they designated this room for that show as well. But that has NOTHING to do with the family who lived here and does not reflect any of their decorative styles or clothing choices. Still, it's a lovely dress and room.

This layout is based on a pin I saved related to a Project Life blog. Click on "visit site," and it will take you to the place I originally found it. Click on that link, and you will find yet another blog using the sketch. It's wonderful how versatile it can be, and you can see some additional ideas for how to use it. I chose to use some old CM papers called Reminisce Winter. The pack was made in the early 2000s, and though double-sided, both sides were similarly colored. For example, the dark blue had one side with a border print and the other side was also dark blue with an all-over print. Still, I was able to use the blue and green with a roll of paper ribbon to create the background components. They are layered on Autumn Hay Shimmer cardstock. I used a couple of mats to create the fan spray of strips behind the photos. They are 6 1/2" long, so I joined 2 and hid the joint behind the photos! The title block is from another older CM collection called "Noel". Though the colors are different, both have a "heritage" feel to them that worked well with the topic.

American Gothic

Welcome back to my December 2021 trip through the Hudson River Valley. Our first location on Saturday morning was Lyndhurst. If this structure looks familiar, you might have watched the TV show "Dark Shadows". The exterior of this building was used for that series, though none of the interior rooms were used. This 19th-century structure is one of the best examples of Gothic Architecture in the US. The mansion (dare I say, castle?) is vast, but so are the grounds. There are additional buildings behind this building, and a couple of miles of road and trails leading through the estate. I was joined by friends Melania and Allan on Saturday, so you'll see several selfies of us through the layouts. 

This layout is based on a pin I saved (which I doubled). As I put this album together, I planned to use a tablet of heritage Christmas papers, but since we were outside and there was a baby sled, I decided to go with a more wintry theme here. I liked the blue and silver elements in the sketch and tried to replicate them with silver background paper and remnants from the Silver Bells pack. The silver cardstock is so old that it's 10 x 12. I "welded" the blue paper to the silver to create the 12x12 background I wanted. The old CM Reminisce Winter pack also came in handy for the thin borders and the small tag cluster in the bottom right. I made that tag many years ago and finally have a chance to use it! I used the CM custom cutting system to create the large bracket shape, helping to frame the papers.

Up the River

Welcome back to the blog! Today, we begin a series covering my December 2021 trip to the Hudson River Valley. The official name of the region, as related to the National Park Service, is the Maurice D. Hinchey Hudson River Valley National Heritage Area. The area is vast, stretching from Yonkers, NY, in the south to just north of Albany (but not quite to Saratoga). In that 150-mile range are historic houses, Revolutionary War routes and battlefields, and even the home of a former president. In all, there are 83 sites to visit. We managed only a handful over the weekend, so you can see that a full exploration would take many months! 

I based this kick-off page on a sketch I had saved. I was digging through my stash and came across CM's Gallivant from 2017. There were just scraps of paper and a few stickers left, so I decided to use what I could and recycle the rest. I added a piece of non-CM paper that's been in the stash for a while. The gray-toned paper with the driving logos matched the original Gallivant papers well. CM had suggested Evergreen cardstock, but that color is no longer made. I chose Sequoia, with its gray-green tone, and it proved a good choice. I also used some blue-gray cardstock that matched the mountains, the brochure, and my sweatshirt for some of the contrast strips and triangles. 

The right side page mat is a piece of vellum with a map printed on it. I trimmed that somewhat larger than the original sketch, but I didn't want to cut down my bridge photos. Keeping the larger photos meant I wouldn't have room for the tags at the top, so I moved them to the bottom, which created a bit of symmetry with the left page. I had initially planned this as an itinerary page, but then decided that for a 2-day trip, that wasn't necessary. I changed the focus to my arrival in the area. It did give me a spot for the Hudson River Valley brochure, though!

Bonus post--Making it Work

Hello all! I'm adding a bonus post as I'm playing with Lasting Memories Challenges again. This post shows some of the downstairs areas of the Franklin D. Roosevelt House in Hyde Park, near Poughkeepsie, New York. This is part of my Hudson River Valley tour, which you'll see soon. When FDR contracted Polio, the house had to be modified to accommodate his wheelchair. The stairs to the downstairs rooms were replaced with ramps. Luckily, the family had put in an early elevator to haul luggage from the bedrooms to the entry hall. FDR used that for transport upstairs.

I put this layout together for the Lasting Memories challenge: using a quote. Since that's the only rule, I started by looking for a sketch to follow, and I chose this sketch from Club Scrap. They post a bonus sketch for those who receive monthly kits. I found a few of the layout instructions, so I was able to use them for my pages. I chose papers from the latest CM Decades packs. This one uses papers and stickers from the 1920s-1930s, which are right in the home's time period. I wanted to highlight how the Roosevelt family accommodated FDR's paralysis from polio, beginning when he was 21. I found a sticker that says, "Happiness depends more on the inward disposition of mind than on outward circumstances" (Benjamin Franklin). I thought that an apt saying for these photos and his drive to overcome his illness.

Fine Dining

Who else is scrapping during the snowstorm? I am working on my Hudson River Valley tour from December 2021. I stopped at Lyndhurst Castle, which you will see in a few weeks, but decided to play along with the Lasting Memories challenge this week. I chose these photos of the Lyndhurst massive dining room, all decked out for a fancy Christmas dinner. Who would have thought the fancy dinnerware would include pheasants painted on the plates!

As I mentioned, I based this layout on the Lasting Memories challenge (#783), which included this sketch of 4 photos. I turned the layout 90 degrees as my photos were all horizontal. I am using a 12x12 tablet from Recollections called Holiday Elegance. The paper is rich and luxe, with gold-foil pages on maroon and green papers. I won this pad at one of the crops I attended, and it will feature prominently on the Hudson River Valley pages. I chose one paper for the background and then another for the large 11x11 mat. I only needed a small border (one of the pages is a stack of several nice borders that I cut apart) to complete the sketch. The green and gold paper takes up the job of embellishing! I found a coordinating journal box in my stash to detail our trip.

Lasting Memories Guest Designer Week 4 (Mount Gulian Front to Back)

Hello everyone! I'm guest designing for Lasting Memories throughout September! This is my final entry, but you can review the previous entries from the past few weeks. Each one followed the weekly challenge posted at Lasting Memories, and I encourage you to join the challenge! Post your version using the link at the bottom of their post.

For this challenge, I moved to my December 2021 trip to the Hudson River Valley. There are numerous vintage houses in the area, and many of them are decorated for the Christmas season. One of the houses I visited is Mount Gulian. This home is over 300 years old. When we arrived, we were early for the tour, so I walked to the back of the house to explore the grounds. Or did I? Interestingly, this house was located on the river, and so the "back" of the house is truly the FRONT. People traveled mainly by river when the house was built, so they arrived on this side of the house. The side I entered, which is NOW the front, was originally the back door. Amazing how things change over time.

This week, our theme is to use plaid paper! When I think of plaid, I typically think of Christmas, so I went through my park-related photos and found this trip to the Hudson River Valley, where we toured old homes decorated for the holidays. I went through my Christmas stash and located some plaid papers. I followed this idea from the CM blog to create the borders at the top of the pages. I picked a few plaid mats to highlight the house and break up the green at the bottom. The large poinsettia was also one of the photo mats, but I fussy cut the image from the middle.