Laura Vegas

My oldest daughter, Alyssa, is graduating from high school in less than three short weeks. I still can't wrap my head around that, let alone the fact that she'll be headed off to college in a few short months. College. It's such a huge process, especially when it's your first child and you're learning the ropes as you go. Every family and every student approaches this process differently, but we picked up some good tips from fellow parents of seniors and I now feel that I can even pass along some good tips to future parents of seniors.

The entire college process was a big part of Alyssa's senior year, and even with the big decision made, there's still a lot of steps that need to be checked off the list in the next few months. While choosing a college was a hard process at times, in the end it came down to an easy decision for her. I wanted to document her college choice and how she came to decide on the amazing college that she will be spending her next 4 years at. And where exactly will that be?

Alyssa is beyond excited to be attending the University of the Pacific this coming fall. UOP has been her dream college, and at the very top of her college list since the beginning. She fell in love with the school, the programs, the campus, and just about everything it has to offer. And we, her parents, loved it just as much as she did. UOP is a small, private college, just about 20 minutes from us. With everything we learned about the college, we knew it was a perfect fit for our girl. And it doesn't hurt that she'll be staying pretty close to home 🙂

Once the college decision was made, I knew that I wanted to document it. When I sat down to create my next layout for Kerri Bradford Studio, it was the perfect opportunity to do just that, as Alyssa had just confirmed her registration. My layout is up on her blog today, and I'm excited to share it here too.

About a month ago, Alyssa and I attented UOP's Profile Day. It's a day dedicated to all admitted students, where you could go visit the campus (for some, their first time, for us, our third or fourth time), attend a welcome assembly, hear from students and alumni, attend workshops on financial aid, housing, sit in on a Q&A session for your students department/major, and so much more. It was such an informative day, and we ended it with Alyssa stopping for a photo with the school mascot, Powercat.

I spent more time than I care to admit trying to come up with a title for this layout. Oftentimes, I will do my title work towards the end of the layout design process. But for this layout, it was one of the first things I did. In fact, I was originally going to have my title filling up the entire left side of the first page. It took me a while to realize that I wouldn't have enough room for my journaling, and it made more sense for my title to span across the tops of the two pages.

I played with a mix of words from a variety of Kerri's kits, trying to come up with a fun title that "announced" her college choice. I looked at a ton of Kerri's brush script hand-written words, as I'm loving the look of them. I loved the idea of using the large "hello", from Kerri's Let's Go kit, and then adding her college choice directly after it.

I used the Weathered Door Alpha kit for the name of the college. The University of the Pacific is simply known as UOP to most, which is definitely easier to fit on a layout. Lol. I had dug out a wide variety of orange patterned papers to chose from, and ended up using a smaller 6×6 diagonal striped paper from Echo Park for the "UOP", as well as the arrow on the second page.

It finally dawned on me that the "you make my heart sing", from Kerri's Happy Stuff kit, was the perfect subtitle to use, as Alyssa is attending college as a music major.

I un-grouped the words, so that I could arrange them all going across the top of the right page. Once I had them sized to fit, I cut them out of black cardstock. I then decided to go back and cut out the words three more times. I adhered all four of each word together to thicken them up, mimicing chipboard.

I also wanted to include some photos of the college, but didn't have any of my own to pull from. So I did a Google search for images, and used those to create a collage using a template from Kerri's Storyboard #6 kit. Tell me that's not a gorgeous campus, right! It's actually ranked the 31st most "amazing" colleges in the country, and rightly so.

I can't remember the last time I journaled this much on a layout. I knew I had a lot to say, but I didn't have much wiggle room with a 5×7" photo and a 9×7" photo collage. It took me a while to condense what I had to say, into the space I had to say it in, and still make sure I got the most important details in there. I think I did fairly well.

Now wish us luck getting through these last 3 weeks of school. We have so many end-of-the-year award ceremonies, final band concert, and all of the senior/graduation activities that lead up to the actual graduation event. It's all happening so fast, with so much going on, that I haven't had much time to let the reality of it all set in. It's going to hit me like a ton of bricks before I know it!