Laura Vegas

Happy Monday! It's been so fun designing for Jillibean Soup this past year, and today I'm sharing my last official design team layout that I created for them. I do still have one more Jillibean card to share, and will share that later this week. 

When I first joined the Jillibean design team, I was browsing their Silhouette store and came across this fun cut file – "Wooden Spoon Survivor" – and I just knew that I had to use it on a layout. After all, I am totally a wooden spoon survivor, having grown up in the 70's, when that sort of thing was super common.

I even went so far as to plan out the page in the Silhouette software. That was almost a year ago, and I just never got around to actually making the layout. So I made sure to fit it into my last set of layouts for them. 

I actually didn't have a specific photo in mind for this story until I finally sat down to make it. I was originally going to do a photo-less layout in fact. But since the main part of the story that I wanted to tell had to do with something that happened at school, when I was in the first grade – I thought my first grade school photo would be a great choice. 

Shhhhhh. This is actually my second grade school photo. I didn't have an extra copy of my first grade photo, but I did have one of my second grade photo. Close enough, right 😉

I went thru my Jillibean patterned papers and picked out a handful that coordinated with the colors in my photo. I was wearing a Holly Hobby dress that my mom had made me, and I thought it would be fun to mimic the patchwork design on my dress in the design of the page. So I used small pieces of each patterned paper and arranged them around the border of the page. 

I adhered a piece of white cardstock in the center of the page, large enough to hold my photo and title, with room to add my journaling across the bottom. 

"My name is Laura and I’m a wooden spoon survivor. I’m also a wooden paddle survivor. Yep, you read that right. Here’s the thing. I grew up in the 70’s, and I’m pretty sure that having your parents take a wooden spoon to your behind every now and then was pretty normal. I’d like to think I was a fairly good kid, but I still had my fair share of “swats” with the wooden spoon from the kitchen. Once, the spoon even broke on my tush! Lol. But I’m not sure how normal it was to receive a swat at school. I went to a private, Christian school, for all thirteen years of my education. And it just so happens that this school allowed for “paddling”, when deemed necessary by the school. Now, I was an extremely shy child growing up. I didn’t talk to anyone, with the exception of my friends. I was quiet as a mouse, didn’t talk in class, and sometimes, I wouldn’t even talk when spoken to by my teachers.

When I was in the first grade, my class was going on a field trip, but I forgot my permission slip. So I was sent to the office, where they asked me for my parent’s phone number. Except I didn’t talk to people, so I wasn’t about to speak up and tell them my phone number. I’d like to think, that in my mind, they had to know my phone number, since it had to be in my file. Why did they need to hear it from me? Next thing I knew, I was being sent to the principal’s office, where I also refused to give out my phone number. That’s when he decided that I deserved a swat, with the wooden paddle that hung on his wall. I can still remember having to tell my parents about it that night, and having them sign the paper I brought home saying I had received a swat. I mean, look at my sweet, innocent little first grade face. I guess it was different times that I grew up in, that they thought they needed to punish a little child for simply not talking."

And with that, I finally have my first grade, swat with a paddle story in the books. Lol. It's one of the few school memories that has stuck with me all these years, so it was nice to get it down on paper.