A Walk Down Memory Lane

Sahlin Studio just released another Project Mouse collaboration, this one is called Paradise.

There are a lot of pineapples and palms trees in this collection, which leads you to believe you have to focus on capturing more  of a 'tropical' type of memory. 

But living somewhere that it rarely feels like the tropics, challenges me to use these products to suit my needs. 

Exactly what I did with the following layout. 

Back in October 2016, we made a quick trip out to the West Coast, [Vancouver Island]. You can click here and read the blog post I had done, shortly after returning home from our trip.

Back then, I had created a single page layout shortly after our trip, but never actually documented our little get away.

Until now...

To create these pages, I simply cut down the page protector. This will slide nicely into either my project life album for that year, or I'll put it in my 'scrapbook' album. 

Either way, it gives a little insight into our trip to the coast. 

When we picked up our rental car, at the airport, it was absolutely P O U R I N G. And when I say pouring, I mean the windshield wipes were on full speed, most of the time, pouring. We made the trip to where we were staying, probably about an hour ride from the airport. We checked into our hotel, while it was POURING... We went for lunch, and when we came out of the restaurant, it had stopped raining. And I'm not kidding, when I say, this was the only time during our stay, that it wasn't pouring. As in P O U R I N G...

So the photos where it's not raining, all happened within a few hours. And the rest of time it rained. 

We hit 3 beaches during our trip. Day 1, French Beach, where it stopped raining, and we could wander up and down the waters edge, searching for treasure. The sun actually came out that afternoon, giving the beach a misty look, that my heart so desires.

Day 2 we made our way up to Botanical Beach, in monsoon-type weather. Power had been knocked out to many of the places along the way, due to the storm. The island was preparing for an epic storm, the tail end of the Super Typhoon Songda. How lucky that we just happened to be there for it!

Our trip to Botanical beach, was CRAZY. Windshield wipers never stopped and were on high speed most of the drive. We learned quickly, that water resistant and water proof are vastly different.

Day 3 and 4, we hiked down to China Beach. In the past, it's been my favourite. But the tide was high, and it was stormy, so we really weren't able to get close to the waters edge.

The coast has our heart, for sure. And I'm glad I was able to use this product to capture these photos. Sometimes when you see paper, elements, paper etc, that scream tropical and it's hard to imagine using them anywhere else. I hope this shows how flexible you can be with different kits.

The following Sahlin Studio product was used:

PM Paradise - Journal Cards: http://the-lilypad.com/store/Project-Mouse-Paradise-Cards.html

PM Paradise - Paper: http://the-lilypad.com/store/Project-Mouse-Paradise-Papers.html

PM Paradise - Elements: http://the-lilypad.com/store/Project-Mouse-Paradise-Elements.html

PM Paradise -  Word Art http://the-lilypad.com/store/Project-Mouse-Paradise-Word-Art.html

West Coast - Mini Vaycay

I was hoping to get a post in, long before now, of our trip to the west coast.

We decided to take a mini family vaycay for several reasons. 

Reason one, we had air miles that needed used up before we lost them at the end of the year. [This has been a hot topic, because very recently, AirMiles announced that said miles won't expire after all] 

Reason two, with my recent job, I wasn't able to take much time off this summer, and therefore we didn't go away on our annual vacation. 

So, we booked a trip to the West Coast. 

The kids were thrilled. The last time we were at the ocean as a family was 2012. Madelyn has talked about going back ever since. 

We arrived in Victoria early. Very early. Like by 8:15 am, and had the whole day stretching out ahead of us. It was raining when we picked up our rental car, but as we made our way to the beach, it began to POUR. We had anticipated grey, rainy days, but I had not anticipated a monsoon. 

Lucky for us, when we got to the beach, the rain had stopped. At one point, the clouds even broke up, and we got to see blue sky. This ended up being the only time our entire trip, that we saw blue sky...

We brought rain 'resistant' clothes. But it took us mere minutes to realize that what we required was 'water proof'. [Mental note, if we were ever move to the west coast, we would most definitely need to invest in proper rain gear]

Here are a few images from our afternoon at French Beach. 

That was our driest day. From there, it only got wetter.

The next day, we decided to venture up to Botanical Beach. It's the farthest up the coast, at Port Renfrew. Madelyn was most excited about this trip, because she was ever so anxious to check out tidal pools. It's at least an hour drive away, on curvy roads, in nice weather. But the weather wasn't nice. It was absolutely pouring buckets of rain. We had the windshield wipers on high speed. It was so foggy, that we couldn't really see much. So we cautiously and slowly, headed in that direction. 

Let me just say, pictures do not do justice to what we saw. 

The intensity of the angry ocean took my breath away. The size of the waves... They were huge. It was so windy, and the waves were so angry, that it actually made me sick to my stomach to be standing so close to the water. [Though we were not close in that sense, we were up high and far away from it] But I wasn't comfortable until we got back on the trail again. We were all soaked. Madelyn was the only one who had a rain suit, but it just made her get all heated up and hot. 

On our way back from Botanical Beach, it was pretty obvious that the storm had intensified while we'd made the trek down to the beach. There was debris all over the highway. There were fallen trees all over. In fact, we had to make our way under one, in our vehicle... We carefully followed the guy ahead of us. By the time we got back to our hotel, we'd seen more than a dozen downed trees. Some had already been chainsawed so that vehicles could get through. 

Another mental note to self, if you move to the west coast, you require rain gear and a chain saw... 

We learned that evening, that the west coast was getting the remnants of former Super Typhoon Songda. We were driving along the coast highway, during the 2nd of 3 super storms. Like I mentioned, the photos don't do justice. We saw mother nature at her angriest, and she's more than impressive.

Next up, China Beach. This beach was/is my favourite. I have to say however, that high tide was noon-ish every day, so the water levels were always very high no matter which beach were were at. That meant, no exploring. Madelyn was devastated. We all were, because the tide was so high, and the water so stormy, we couldn't really do much but stand at the edge and look.

We ended up doing China Beach twice, the first day it rained so hard, we were absolutely soaked. Again, Miss Madelyn the only one in a rain suit. Of the 4 of us, she was the driest.

As soon as those boys left that rock they were standing on, and walked away, it was covered in water.. They were lucky not to be on it when that happened.

The second trip to China Beach, it actually stopped raining. Woot-woot! So we finally got to mooch around without getting soaked.

Even with the rain, we had a great time.

I think it's safe to say that the beach is our happy place. We didn't get to beach comb, scour and check out tide pools, like we'd have liked to. I guess the solution to that is to make a trip back next summer.