My Genuine Boy

Our son is all boy. Don’t be fooled by his disinterest in playing sports. He loves what many boys love most – being out in nature, and bringing nature in, too. More than anything he loves to read war history books. Today we ventured to Wade House in Greenbush, Wisconsin for a very well done Civil War reenactment during the year 1862. All summer long we had hoped to take our son to a war reenactment, but it did not work out with our schedule. We enjoyed it today, however, and took my father along as well. Abby stayed behind with her grandmother, as the repercussion of the canons and muskets blasting hurt even my ears – and I know our sensitive hearing girl would have made the outing miserable for all of us.

The layout featured today uses Reminisce Genuine Boy papers and a super star frame by Magistical Memories.
Here is a tip on working with this frame, using a 4x6 photo. My photo was too short to fill in the vertical space. Seeing as how the photo was cropped I brought the picture down to the bottom of the frame and filled in gaps along the top with punched stars, using Fiskars “Twinkle, Twinkle” squeeze punch. Some are punched from thin chipboard, others from the patterned paper. Dimensional adhesive squares also lift some off the page – and it turned out to be a great method for camouflaging the fact that my photo was too short for the frame.



Ideas for this layout include distressing the chipboard frame with both color chalk inks as well as dry brush acrylic paints. Also, I used the logo for the Genuine Boy collection as a part of my frame cluster, by cutting it out of the UPC strip on the sheet of paper. I also cut out words from “Genuine Boy” word paper to create my journaling. I think the page turned out well, and it pays a good tribute to our son and who he is.

Here are a few photos from our trip today…my dad and Kyle posing by a canon on the battlefield:




The best Abe Lincoln impersonator I have ever witnessed, not that I have seen that many. But I overheard a man behind me commenting that of all the Abe’s he has seen – this man, with his long facial features and mannerisms, is the best he has seen. We sat in a Q&A with Abe this afternoon – as he answered questions – of course we were all in the year 1862. I think I could have listened to this man for hours – he was so well versed in the life of Lincoln. I sat there thinking I would vote for this man for president if he were alive today in real time!



This last photo was taken on our way out. A canon had been brought up from the field, and I was posing Kyle by it before heading to the car. A “union soldier” in the tent saw this, and came out and put his coat and hat on Kyle, and even rummaged his sword out of his vehicle! How great was this? I love the photo, but I am amused by this fact… The point of the photo was to take Kyle’s pic by the canon, but as he was redressed, with his newly purchased Union hat coming off…well, you can see where the hat went. In the end – we have no picture of Kyle by the canon. (LOL)