Picnic Day 2025

I always have a great time at Picnic Day, the annual open house at UC Davis. This year was extra fun, as our Scout friends Logan, Avery, and Bobby joined us. They'd never been before, so we were able to introduce them to maggot art, popcorn shelling, and all of our other favorite Picnic Day traditions. And Trevor showed us something that even Steve and I hadn't seen before -  the third-floor greenhouse in the Sciences Laboratory Building where he'd had for BioSci classes. It was a great day. 

Picnic Day 2025 (affiliate link)

For this challenge, we had to use one of four sketches for our layout design. This is the one I chose: 

As you can see, I increased the size of the photo block in order to include five pictures. There isn't a spot for journaling on the sketch, so I swapped out the flowers for circles that could hold my journaling. 

This is a very rare layotu of mine that has absolutely no white. I almost always mat photos with white and I frequently use white to house my journaling. I like this color combination and I'm happy with the completed page. 

Picnic Day 2018: NSD Crafter's Choice Challenge

Picnic Day is an annual tradition in our family. We love visiting our old stomping grounds, letting Trevor explore all the different departments, try fun foods, and do the world's most horrifyingly awesome art project. Last year, I couldn't go because it fell during Snap Conference. This year, Steve couldn't go because he had a training he had to attend. We invited my mom to join Trevor and me. She hadn't been to Picnic Day since I was a college student many moons ago. Trevor has gone to Picnic Day and visited the UC Davis campus enough times that he was able to pretty much lead us around to all his favorite activities.  

Picnic Day (affiliate link)

I kept the layout really simple - just three photos (featuring Trevor in his UC Davis shirt), a title, journaling, a border sticker, and an embellishment. I wish I'd been in a photo to at least document that I was there, but I didn't think to hand over the camera. I was wearing a UCD Alumni shirt; why didn't I think to have Mom photograph Trevor and me together in our coordinating shirts? We even talked about getting her UC Davis Mom, UC Davis Mother-in-Law, and Future UCD Davis Grandma shirts. It would have been a fun picture having her pose with the various options for sale on campus. Oh well. I'm grateful for the photos I do have. 

The Most Horrifyingly Awesome Art Project Ever

Check out this lovely art that Trevor and I made:

Here's a closer look:

Can you guess how we made it? Here's a hint:

Do you know yet? As you can see, it involved three colors of paint, some tweezers, and one more important item:

A maggot! To make the project, we picked up the maggot with tweezers and dropped him into one of the paint colors. Then, using the tweezers, we placed him on the paper and he immediately squirmed all over. Ours kept trying to zoom right off the page:

Isn't it awesome?! And horrifying?! Horrifyingly awesome?! I thought so too.  

Now surely by now you're asking where we did this. Obviously (I'd hope), not at home. This was one of the projects we did at Picnic Day, the annual open house at the University of California at Davis, where Steve and I both went to college. Each department has family-friendly projects that help teach about what they do. Maggot Art took place in the Entomology Department, where we also saw a hive of bees in action, tasted honey from different parts of the United States, and collected ladybugs to take home. Sadly, we didn't watch the Cockroach Races, as the area was quite crowded. What a spectacular day!