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. 

Biodiversity Museum Day 2025

On Saturday, Steve and I attended Biodiversity Museum Day on the UC Davis campus. 

 

Biodiversity Museum Day is a free annual event that serves as an open house for the many biology-related museums and departments on campus. Trevor and I attended last year and had a great time. Steve had to miss it due to a Scout event, so he was eager to attend for the first time this year. 

We started our visit at the California Raptor Center, where we bought a CRC t-shirt.... for the person who sold it to us. 

We spent some time looking at all of the Ambassador birds. This is Kalli. She's one of my favorites at CRC. 

Several of the birds were out on the glove. I think this is Whistler. 

This is Sul Wita, CRC's first glove-trained bald eagle. Billy was casually feeding him while speaking to the crowd. 

Our next stop was the Robert Mondavi Institute. This facility houses a winery, a brewery, a food research plant, a milk processing lab, the UC Davis Olive Center, the Honey and Pollination Center, and a lot more. We started by learning all about microbes. They are much more adorable in stuffed form than in the microscope. 

This was absolutely fascinating. Have you ever heard of yeast art? Yeasts naturally have different colors, so you can "paint" tiny amounts onto an agar plate and then allow them to grow for a few days to reveal the pattern.  

Next, the brewery tour. It's an impressive facility. 

  

Then we toured the winery. It's also very impressive. 

Did you notice the open doors at the back of the winery? They lead out to the vineyards. 

We made a short stop to view the Nematode Collection...

.... and learn about sampling for the Herbarium at the Center for Plant Diversity. 

Then it was over to the Botanical Conservatory. It's most famous for the corpse flowers, but there are many other interesting and beautiful plants to see. 

  

  

Pitcher plants. 

I like the freedom of choice offered here.

Students were on hand to explain all about the various plants and their most interesting features. I was amazed by a demonstration of explosive seed dispersal. If you ever visit the Conservatory, ask for a demo. 

  

  

Bats and butterflies. 

After the Conservatory, Trevor joined us for lunch and then we headed to the Design Museum. I don't necessarily see a connection to biodiversity, but I thoroughly enjoyed their newest exhibit of Visual Journals. 

There was a cool hands-on area that looked really fun. 

Then we hustled over to the Museum of Fish and Wildlife Biology. It's housed in the same building as the Bohart Museum of Entomology. 

We only got a peek before the event ended and the museum closed. We'll make it a priority at Picnic Day or at the 2026 Biodiversity Museum Day. 

If you live near Davis, I highly recommend attending a future Biodiversity Museum Day or Picnic Day. Most of the museums have regular visiting hours, so visiting when there isn't a major event going on is also an option. I love how much there is to see and do at UC Davis. 

Parent Weekend 2024

Steve and I attended our first Parent and Family Weekend at UC Davis in November. For the layout documenting our visit, I paired a photo of the three of us with a photo of the iconic water tower near Tercero. I used the graphics from the event website to make my title and subtitle. I love the balance and the colors and the simplicity of this page. 

Parent Weekend 2024 (affiliate link)

So what did we do at Parent Weekend? We opted out of most of the formal activities - since Steve and I are alumni, we didn't need a campus tour, for example. We've been to all the campus museums recently and are regulars at the Arboretum. Instead, we had brunch in my former Dining Commons, then I talked my way into my old dorm, which was quite a blast from the past. 

My room was the one on the top floor, three from the right, with the windows open. 

For the most part, the building looks almost identical to how it looked 33 years ago, which is to say the building could use a refurbishment. One major difference: they swapped the men's and women's bathrooms. My room was directly in front of the women's bathroom, which made a convenient way to cut through to the other side of the building. It felt really strange seeing the men's room there instead. 

After visiting my dorm, Trevor walked us to each of his classes. Then we strolled around, enjoying the beautiful weather and seeing what had changed on campus since the last time we'd been there. There's always something new. All in all, we had a wonderful time at our first UCD Parent Weekend!

Congrats, You're An Aggie!

Not every scrapbook layout needs a traditional photo. For this page, documenting Trevor's acceptance to college, I treated the email that he received like a photo. The text of the email serves as the journaling. 

Congrats, You're An Aggie! (affiliate link)

I embellished the layout with two hearts, punched from the background paper, as well as the header of the email, cut like a flag. I'm happy with how this simple page turned out. 

Bird Art at the California Raptor Center

Look who I got to see last week!

 

Trevor is thriving at UC Davis as a Wildlife, Fish, and Conservation Biology major. He's currently taking a class called 'Wildlife Ecology and Conservation' and loves it. Most of the lectures are from experts in different areas of conservation. They did a creek habitat field trip, which sounded like great fun, and he just finished a group project about wolverines that he really enjoyed. Trevor is eager to take more wildlife classes and get even deeper into the subject matter. 

In the meantime, he loves the volunteer work he is doing at the California Raptor Center. Last spring, Trevor did a full day working at CRC as part of his Senior Project and was hoping he'd get one of the coveted volunteer positions as a freshman, which he did! He has a 4-hour shift each week. If you visit, you might see Trevor cleaning cages, feeding the Ambassador birds, and possibly even giving a bird some out-of-enclosure time on the glove. Of course, it's just as likely he'd be doing behind-the-scenes work. There are always many, many tasks to be done!

The California Raptor Center is where Trevor completed his Eagle Project in April 2022... and I'm happy to report it looks as good as ever! 

One of the things I love about the raptor center is the growing amount of raptor-themed art. This gorgeous barn owl sculpture now greets visitors as they enter. Read all about how and why it was made in this article. 

Source

The front of the museum has two raptor portraits on the wall...

... while the entire back of the museum is an absolutely stunning mural called "Bird's Eye View." It is 8 feet tall and 22 feet wide. It features 11 key raptor species from California, as well as 84 insects that are either eaten by those raptors or as their parasites. Trevor and I saw it for the first time at Biodiversity Museum Day. Read more about this impressive work of art in this article. 

This life-size eagle sculpture has been at the CRC for awhile. I can't find an article about its origins, but I did find an article with a much better photo than mine. 

Many of the enclosures and buildings at CRC are decorated with raptor silhouettes. They add a nice touch. 

I really like this one. 

I love this pair. I imagine a lot of people miss them

There's even art to enjoy in the parking lot! 

If you've never visited the California Raptor Center, I'd encourage you to go check it out.