SEASIDE ESCAPE

For this challenge for Red Carpet Studios, we were asked to make a movie based on "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation."  I remember the first time I watched this movie.....I was in High School, I was at a basketball game on a Saturday night, my Dad picked me up early for some reason....I came home, plopped down on the couch, was flipping through the channels, and found this movie on HBO.  Little did I realize that a Christmas tradition began for me and my family.  It's not Christmas in the Thompson house (my parents) until this movie is watched at least once.  (And it already has been watched at least once this year and it's only November!)  I think we all can relate to Clark Griswold wanting his family to have the best Christmas ever, and it turns into a disaster.  While we have had some Griwoldesque Christmas' in my family (the worst was when my Dad went into the hospital on Christmas Eve with a kidney stone, my husband backed his truck out of our driveway to hit our neighbor's relative visiting from Washington, and our Christmas Eve dinner that we spent the entire day cooking being ate in another location because of all the mishaps....), I chose to focus on the "vacation" portion.  I took this picture of my daughter this past summer during our family vacation to Panama City, Florida.  We had a terrific time and fortunately, no Clark Griswold moments.  Before my old scrapbook store Simply Scrapbooks closed, I stocked up on this Fancy Pants beach paper.  I loved the swirly ocean water on the paper and decided it would look great with the picture of my daughter hanging out in the Gulf of Mexico.