Why did you name me BettyLou?

It is strange and I'm glad you can laugh about it now. It sure made for a cute layout! Love this.

@garrynkim, thanks.

oh ... I wish I had mire time to express all I want to, as not only the page is fabulous visually, called my attention straight away, but the whole thing ... I have a deep regard for names we give to our kids or the ones given to us.... anyway, I will come back to carry on chatting (and look for the other page!) love that your scrapping has a content of high value in my books, I think using our scrapbook art to find the process to many things in life has the power to change something that can be not so great, nice or even be right down awful, and transform them into beautiful pieces of art... LOVE THIS!!!!!!

into the October Froggy Faves!!!!

Yup, I agree with the others: it's great you can laugh about it now, and what a great way to capture not only your name but also some of your family's history!

I don't think I can say my mom was definitely "named after" a gf of my grandfather's, but I can tell you that my grandpa dated a woman with the same name and my grandma knew about this woman and my mom knows about this woman. And now you have me thinking I should record the full story for my own kids to know!

Gorgeous page BettyLou! Love how you did the titling and that blue in your pic pops so beautifully against the wood and the green background paper!
What an amazing story your name has!!! I don't think many children will be named after a father's old girlfriend. I am happy you can laugh about it now but I can totally imagine that you were horrified at first.

@MrsPeel, I started the other page about two years ago before I knew about TLP so it doesn’t meet the criteria for this gallery. On a pink background, I have a single photo of my mother holding me after arriving home from the hospital after my birth in front of the family car. It is one of my fave photos I scanned from my father’s huge collection of Kodachrome slides. The journaling tells of calling my mother on a slow day at work when I was chatting about names. I opened by saying to her I’ve never checked this with you but I’m named Betty after your friend BettyJane and the Lou came from your name Louise, right? Few people except for my mother would be so unnecessarily cruel as to say no to a question like that...and she did. I don’t remember what I said to my co-workers. It was just as you said back when it happened.

Seeing my mother with dementia before her death in 2016 provided some insight into her personality/experiences/life which really did include cruelty (never physical) and lots of anger. I doubt if I could have created that page or this one without the hours of conversation with my therapist.

High value content? I can’t force it but sometimes it just flows out and Friday was one of those days. For me, it often comes during LOAD. I read the prompt at 2100 and rarely begin to create before the morning. Sometimes I wake up with an idea that I hadn’t thought of the night before and at least a third of them give me the “I’ve got to tell this story!” feeling. This is the reason I love the Layout a Day challenge.

@Tree City , you definitely should tell that story. I’m pretty sure that my father didn’t continue to date this woman or anyone else but one never really knows. He was so happy to tell me the story of dating one of the women sources in the book I gave him last summer that I don’t think there was any impropriety there.

I, on the other hand, since I had asked him about my name with my husband present, could barely keep from saying, stop talking, I need to call Philip so he can hear this new story directly.

@mirjam, thank you. This template was so perfect for the unwinding of a convoluted story. I was thrilled to find it.

I thought about creating the first layout after a convo or seeing the layout of a scrapbook friend who also had an OMG story about her birth/name. It still took me awhile before I could finish that layout.

@BLKinOR same--no impropriety...but still! lol

This is a fabulous page - the story is so interesting on so many levels - I can understand your emotions and am glad you are coming to terms with it. It would be so much worse if you hated your name! Thank you so much for sharing your very personal story