Sweet Shoppe Designs – The Sweetest Digital Scrapbooking Site on the Web

Hi everyone – it’s me Darla and I am so excited to blog today about the “Flat Stanley” project idea that was organized for the summer by one of our designers, Traci Reed! Some of you may be asking what is a Flat Stanley and um who is he? Flat Stanley is a 1964 children’s book written by Jeff Brown about a little boy named Stanley who becomes a half inch thick after a bulletin board accidentally falls on him. He is a creative boy that finds all kinds of advantages to being flat: sliding under doors, traveling by envelope instead of plane, being a kite. He and his family accept it all and make the best of it.

In 1994, Dale Hubert, a Grade 3 teacher in London, Ontario, Canada, began the Flat Stanley Project. He invited other teachers to take part by hosting flat visitors and to encourage their students to write their own Flat Stanley journals. Flat Stanley has traveled to many places through the mail and has visited many famous famous people on the way such as the White House staff and President Bush, actor and director, Clint Eastwood, and this week he came to visit my family in Southern California!

We had a lot of fun thinking of creative ways to show off where we live and were a little surprised at how many people were already familiar with Flat Stanley and how they wanted to help us make the most of our time with him. Our first stop was to a baseball game for one of the local teams in my town called the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes. Personally I am not a huge sports fan but the Quakes games are really a great way to have fun with your family because they have mascots, music and dancing all during the games and oh yeah, they do have a ball game too! 🙂 Here is Flat Stanley enjoying some quiet time in the game suites before the fireworks show started:

The next day, we took off to spend the day at the Happiest Place on Earth – Disneyland!

Flat Stanley was definitely a conversation starter for the many lines we had to stand in at the theme park. We laughed at how many Disney Cast members recognized him right away and then would tell us about their stories of how they did a Flat Stanley project when they were younger. It was fun sharing stories and cute to see everyone watching while Flat Stanley posed with one of the Disney characters.

On the 4th of July, we went to go watch my daughter, Amy in a local parade and of course, Flat Stanley was there to show off his patriotic spirit:

We had a lot of fun taking photos and enjoying the parade but knowing that Flat Stanley was leaving our home the next day, we decided on a lark to go to Hollywood, California to take Flat Stanley on a walk down the famous “Hollywood Walk of Fame” located at the Grauman’s Chinese Theatre – a 70 year old theater that was host to many famous Hollywood movie openings and Oscar Award shows. We saw the stars for Dolly Parton, Judy Garland, Sandra Bullock and Walt Disney himself. In the front of the theater, you can see the actual footprints and signatures of some stars like Tom Hanks, the Harry Potter kids and Marilyn Monroe. We had a lot of fun walking around with Flat Stanley and seeing all of our favorites stars even if it was just a hand print or star on the ground.

Our time with Flat Stanley was really fun and if we had it our way, we would have kept him longer but we know that it was time for him to explore the other towns, countries and friends waiting for him to come visit them too. We can’t wait to see what adventures Flat Stanley has with other scrappers here at SSD…..and of course, I am sure you will see tons of pages as Flat Stanley continues on his journey over the summer! Happy Scrapping!