Monday, November 28, 2011

Preserve Your Family Recipes in a Book This Holiday Season!


Here is the book I just finished, with photos and pictures of my children's grandmother and great grandmother. Click the link below to see the preview and Email me if it inspires you to do one of your own!

Your Jewish Grandmothers’ Cookbook


Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Capture precious memories in a book this holiday season!

Here is one of my latest creations...
Our mother-daughter trip to Hershey, PA!

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Things to do with your oldest living relatives right away....


Grief is a powerful emotion, which I’m reminded of daily since my sweet mother-in-law passed away two weeks ago. I have brought all of her photos home to scan them and preserve them so that everyone in the family can have them all. It was just in last month’s newsletter that I wrote: “Our photos become more precious to us with each passing day - reminding us not only of when we were younger, but of good times with the people we love, some of whom may not be with us any more.”

Each day we struggle to deal with our loss and I have found that another emotion, GRATITUDE is a great combatant of grief. As I go through Jean’s photos, I am reminded of the good times we had together and am so grateful for so many things.

Here are a few: I worked with Jean on her family history and helped her locate many cousins she never knew; I helped her put together a scrapbook (pre-HM) of her oldest pictures and labeled each one with her dictated caption; I asked her to write down every place she’d ever lived, along with memories of those places and the people she knew; I made a friendship quilt for her 70th birthday and sent her photos and cards to help her feel less far away from her grandchildren. Those things took time, but time that was well-spent.

Here are some things I urge you to do with your oldest living relatives (especially your parents, if you're lucky enough to still have them here on earth):

1. Pull out the photo albums and find the oldest photos. Ideally, scan those photos at 300 dpi and preserve them on several CDs (put one in your safe deposit box and distribute them to your siblings). Print those photos (or make good quality COLOR - even if they're black and white photos - copies of them) and ask these questions: Names of everyone in the photo; place photo was taken; approximate date of the photo/event. Pay attention to details like jewelry and clothing worn (family heirloom?); cars (who owned them); houses (who lived in them and what was the address). You'll be surprised what people will remember and tell you IF ASKED. Photos are a great way to prompt your oldest living relatives to tell you really interesting things about their lives before you knew them and about the people you never knew or are already gone.

2. Ask your parents to write down every place they've lived - just list them. Ask them to try to include an address if they can recall it and if they have any particular memories about the place, to jot those down as well. This should not take too much time (maybe 20 minutes?), but will be treasured by many!!!

3. Ask your parents to do the same thing as #2 with every school they attended. Ask them to jot down any particular memories, names of teachers and friends, favorite subjects, as well as worst and best experiences.

4. Ask your parents to do the same thing as #2 and 3 with every job they had. Details might include names of bosses and co-workers, description of tasks, best and worst experiences and lessons learned.

That's a good enough start for now and my best advice of all... DON'T WAIT. I had so much more I wanted to do with and for Jean. I thought I had a lot more time.

Monday, February 21, 2011

Senior Mom's Club

I’m so excited to get our group together and get started on our graduation projects! These will truly become instant family heirlooms and lifelong treasures for our graduates. You should feel so proud to be taking the time to do this!

We will meet three times over the next three months. If you attend each time and complete small and very manageable tasks in between, you’ll be ready to publish your project and get it back in time for graduation day! If you ever need help in between our meetings, we can always meet online anytime.

Here’s what you need to do to prepare for that first meeting:

  1. Pick out a project template from the templates below. You can click on the image or the links below the images, which also have a description of the projects. Look for a project that has an overall layout that appeals to you. ANYTHING and EVERYTHING on any page and the covers can be changed, so just look for a general layout (how the photos are organized on the pages) that you like.
  1. Upload at least 10 photos to your account. To do this, login to your account, click My Photos (top tabs) and then create a FOLDER with the name of your graduate. Within that folder, you can add ALBUMS for each of the 2-page spreads in your book, i.e. Birth, School, Sports, etc. Here is a short youtube video that shows how to upload your photos: Upload photos to your Studio account (6:18)
  1. Start gathering items you’d like me to scan. Examples include: photos, certificates, report cards, etc. Photos must be loose (not in frames or albums) when you bring them to me next week and cannot be wider than 8.5”. If you want to include larger items or trophies, medals or other items, take a picture of those items in good light and upload those into your account.

We still have room for a couple more moms, so spread the word this week! See you on the 21st!


Click on the links below to see a preview of these projects:

ALL TEMPLATES ARE FULLY CUSTOMIZABLE

I’LL SHOW YOU HOW TO MAKE IT

JUST LIKE YOU WANT IT!

http://www.heritagemakers.com/projectBrowserStandAlone.cfm?projectID=1332459&productId=9&sponsorID=250202

(HS graduation cornerstone book – 11” x 8.5” hardcover book – 60 points with 21 pages – can add up to 99 pages for 1 pt/page)

http://www.heritagemakers.com/projectBrowserStandAlone.cfm?projectID=1398340&productId=60&sponsorID=250202

(Senior Send-off - 8 x 8” board book – 15 page limit – 60 points)

http://www.heritagemakers.com/projectBrowserStandAlone.cfm?projectID=1358866&productId=3&sponsorID=250202

(Advice for a daughter - 7 x 5” hardcover book – 40 points with 21 pages – can add up to 99 pages for 1 pt/page)

http://www.heritagemakers.com/projectBrowserStandAlone.cfm?projectID=1358950&productId=3&sponsorID=250202

(Advice for a son - 7 x 5” hardcover book – 40 points with 21 pages – can add up to 99 pages for 1 pt/page)

http://www.heritagemakers.com/projectBrowserStandAlone.cfm?projectID=1346721&productId=5&sponsorID=250202

(Graduation Party Guest book – 8 x 8” hardcover book – 50 points with 21 pages – can add up to 99 pages for 1 pt/page)

http://www.heritagemakers.com/projectBrowserStandAlone.cfm?projectID=1654456&productId=15&sponsorID=250202

(Graduation Announcement 5” x 7” greeting card – 3 pts/card)

http://www.heritagemakers.com/projectBrowserStandAlone.cfm?projectID=1652161&productId=57&sponsorID=250202

(Gallery-Wrapped Canvas – 16” x 20” – 90 points)

http://www.heritagemakers.com/projectBrowserStandAlone.cfm?projectID=721150&productId=5&sponsorID=250202

(Child’s Story – 8 x 8” hardcover book – 50 points with 21 pages – can add up to 99 pages for 1 pt/page)

http://www.heritagemakers.com/projectBrowserStandAlone.cfm?projectID=765507&productId=9&sponsorID=250202

(Child’s Story #2 – 11.5 x 8.5” hardcover book – 60 points with 21 pages – can add up to 99 pages for 1 pt/page)

http://www.heritagemakers.com/projectBrowserStandAlone.cfm?projectID=1668645&productId=11&sponsorID=250202

(12 x 12” hardcover book - 82 points with 27 pages – can add up to 99 pages for 2 pts/page)

Friday, February 4, 2011

Organizing Your Photos in Your Heritage Makers account


We talked about this at the digi-crop last week, so I wanted to send these tips to you, just in case you're interested.... If you start with your January 2011 photos you'll be CAUGHT UP! :)

Here are some organizing tips:
Organizing and Uploading Your Photos

(1) You'll want to isolate and edit your favorites before you upload. However you go about it, your goal is to get your favorites separated from the duds. Most programs have a "flag" or "tag" feature (may be called something else). As you scroll through your January photos, flag or tag your favorite photos. Go ahead and flag ALL your favorite January photos. Even if you don't use them all in your yearbook, you may eventually want to use them in a different project. This step is SO HELPFUL because when you upload to HM, you won't want to upload all the bad photos. And it's much easier to pick your favorites in your photo management program than on the HM upload screen. Also, you should edit your favorites for red eye, brightness and color balance as you cannot do those tasks in the HM Studio (yet).

(2) In your HM account, create a folder for the year (like 2010). Then create an album in the 2010 folder for January. I like for the albums to be listed in order so I add 01, 02 etc. before the months, or they will be alphabetized and out of order. I add an "a" or "b" for special layouts, like "06a Swim Team" for example. See the sample to the left above.

Hope that's helpful.
Have you noticed the COPY and MOVE buttons in your albums yet? I can get online with you to show you how to use those.

Happy Organizing - nothing else to do on these nasty rainy days (plus it keeps my hands busy so I don't just keep eating)!

Here's a quick youtube video to show you how to upload your photos to HM.