November 23: Today I took the first step towards making Mom's scrapbook into a tangible gift that I'll send to her as soon as possible. I ordered from Costco a 12x12 print of the first page, and tomorrow I'll pick up that print and see if what they hand me looks like what I've created on my Mac. If so, then I'll have them print the rest of the pages (about 35 at the moment), and put the whole shebang into a book that will accept additional pages that I expect to finish sometime soon.
We took a break from "inside" projects today and went out in the drizzle to find a Christmas tree. For a $10 fee, we have permission to scout around in the Forest Service land for the ideal tree. With all the early snow this year, we figured that waiting might mean no access to the higher-up roads (above the cedar and Doug fir), so off we went in our raingear and snowshoes. It was a bit of a slog up a streambed to a steep open area where we found our ideal tree – we like one that's not too crowded with branches, so there's lots of room for ornaments. Being mindful of our personal scrapbook, I put my camera in a ziplock bag and managed to get a shot of George cutting the tree, and of the tarp-wrapped tree loaded on top of our Trooper (no small feat!) as we headed out at dusk. The most interesting parts of the trip went undocumented, as we were either in fairly steady drizzle, or burdened with a large, unwieldy bundle that required full attention and both hands.
But it'll be back to the scrapbook tomorrow, as I received this afternoon a big box of photos, the first of two that Rob and Gin packed up in Florida and sent to me to sort out and archive. Just looking through all the folders and envelopes and packets will be enough to keep me occupied till spring!
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Sunday, November 22, 2009
November 22:
My youngest sister turns 50 tomorrow, and my oldest (but still younger than I am) brother turns 60 in less than two weeks. I look at the amount of family history that's been lost because no one had the time to record it, and I get a sense of urgency to complete as much "archiving" as I can, as soon as I can.
Some of these old photos are so poorly exposed, and badly aged, that it's difficult to pick out details. As I worked on the photos from "baby's first Christmas" I am almost certain I spotted, perched on the base of Patty's high chair, the very same sawdust-stuffed teddy bear that's currently slouched on my stairs. I always thought he was "my" bear, but apparently I inherited him from my older sister. Ah, well, that's so often the way of things in big families...
My youngest sister turns 50 tomorrow, and my oldest (but still younger than I am) brother turns 60 in less than two weeks. I look at the amount of family history that's been lost because no one had the time to record it, and I get a sense of urgency to complete as much "archiving" as I can, as soon as I can.
Some of these old photos are so poorly exposed, and badly aged, that it's difficult to pick out details. As I worked on the photos from "baby's first Christmas" I am almost certain I spotted, perched on the base of Patty's high chair, the very same sawdust-stuffed teddy bear that's currently slouched on my stairs. I always thought he was "my" bear, but apparently I inherited him from my older sister. Ah, well, that's so often the way of things in big families...
Friday, November 20, 2009
November 20, 2009: When I retired from editing Hang Gliding and Paragliding magazine two years ago, my big goals were to travel with George during the "off season," and to learn to use Photoshop and create scrapbooks of our adventures. This blog is mostly about the scrapbooking goal, and I have to say I'm really enjoying discovering Photoshop's many and varied applications to scrapping. Thank you, Linda Sattgast, for getting me started with Scrapper's Guide's kits and tutorials. I've always thought I haven't an artistic/creative bone in my body, but I'm great at copying, and for the most part I'm delighted with what I'm able to turn out.
The really fun thing about the "Mom" scrapbook is discovering all kinds of things about our family history. Neither Mom nor Dad was ever very vocal about their past – heck, with seven kids to raise, they probably didn't have either time or energy to be thinking much beyond the immediate, urgent family needs! Mom has a couple of photo albums, which up through Patty's babyhood are pretty much in chronological order. BUT for the most part none of the pages have anything more than a date and location, if even that. Makes it tough on the archivist! I've been having surprising success using Google to find information about, for instance, Dad's army years (actually found his name on a roster of fighter pilots who trained at Millville Air Base), or the hurricane damage that Mom and Dad recorded (photos were identified only as "Hurricane, September 1944"), or the "Jersey flood, 1945" (I had no idea Pompton Plains lay in the "most flood-prone river basin in the U.S." until improvements were made in the mid-1900s).
While she was visiting Mom in Florida recently, Ginny helped Mom "page through" the draft, online version of the family scrapbook. Mom's memory isn't very good these days, and she gets tired really easily, but Gin said she found the scrapbook really cool. Whew! Mom's always been a bit nervous about anyone handling her photos, so I was worried that she'd get riled up about my working with them. Maybe Mom just wanted to make sure the photos, and the history they capture, didn't get lost. I'm doing my best, Mom!
Today I scanned a bunch of photos from the early- to mid-'50s, the first batch from within my memory. It's pretty cool seeing our old house in Pompton Plains, the cabbage-rose wallpaper (I remember the ordeal of stripping that off, spraying it with vinegar and scraping, scraping, scraping...), the kitchen with its black linoleum floor and countertop, our old toys, Holy Spirit church and school, Grandma and Grandpa's flagpole.
Rob and Gin boxed up a bunch more photos and Fed-Ex'd them to me, should get here next week. I bet I'll have to go back and update some of the pages I've already created, and slide some new ones into the lineup. And Uncle Harry is coming for lunch tomorrow – he may be able to help me identify some of the people included in Mom's photos of her first years with Dad, before we kids started to come along.
What actually inspired me to add some words to this so far scrapbook-pages-only blog was a book I just finished reading (and laughing over, again and again): Julie & Julia by Julie Powell. Julie's personal-growth project was to cook her way through Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, or MtAoFC, as Julie refers to her bible, in a year. Julie blogged her successes and challenges (in language much more emotionally charged than anything I'm capable of!), and it was a riveting, hilarious read. So, with the expectation that no one but siblings (and probably not all six of them) will ever read this, and the certainty that no one will get many laughs out of it, I'm carving into this blogstone the ups and downs of the family scrapbook project, and my challenges and inspirations as I delve into the depths of Photoshop's scrapbook potential.
The really fun thing about the "Mom" scrapbook is discovering all kinds of things about our family history. Neither Mom nor Dad was ever very vocal about their past – heck, with seven kids to raise, they probably didn't have either time or energy to be thinking much beyond the immediate, urgent family needs! Mom has a couple of photo albums, which up through Patty's babyhood are pretty much in chronological order. BUT for the most part none of the pages have anything more than a date and location, if even that. Makes it tough on the archivist! I've been having surprising success using Google to find information about, for instance, Dad's army years (actually found his name on a roster of fighter pilots who trained at Millville Air Base), or the hurricane damage that Mom and Dad recorded (photos were identified only as "Hurricane, September 1944"), or the "Jersey flood, 1945" (I had no idea Pompton Plains lay in the "most flood-prone river basin in the U.S." until improvements were made in the mid-1900s).
While she was visiting Mom in Florida recently, Ginny helped Mom "page through" the draft, online version of the family scrapbook. Mom's memory isn't very good these days, and she gets tired really easily, but Gin said she found the scrapbook really cool. Whew! Mom's always been a bit nervous about anyone handling her photos, so I was worried that she'd get riled up about my working with them. Maybe Mom just wanted to make sure the photos, and the history they capture, didn't get lost. I'm doing my best, Mom!
Today I scanned a bunch of photos from the early- to mid-'50s, the first batch from within my memory. It's pretty cool seeing our old house in Pompton Plains, the cabbage-rose wallpaper (I remember the ordeal of stripping that off, spraying it with vinegar and scraping, scraping, scraping...), the kitchen with its black linoleum floor and countertop, our old toys, Holy Spirit church and school, Grandma and Grandpa's flagpole.
Rob and Gin boxed up a bunch more photos and Fed-Ex'd them to me, should get here next week. I bet I'll have to go back and update some of the pages I've already created, and slide some new ones into the lineup. And Uncle Harry is coming for lunch tomorrow – he may be able to help me identify some of the people included in Mom's photos of her first years with Dad, before we kids started to come along.
What actually inspired me to add some words to this so far scrapbook-pages-only blog was a book I just finished reading (and laughing over, again and again): Julie & Julia by Julie Powell. Julie's personal-growth project was to cook her way through Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, or MtAoFC, as Julie refers to her bible, in a year. Julie blogged her successes and challenges (in language much more emotionally charged than anything I'm capable of!), and it was a riveting, hilarious read. So, with the expectation that no one but siblings (and probably not all six of them) will ever read this, and the certainty that no one will get many laughs out of it, I'm carving into this blogstone the ups and downs of the family scrapbook project, and my challenges and inspirations as I delve into the depths of Photoshop's scrapbook potential.
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