Ginealogy gin

Preserve Your Family Recipes in a Book This Holiday Season!

2011-11-28T14:56:00.000-08:00

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

Capture precious memories in a book this holiday season!

2011-11-01T10:03:00.001-07:00

Here is one of my latest creations...

Our mother-daughter trip to Hershey, PA!

click here to see the book

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

2011-08-02T15:29:00.000-07:00

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 70^th 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.

Senior Mom's Club

2011-02-21T13:04:00.000-08:00

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:

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.

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)

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 21^st!

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)

Organizing Your Photos in Your Heritage Makers account

2011-02-04T10:39:00.001-08:00

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.

Why Scan??

2010-12-04T11:45:00.000-08:00

When I first heard that Heritage Makers consultants were offering scanning services to their clients, I thought to myself - why would someone want to scan their photos?

I know many of you are thinking the same thing, and the main answer is PRESERVATION of your precious photos and memories. You may feel like your photographs are safe, but if you, like I, have gone through boxes of old family photos, even ones that were "properly" stored in a good climate and temperature, they have lost much of their original quality, if not all of it. Now is the time to get those photos scanned!

1. Restoration
2. Sharing
3. Fading
4. Color Shift
5. Scratching
6. Disaster

1. RESTORE When I scan photos for my clients, I also restore them. This brings back the color to photos that most people didn't even realize had faded. I can also do more extensive restoration (see previous blog postings for samples) as well, but even just a simple "refeshing" of the photos really makes them a joy to see.

2. SHARE Often, a family will gather after the death of a loved one (or before) and determine how to "divide up" the photographs. This is a shame because not everyone gets to enjoy all of the photos. With scanning, all of the photos can be placed on CDs, making it possible to divide up the actual photos, but for everyone to have the digital images of each and every one. They are then ready to make prints of, or put into a Heritage Makers book for everyone to enjoy!

For information about the other four points above, see the article on Fading below as well as the Scan Cafe website. I have recently been introduced to this fine company and they do excellent work with scanning of slides, which is a service I could not previously offer.
Contact me to handle your photo or slide scanning today.

Fading, Fading...Gone!

2010-12-04T11:42:00.000-08:00

Concern about fading in photography is as old as photography itself, and dates at least to a well-known "Fading Committee" established by the Photographic Society of London in 1855.

This 1994 photograph had been framed with an oval frame. Note how the area exposed to light has changed.

But the photos we are all most concerned about aren't quite that old! They date from 1936, with the introduction of Kodachrome film for 35mm slides, to about 1990, and it's these photos that are particularly in danger.

These photos were printed using a number of different variations on what is called a chromogenic process. That simply means that the surface on which the print is made does not already contain the dyes necessary to make the colors required. Rather, this process relies on a number of chemicals and chemical reactions to create the dyes, on the fly, at the time of processing. And it is the combination of dyes — typically, cyan (blue), magenta (red), and yellow — that creates the final colors we see in a color photo.

Why fading is inevitable

Unfortunately, these dyes — that is, these chemical reactions — are inherently unstable. In fact, they begin to degrade as soon as the photo is printed! And light hitting a photo — nearly any kind of visible light — simply accelerates this process. This is why packages of film have typically carried disclaimers about the fact that colors may fade over time.

This film box, bought in November 2008, carries the disclaimer "Since color dyes may change in time, Walgreens cannot warranty this film against any change in color."

Typically, there are two effects: a loss of detail in general, particularly in the highlights, and a color shift. As the magenta dye is most unstable when exposed to light, compared to the other two dyes, the result is a photo that can shift to a slightly greenish cast.

Over the last 50 years, there have been many different chromogenic approaches to making prints. As the work of image permanence pioneer Henry Wilhelm has shown, these approaches do vary widely in terms of potential image permanence. Unfortunately, the most popular of these — for example, Ektacolor-processed prints from the 1960's and 1970's — have tended to have significant fading problems when exposed to light.

If your photos are already faded

This photo was slightly faded, and correction was straightforward under ScanCafe's standard service.

Prior to the availability of scanning and digital photography software, if your photos were faded you were largely out of luck.That's not true any more!

Depending on the degree of fading, an image can be scanned and then digitally adjusted using a variety of photographic management software tools, like the ones ScanCafe technicians use. However, if your photos are severely faded, it can be challenging to bring them back to life — so it's definitely in your interest to hurry.

Source: http://www.scancafe.com/image-preservation/fading

What's FREE this month?!

2010-10-05T18:21:00.000-07:00

As you probably know, I am a family history researcher, as well as a Heritage Makers Personal Publishing Consultant. It's the perfect match for me, marrying my passions for heritage and the preservation of family photos and stories in a way that brings me and my clients a great deal of joy.

This month, I wanted to share some places on the web where you can go to find out some fun things about your family tree for FREE! Family Tree Magazine (a great magazine, if you're not familiar with it) posts a list of top 101 websites every year. This time, they've only included the free sites, so check out this list

As I mentioned in my October Celebrations newsletter, one of my favorites is the Bureau of Land Management site At this site, you can plug in the name of an ancestor you think may have purchased a homestead in one of the federal land grant states (anything other than the 13 original colonies, MN, VT, WV, KY, TN, TX & HI). The Homestead Law was a series of enactments beginning with the Act of 20 May 1862. Its purpose was to distribute public lands to those who did not own any and, later, to encourage settlement in the less-developed western states. Most claims were made between 1863 and 1917, though the law was not abolished until 1976.

The Bureau of Land Management, over the past 10 or so years, has been indexing and digitizing the land patents - certificates issued when the land was finally granted to the claimant. These patents provide some interesting information as well as the "key" to gaining even more: your ancestors Land entry case file.

If you have an ancestor in mind, here's what to do:
1. Go to the BLM website
2. Identify the state where your ancestor lived when he applied for land
3. Go to "Search Land Patents"
4. Enter your zip code and Continue
5. Search for your ancestor's land application

You can copy or print the certificate and use Form 84 to fill in the information needed to order your ancestor's Land Entry Case File from the National Archives.

Why send for your ancestor's Land Entry Case File?! There is a fee to send for the case file, and this file may contain only the name of the claimant, the location of the land, acreage, price, dates of final papers and the name of the land office. However, files made after 1840 may also contain things like copies of birth certificates and marriage records, citizenship records, military service information, information on other family members and more. These files can be a true peek into the life of your ancestor in a way you never thought was possible.

So, if you think you might have an ancestor who was a homesteader (I did and I never would've guessed!), give this a try - and make sure you tell me what you find out!

Ginealogy tips for September

2010-09-13T14:37:00.000-07:00

Back Up Your Digital Photos
Don't Neglect Digital Photos in Your Backup Routine

By Sue Chastain, About.com Guide

You do have a backup routine, don't you?

Some people will save film negatives for generations, but when they make the switch to digital, they may never even consider the idea of making a second backup copy of their images.

Folks, any kind of digital storage is susceptible to failure. It can't be predicted, but you can certainly plan for it. Please get in the habit of making at least monthly backups of your digital pictures--and by backup, I mean a second copy. Archiving your photos to a single CD and then deleting them from hard disk is not a second copy.

Currently, the most convenient backup solution is a second hard drive. The most affordable solution is recordable CDs and DVDs. HP's SimpleSave Photo DVDs are a very easy and affordable solution for anyone with a DVD burner drive.

For the best protection, consider making duplicates of all your archive CDs and pass one copy along to a family member or put it in a safety deposit box or fire-proof safe. Then, even in the event of a fire or theft, your precious photographic records and memories will not be lost.

Personally, I keep copies of my most recent and my best photos on my hard drive for convenience. Every night, my pictures are copied to my HP MediaSmart Server where the files are automatically duplicated. Whenever I make a CD of pictures, I make an extra copy or two to pass along to a family member to have.

In addition, my best photos are usually uploaded to an online photo sharing site such as Picasa Web Albums or Photoshop Express **. If you do rely on an online storage site for backups, be sure to choose a company that does not resize or recompress your pictures, and one that you feel confident will not go out of business.

**Gin's note: Of course, you'll want to upload them to your Heritage Makers account so you can not only have them safely stored, but also have them available to use to create fabulous gifts for your loved ones this holiday season.

Wedding photo before and after restoration

2010-08-05T16:38:00.001-07:00

Wedding photo

2010-08-05T14:01:00.001-07:00

Monsignor Kiernan's Commemorative Book

2010-05-28T11:50:00.001-07:00

Click on the image at left to preview Monsignor's book, which is 12 x 12", hardcover, library-quality, with 22 pages. Email Gin at gShaw1234@aol.com to order. Include your name, address, phone number and number of copies. Gin will reply with payment details.

Samantha's Book - Click on each page to enlarge, use back button to return

2009-06-25T15:19:00.001-07:00

Fourth Grade Class Cookbook

2009-06-03T20:06:00.001-07:00

http://www.heritagemakers.com/?event=projectBrowse&projectId=b78f5cd0-9fd8-4bf4-926c-378dc42b1148&productId=73&projectSponsor=250202

Friendship Coup

2009-06-03T19:59:00.001-07:00

http://www.heritagemakers.com/projectBrowserStandAlone.cfm?projectID=943621&productId=7

3rd Grade Nativity Pageant 2009

2009-02-05T12:01:00.000-08:00

Myers Family Reunion Book

2008-07-02T11:34:00.001-07:00

Click on the red x below to see a small version of the final book.

Crew 1 Northern Tier Book

2008-06-22T20:59:00.000-07:00

Click on the link below to view the preview

http://www.heritagemakers.com/?event=projectBrowse&projectId=f88f518d-0db9-4fe3-b7b2-6f9bf2c4f141&productId=9&projectSponsor=250202

Sample First Communion Book - 7" x 5"

2008-03-27T09:41:00.001-07:00

The first pages below are the front and back covers.

The second page is the Title page.

Click on any page to enlarge it,

then use your "back" button" to return to the blog.

Sample 4 x 6" card using artwork

2008-03-25T17:30:00.000-07:00

Guest Book, revised for Parent Gift

2008-03-04T21:51:00.001-08:00

Hi Jennifer,

Here's my idea for a parent gift - it's your guest book,

but with the signature lines left off and the

signature pages deleted.

Also a page for a personal note - each book could have a

separate note on that page, if you like.

Like??

Jennifer and Tim's Guest Book

2008-02-27T20:29:00.000-08:00

Hi Jennifer,

The first two pages are the front and back covers of the book.

The next one is the "Title page and does not have a facing page.

The blue/white pages are meant to resemble your website.

There are places for your wedding party to sign by their photo

and the other signing pages are the back pages.

There are enough spots for 126 signatures in the back section.

Nativity Book

2008-02-13T06:53:00.000-08:00

The Nativity Book - as of Feb. 13

(minus the covers and credit pages)

Sample Basketball Poster - 12" x 18" glossy

2008-02-12T11:55:00.000-08:00

Sample nativity pages

2008-02-08T17:58:00.000-08:00

The previous one (but with the new background color)....

Currently in the book

Liberty Fitness Girls' Cruise!

2008-01-25T12:26:00.000-08:00

Hi Liberty Cruise Girls!

Here is a sample of what your cruise book will

look like. Keep in mind, however, that this sample is of a rectangular

(7" x 5") book and your finished book will be a square book - 8" x 8".

The first two pages shown are the back and front covers (full color, hard-cover).

The other pages show a sampling of the 21 pages that will fill your

fun and festive book.

What a great way to commemorate your Cruise with the girls!

(Click on any image below to enlarge it -

use your back button to get to the next set of pages)

Sample 50th Anniversary Template for 12x12 book

2008-01-13T19:38:00.000-08:00

Sample 5oth Anniversary 12" x 12" book

created in BASIC

Front and Back covers, title page, etc.

(click on any page to enlarge)

Christmas Thank you 5x7" postcard

2008-01-13T17:11:00.000-08:00