My two new Shutterfly books unveiled

I've been wanting to post photos of the Shutterfly books that I did for Christmas this year.  The primary objective of these books was to share with my in-laws the ancestor photographs I have collected over the years. I then decided that the pictures would mean a lot more if there could be a little history for each of the ancestors.  I also decided to look online for more photos and really hit a bonanza at dupinternational.com for both photos and histories.  I mean I had a lo of both categories to begin with but I found even more.  It was great.  Anyway, it took me a long time (relatively speaking and no pun intended) to figure out how to lay out the different generations so as not to lose the reader as I moved couple to couple along the pedigree chart.  I assigned each ancestor couple a number on a graph at the beginning of the books and put that same number on the beginning page for each couple.  I also gave each couple a different color of page background.

Here is a photo of one of the books:

Here is the layout for the first page for ancestor couple #2, below.

Here is a shot of one layout for ancestor couple #8, below.

I wrote or copied history information, up to one page for each person for whom I had a picture.  I even included things like this cool headstone.

I also included some source pages--not really doing official bibliography per se but giving enough information so that a person would know where I found the pictures or information, see below to the source pages.

Here is the other book, below.

Here is couple #2 in this book.

I just loved some of the cool pictures, particularly these, below.

Because my mother-in-law's favorite color is blue, I alternated the different ancestor pages in her book between this color (that I inadvertently used for all three sample photos) and other, darker colors of blue.

If I had the time, I could blather on for many more cyber lines about these books.  I am currently, but at a much slower pace, putting together similar books, one about my mother's line and one about my father's line, with no particular end date in mind, but in the hopes of doing them for my children.  

The problem with my parents' books is I have too many pictures so the picture layout (where I currently am in the book process) is all about leaving photos out and winnowing things down.  And for the ancestors for whom there are almost no pictures, it is a very glaring lack when compared to the other pages.  Sigh.  Plus, for my father's book, it doesn't take many generations back on one side for there to be absolutely nothing since they were immigrants to the USA.  

One issue I've wondered about since printing these is whether I should have included the two-page histories per ancestor couple for those ancestors WITHOUT photographs but for whom I had some historical information.  In my mind, these books were all about sharing pictures and then enhancing the pictures with text.  However, now that I have taken a breath, I'm wondering if I shouldn't have tried to be more thorough, at least as to the fifth generation back from my in-laws, where I had some but not all the pictures of those ancestors.

It is past my bedtime and I have to close.  Good night.

Merry Christmas!

Our trees this year.

Every child on earth is holy,
Every crib is a manger lowly,
Every home is a stable dim,
Every kind word is a hymn,
Every star is God's own gem,
And every town is Bethlehem,
For Christ is born and born again,
When His love lives in the hearts of men.
--W.D. Dorrity, 1909.

In the middle of December

Hello to all three of you who read my blog!  Here we are in the middle of December and not far from Christmas.  Just last night I finished and ordered the "My Family Tree" books that I created for my in-laws.  I created one for my father-in-law and his ancestors and one for my mother-in-law and her ancestors.  Today, I feel I have come back from the abyss.  Every spare minute, and even many, many unspare minutes, have gone toward those two books for the past almost three months.  I will have to post pictures of them here on the blog once I get them back. Pray with me that any typos will magically correct themselves.  I proofed the books so many times that I could no longer think straight.

When my friend Elaine blogged about completing something on her "bucket list" a few months ago, I thought about my bucket list (actually the "must do before I get dementia" list).  My bucket list is very, very short--almost nonexistent--but on that list WERE (until I finished two of them) these ancestor books.  Actually, I need to make two more to really complete that bucket list item--one for my father's ancestors and one for my mother's ancestors--but since those two people are dead, I  have NO  immediate plans for those books (don't even try to talk to me about that) nor adequate motivation (zero, zip, nada)  to overload another holiday season with them in the foreseeable future.  Also on that bucket list is writing histories of both my mother and my father before my mind goes, particularly because their grandchildren don't really know them and I want their grandchildren and future generations to have something to remember them by.  I also need to somehow make my two file cabinets of family information accessible or "necessary" to my family-history-disinterested children.  These ancestor books are part of that objective--pictures and SHORT histories of each ancestor for whom I have a picture.  That  is how I've arranged the books so far but I have lots more information than that. I've actually thought about these books for years and started them several times.  This time, I finished two. Yea!  I have also tirelessly collected ancestor pictures on both sides of the family hoping to make these people seem more "real" to my children.  Otherwise, I have no clue how to go about making all my collected information something my children will care to have once I'm gone or not able to use it anymore.  But enough about the bucket list.

A few years ago, I read a biography of Juanita Brooks and there is for me a haunting scene toward the end of her life where she is in her Salt Lake City basement, day after day, in an ever-increasing fog of dementia, trying and trying to put together another book--something she has done well in the past--and she simply cannot pull it off, though not for lack of trying.  I have seen this kind of dementia up close and it is not a respecter of persons.  I know it has my name and address.  I calculate I have about twenty years but years go by rapidly.  It will seem like tomorrow.

OK, back to the fact that it is mid-December and back to the the here and the un-dementia now.  I wasn't joking about my unspare minutes going toward the books and not toward other things.  Now that I am back from the abyss, there is so much to do.  Cleaning--egad, yes!  Decorating at least ONE tree for Christmas (it has been UP since Thanksgiving).  Doing more shopping (although with less money and therefore less gusto than usual).  Delivering gifts.  Wrapping gifts.  Ho, ho, ho.  All that Christmas stuff.  It doesn't matter that I wrote my family Christmas letter back in October.  You will not see it until after Christmas.  I've rescheduled working on Christmas cards/letters to accommodate these books and swim and church and work and family and life.

One little Christmas miracle occurred last night.  I was trying to hit the "30% off and free shipping" deadline of December 15th for the shutterfly books.  I had had MANY MANY MANY (you get the idea) interruptions already that day.  I had hunkered down and I had barely stepped away from the computer since early afternoon.  I was missing three pictures for my mother-in-law's book that I had ordered from dupinternational.com.  I had ordered them at the beginning of December but they had not arrived and there was no telling if they would.  I had to decide by yesterday whether to leave them out and hit the deadline or wait for them and miss the deadline.  I decided I would cross that bridge when I came to it.   About 8 p.m., I reached that "bridge" and I asked B to check the mail.  Viola! Guess what was in there? The disk with those pictures!  Hallelujah! It felt like divine intervention for them to show up exactly on time like that.  Exactly on time!  Awesome.

I've gotten to know so much about B's ancestry this past while.  I've thoroughly enjoyed that part of the project.  Plus, you cannot work on a book like this without feeling a closeness to some of the people and I hope they're pleased, too, with the final products.

Because my parents married so late in their lives, my lines do not go back as many generations in Utah as B's lines do (all of his lines and all of my lines come to Utah at some point and all converge in Dixie).  I would like to create something pinpointing (a) which generation in each ancestral line marks the oldest generation to come to Utah or join the Church, and (b) these ancestral lines' countries of origin. That's not a bucket list item, just something that interests me.

I have spent years and years collecting family pictures, both for my side and, once I married B, for B's side.  These past three months, I have found so many pictures (relatively speaking--no pun intended) that I did not have and I have found a lot of histories I did not have for his family.  God bless the Internet and technology!  The "hunt" for these things has been a little like feeding nickles into a slot machine--always hoping the big win would come with the next nickle.  The more things I found, the more things I was DETERMINED to find and I was CONVINCED that there MUST be more things out there somewhere if I could only find them. (Can anyone spell OCD.?)  If I wouldn't have had the Christmas deadline AND the motivation of SO MANY HOURS already spent trying to finish this specifically for this Christmas, AND knowing that life can be short and I need to get this done for my intended audience (my in-laws) while they're around to enjoy it, my OCD would not have let me finish . . . yet because in the back of my mind I keep thinking other big discoveries are just around the corner.

Well, I'm going to get dressed and then set a timer that I can clip on my shirt.  I am going to take a page out of the Flylady's book and I will work in 15-minute increments on different things, rotating around and around so as not to lose my mind over all I can't do RIGHT NOW, and thereby I hope to do a little on a lot of things that need more attention than I have time to give them, such as (a) clean the books, histories, and pictures from the computer area and put them away (a bigger project than it sounds like), (b) bring up the Christmas tree decorations and decorate the tree, (c) clean up the kitchen/family room area--o, woe is me . . . where is my shovel . . .well, maybe that is enough for today.  Here we are in mid-December, on a fast glide to Christmas!  Cheerio!