Ethnic Scrapbooking

Everybody has a story...be proud of yours

I heard this saying "Everybody has a story...be proud of yours." today and had to take it to heart.  A couple of weeks ago, I reunited with my best friend from grade school (Bladensburg Elementary).  Glynis got to pay us a visit and my kids were shocked to even think that I had friends in school.  Glynis told my kids how I was bullied by this girl in school on a daily basis (really it was only 2nd or 3rd grade until middle of 5th grade).  I did forget one important fact in all of that, which was most of the adult teachers were afraid of her and she beat up our 5th grade teacher. 

Any hoo...she never put her hands one, just nagged and picked on me and Michael, a special education student.  One thing I knew then was that I was on her bad side, because I defended Michael, which ultimately means I took a stand...I had a conviction about something...not bad for 2nd grader.

After her visit, I thought maybe I didn't want my kids to know that I had been bullied, but it is what it is.

I'm barely in the pciture...see the red sleeved girl...that's me, fourth grade birthday celebration right after our CHRISTMAS play...not Holiday play.

Earlier this week, I connected with a good, GOOD friend from college. She told me how she uses our friendship to teach her Sunday school class.  How she hung out with me at the parties to make sure I made it home safely because of all the drinking & drugs.  Yes, I was known to down a fifth of Jack Daniels (Black Label only) almost everyday. At first I was embarassed by those memories, but I was glad to report to her that those days were short lived and now I barely can hold down a glass of wine.  My life changed, because I made better, BETTER choices.  So...that's my story and I'm proud of it.

The House

I am very fortunate that my GG Grandmother's house is still standing and that we still have family gatherings there.  Recently, when we were all gathered there for my Great Aunt's funeral, we found a new scrapbook.  One particular party that was held in the house was my Great Grandparent's 50th wedding anniversary in 1965. I study these photographs for the little details, how the room was decorated, the china, the punch bowl, glassware and etc.

Here's one of those photos that I've seen more than a dozen times.  What I never noticed before is that I am the infant my Dad is feeding to the right!  LOL!!!

You Are the Window to Your Family's Past

This is the topic of a speaking engagement I have this weekend.  As I was preparing my text for this event, my husband came across this note (in the garage) I jotted down more than 2 years ago. 

 

Should this be a rare scrap of paper, let's say my great great granddaughter finds one day, what will she know about me from this list?  She'll know, at a minimum, the following:

1. I worked in publishing (somewhat true, I had a book published)
2. I drive (well in this case I had to have someone drive me around for 2 days)
3. I had allergies (pollen was so high my eyes constantly watered and I couldn't drive)
4. A "grandmother" was in a home (my husband, Jerry's grandmother had alzheimers and was placed in assisted living home)
5. I went to Florida (went to florida on a business trip, over a weekend)
6. Some one graduated (my first cousin had yet another graduation from a medical feloowship program)
7. Peggy had Cancer (my mother's sister started her battle with breast cancer)
8. Oh yeah...I was stressed!

Now if I had found something similar of my Great-Great Grandmother, I would be in heaven, but then full of questions.  Whether we acknowledge it or not we are the window to our family's past.  So I'll add this note to the back of an album I actually did create about my daily life in April 2007 with a bit more details about the stress in my life.

Heritage Event in Maryland

Harbor Scrapbooking is hosting a Heritage Theme Crop on July 12, 2009 from 10:00 a.m. – 8:00 p.m. at the Annapolis Elk’s Club in Edgewater, MD.
 
There is still space left for this all day crop with mini seminars about Heritage scrapbooking.

You do not have to be working on a heritage scrapbook to attend this crop.   However, by attending you can learn interesting information and references to use in the future, when you are working on a heritage album. The crop is open to anyone who wants to spend time scrapbooking, taking classes, or attending the mini seminars. 

Heritage layout by Janet Johnson

Attendees will have access to all of the mini seminars, classes, shopping with vendors, use of Harbor Scrapbooking scanning and printing services, and will receive a Heritage Resource folder containing presentation slides, a CD, and other heritage related information).

There are three registration options available:

• Crop space, two meals, and goodie bag – $50.00
• One meal and goodie bag – $20.00
• Goodie bag – $10.00

This Family Heritage Theme Crop also offers one-on-one consultations with a Genealogist and heritage-style page layout classes.

Speaker topics include:
 
"You Are the Window to Your Family's Past"

Lisa Sanford, Author of the book Ethnic Scrapbooking, will explore why we as scrapbookers must gather and document our family heritage. She will also discuss how to bring your family together while investigating the past.

Other experts will be on hand sharing their tips on genealogy.

St. Croix Vacation Album

Although our family has taken week long vacations before, I've never scrapbooked the whole week, amazing I know.  I've scrapbooked whole albums on just one day events, but never a week long event for my personal scrapbook collection.

Here's my game plan:  (I'm making this public so you can hold me accountable)

1. download and tag all photos - DONE!
2. dowload and tag all of my sister's photos  - DONE!
3. delete bad shots and duplicates SCRATCH, too time consuming, not going to do
4. Revisit Stacy Julian's ideas in Photo Freedom (I highly recommend purchasing this great reference book)  - DONE 7/16/09
5. organize photos by day - select 8-10 to print/use DONE 7/17/09
6. order two sets, use 2nd set for Kids,Parent's & Hostess album -  revised plan 7/17/09, create a 9 image collage for each day, print at home one 8x10 for each day
7. Create photo album or traditional album - hard choice for me, uploading to a photo album seems very appealing and quick, but I love to customize using my own stash. - Created one mini-album in an hour by purchasing a pre-decorated album at silent auction for $25!
8. Kids Pages - let them do their own two-page spread or mini-albums?
9. Parents Keepsake - give them the prints in photo sleeve album or what?
10. Cousin Tina (our hostess) - Create Thank You gift - traditional mini-album or loose print...decided, have Lisa Renee Young create a blank beach-themed mini-album
11. Deadline - Complete by September 1, 2009

Leave a note or additional ideas in the comments section on what you think about my plan.

Family Historian at work.

ME Album - Gardening

Here's another installment on my ME album for 2009.

Paper is WILD ASPARAGUS...quite fitting for my theme.  3-d items are from Jolee's, of course...black letters are Thickers, my new favorite.

While I was finishing up this page, my son asked me if he could make a popsicle photoframe. Me being one to foster creativity was thrilled at his request.  As I was getting him all set up across from the table from me, I shook a bottle of glue and when I removed the cap a squirt of liquid shot across the room and landed right on my photograph...no where else...right on the photograph.  I gasped (cursed and screamed) and Jonathan said, "It's okay...it looks like rain."  So there you go I converted a mishap into a page embellishment.  I added some diamond glaze to each spot to give it diminsion is IT'S OKAY as Ali Edwards would say.

ME album

For the past three-four years I have been trying to do some sort of album about myself.  I have this love affair with trying to gain any glimpses into the daily life of my female ancestors.  What was like for Grandma Josephine (whom I wrote about in Chicken Soup for the Scrapbooker's Soul) to raise 7 children on her own, for Grandma Jo to bear and raise 13 children...both of them without the modern conveniences of microwaves, washers and dryers, cars, and etc.

Last year I didn't get around to doing one, but I had planned to do an A-Z album, so a couple of weeks ago, I finally got all the right ink cartridges for my new Epson Artisan 800 so I printed out a handful of 8x10 photos of me. 

My inspiration for using self portraits comes from "E" she is single, no kids so she scrapbooks about herself...she takes a ton of very interesting self-portraits and I think about her everytime I take a photo of my self or hand the camera over to one of my kids.

Two other sources of inspiration:

One, the pose in the photo is similar to something I saw Ms. Ali Edwards do on her blog. Two, Highlighting the words Attitude & Gratitude comes from Oprah.

Scrapbooking the President...

No not today.  I took a day off from spouting intellectual Presidential history to my kids today and let them do what they wanted.  Leah started her day with cooking lessons with Dad in the kitchen.  Jerin slept until like 3 pm, Jonathan went on a four hour hike with the neighbors, Joseph practiced his spelling and addition flash cards and I...I went to my scrapbook room at 6pm and played.

Here's what I did...so that I can have a little bit of art creep into my surroundings everyday.  I was on a bit of an inspiration high from visiting Anthropologie on Saturday.

I started out with two small journals I picked up for under $3.00 at Borders.

I love new journals...I don't think I've ever filled one up, but I love journals.  So far for the new year I have three.  The larger black one is for me to record my goals for my new consulting business.  The smaller one is to keep in my purse to jot down notes at meetings.

I also have a 2009 calendar type one that I keep by my bed to use as a gratitude journal...ummm I'm already 6 weeks behind in that one.

Just as Abraham Lincoln kept so many journals, my descendants will have plenty to fight over...although I doubt any of my writings will go for $3.44 million like one of Lincoln's speeches did last week at auction.

Here are the journals after I tinkered with them.

 

S.M.A.R.T. is some MBA way of thinking through your goals, so I thought I'd give it a try...so far it's working, it helps me keep in mind which types of projects I should accept.

NEXT...

NOTES JOURNAL - I had to resort to an address book style way of keeping up with all my login, usernames, passwords, and pin codes.  It is just mind boggling.  I had to clear the clutter in my mind and just write them all down in one place.  So... I literally cut pages out of (last year's) favorite journal and made up this little cutie.

I used chipboard from some packaging that came in the mail this week, scraps of ribbon leftover from another project, bits and pieces of ethnic fabric Kyna gave me over a year ago.  While watching 24, I made this to sit on my desk to remind me to be creative everyday.  I even lined the inside and back cover.

 

 

I guess you can call this my version of fabric scrapbooking.

NAACP 100 years old

My fourth grader has been studying Ida B Wells-Barnett this week as one of her Black History month projects.  We both learned that she was one of the founders of the NAACP and we had a frank discussion about lynchings, mob actions and her writing career.  Today, I was quite surprised to hear that TODAY is actually the 100 year anniversary of the NAACP (and it's 100 day at school today too), so we had even more to talk about.

I love it when materials the kids study at school have a relevant place in today's world.  It just makes it all come alive and easier to remember too. 

I also took the opportunity to connect Mrs. Wells-Barnett to our family history, by explaining that our Great-Great-Great Grandfather may have read her articles in the late 1800's.

What I am concerned about it, in studying four different notable people for Black History Month, is how many biographies are missing from the library shelves that are written at a child's level. (note to self...book project during retirement years)

We've come a long way in the last 100+ years, but we have a long way to go.

Photo Credit:  library of congress

U.S. President Scrapbook - Inaugural Activities

On January 20, 2009 we were high on inauguration fever around here.  Here are a few shots from our activities.  We stayed home, it was too cold and too crowded to take the kids downtown to witness the most historic moment in our lives to date.

 

We had this display on our kitchen table.  The kids understood the symbolism behind each element...I was so proud.

Red, White & Blue - American Patriotism

Wine (Sparkling Cider) Glasses - to toast the new President

Cake - celebratory food

Container of Cotton - (straight from a Georgia cotton field) represents the back breaking work of our ancestors

Heritage Photo of our slave ancestor - giving honor to the many who planted the trees in which we now enjoy the shade.

Book - Martin Luther King Jr. biography (Leah read three this past year) In dedication to the one who mobilized America with his DREAM.

Card - Photo card with Joseph  on the front to inspire him to one day be the President of the United States.  (I made these to mail out since I didn't send out Christmas cards...e-cards are so impersonal)

 

This display was in our front hallway...It will stay up until President's Day and we'll had our Presidential biographies to the table.  I got this idea from the displays at my local library.  This reminds us to re-read the good books we already have in our home library.