Creating a Family Heirloom

I am creating a family heirloom.. otherwise known as a heritage album for my dad for his 60th birthday that is coming up in August.  Yeah, normally these things are done secretly, but not in this family.There are just too many of us and too many memories that need to be included! 

As of today I have scanned more than 2000 pictures into the computer and have sorted memorabilia dating from the early 1900’s through today.  It is an amazing experience but just a little overwhelming!  How can you decide on what to include in an album like this?? 

For example, we have notes written by my Grandfather to my dad during his first week of life.. those HAVE to be in the book.   

But we also have ration books from WWII, love letters, telegrams and poems written while my grandfather was at sea during WWII and even his autograph book prior to leaving for war.

I have learned so much about our family while going through pictures!!  I just don’t see how I am going to get all of it into one book.  And if I make more than one book, where do I stop one and begin the second… UGH!! But what a special problem to have!

One thing that has truly been apparent in all of the pictures, letters and pieces of memorabilia is the strong faith and love of family that has passed down through the generations.  My Great-Grandma spent from Nov. 1947 to Sept. 1969 writing the “Highlights on The Acts of the Apostles” it has to be more than 100 pages of single spaced typed biblical commentary.  Obviously it can’t be in the album.. but how can we not include it in some form!

Have I overwhelmed you all yet?  If not.. how about this.  I have a piece of hair from my Grandma’s first haircut in 1926!And I won’t even mention all of the pictures that are unnamed and unmarked that have got to be more than 100 years old!

Yes, I am absolutely loving this project!  I can’t wait to see how it will all turn out.. no telling how many pages it will be :)  The book I created for my Grandfather on the other side of the family didn’t have near this much stuff and his was 100 pages! 

Well, I am off to work on the book some more, but here are a couple more pictures for you..

This is my Great Grandfather taken during WWI.

The pictures below are of my dad at 8 weeks old with his parents.  My Dad’s dad wrote the commentary under these and probably 100 other pictures!

It’s no wonder that I have a love for scrapbooking!

Thankful Thursday

Lake house 2009 has come and gone.  

It is so much fun to play with family, but man am I tired by the time we get home!  With all of the family together, I am reminded how special our family is and how lucky we are that we get along and play and at the end of our vacation we still all like each other!!Isn’t the “island” so cool!! We had a blast playing on our floating island.  It seated 6 adults, had 2 reclining areas, 2 ice chests, a loading dock, an anchor and even a swimming hole in the center!

This year we were back on Cedar Creek Lake and the house was a wonderful size complete with 5 bedrooms, 3 full baths, 2 half baths, 4 dining tables and lots of play space.  That may seem like a lot of space but when you have as much energy and craziness as our brood, that space is engulfed quickly!!

Here a a few pictures from the adventure! See if you can count us all….  I’ll help!

The list includes:

• Mom and Dad
• Oldest daughter Libby and her husband Mike and their kids Carter, Abby and Dillon.
• Second daughter, Me and my husband Doug and our girls Maddie and Lexi.
• Third daughter Melody and her husband Brad and their daughter Sissy.
• Fourth daughter Katy and her husband Kyle and his parents Lonnie and Cindy.

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Next year we will add 3 more children to the mix!!

Technique Tuesday: School Keepsake Files

One day this week while at a friend’s house scrapbooking, I saw wonderful keepsake files that she had created for her girls. 

I knew that this would be a great solution to all of the masterpieces created by my kids that I have no room to store!  So off I went to the store for the supplies and here are the results!!  Yes, Maddie is helping to create her own box.  She is at the age were she not only wants to help, but wants to tell me how to do it!  What am I saying, she has ALWAYS been at that age!!

We created the girls’ names and some of the embellishments on my Pazzle at school.  I really do like that thing, I just forget about having access to it!

If you have a need to store a lot of memorabilia, this is a wonderful project for you!

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A Couple of Sneak Peeks

Here is a sneak peek at the project I created for the next Technique Tuesday post! I finished it this morning so it would be ready for viewing while we are on vacation! 

I hope live writer works and the full post will be available on Tuesday :)

Here is the sneak peek!   Did you notice the other sneak peak?

Technique Tuesday: Another envelope album

Okay, so today is that day during the week where I try to create something new and fun.. however, instead of playing, I cleaned.  If you have never had the joy of trying to keep a house spotlessly clean with kids, let me send you mine and you can try.  I was thinking last night that if I could perfect the art of keeping a house show ready and still allow my children some playtime in the house, that would surely be a noteworthy technique.  Alas, I couldn’t so I’ll just share one of my creations from last year.

I know, some of you will have already seen this, sorry.. but I so love the envelope album that I hope I can inspire you to start giving these gems as gifts.  

One of the coolest things about an envelope album is that you can use any size or style of envelope. This one is created from traditional invitation size envelopes. I like this size best since you can use 1 sheet of 12x12 paper for so much of the book! Your total cost of the album is relatively low if you can keep your embellishments in check.

All of my supplies are from Close To My Heart.  This is one of my favorite paperpacks, but it is no longer available for purchase.  However, some of the new CTMH papers are similar and I know that I will LOVE playing with them!!

Here are some of the close ups of the album.

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Let me know if you have any questions.  Since I have posted previously as to how to make an envelope album, I didn’t bother to here.. however, I would be happy to answer questions.