Category Archives: step 1: decide

step one of the DOABLE approach to telling your family’s tales

Historypin

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While I was checking out Homestory’s blog I came across her post on Historypin. This is such an awesome concept I can’t wait to explore it more. The idea is to tag photos by place and date. This way you can narrow down your searches for images so easily by the site and the time frame. I’ve done images searches for history books and this would have been so helpful. If you haven’t been to Historypin, you’ve got to check it out.

p.s. I enjoyed the rest of Homestory’s blog to. I really like the idea of using a building as the theme behind telling family stories. I’ll have to post more on this another day.

Time-lapse Project

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Last week I came across this cool time-lapse project via Design Mom and Things Change by Frans Hofmeester. He films his daughter every week and now he has a video that shows her from birth to 12 years old in less that 3 minutes. I want to do this with our next puppy. When I told Bill about it, he suggested that it would be good to practice with Yakira first to get some of the kinks figured out before trying it with an 8 week old puppy. So I picked a spot yesterday to try this out but my camera battery was dead. Today Yakira is off to work with Bill, so I have no puppy to test it on. I’ll put it on my list for tomorrow.

This idea seems like such a fun way to document and tell the story of growing up. I have to give it a try to see what happens. Besides with a puppy it doesn’t take 12 plus years to grow up, a year does wonders. Have you ever done a time-lapse project before? I wonder if it would be possible to do something with still photos that have already been taken to show the process of growing up effectively. Who or what would you like to capture with a time-lapse video?

Infographics

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From Felton Annual Report 2010

I came across a different way to tell someone’s life story recently and I had to share it here. From what I can gather Nicholas Felton puts together what he calls an “annual report” each year. For 2010 he put together the life of his father all presented in charts and graphs. It is a whole new way to look at life and the stories behind it. I want to use this concept in a project in the near future. I’m not sure which one yet but I’ll keep you posted. Maybe it will be a quick project for Mother’s Day.

Can you visualize a project that you could use this concept with? I’d love to hear about it.

Related articles

Blurb – my favorite for self publishing

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I’m a huge fan of Blurb.com! I have published more than a dozen books with them and I will continue to use them in the future. Blurb has 7 different sizes of books. My favorite is the 7×7. It makes such a nice compact book for those not huge projects. I also prefer the ImageWrap for the binding. It gives you a very durable cover plus the ability to have any kind of image or design on the cover you would like. If you haven’t used them before I highly recommend them. I’m grateful to a neighbor who told me about them a few years ago.

Remember Me

Last week I happened across “Remember Me” by Lesley Graham on Blurb. She uses a very collage style to illustrate the book that is very effective in telling this story. The book is about her grandfather who is losing his memory and his journey. I’m inspired by her work and will keep it in mind for future projects. Blurb has a cool preview feature that lets you see the entire book or just a few pages depending on how you set it up.

You can save 20% on two books with the promo code MOMRULES until May 2, 2012*.

*Offer valid through May 2, 2012 (11:59 p.m. local time). A 20% discount is applied toward your product total with a minimum order of 2 units or more. Maximum discount is USD $150, GBP £75, EUR €100, CAD $150, or AUD $150 off product total. Valid for printed books only. This offer is good for one-time use, and cannot be combined with volume discounts, other promotional codes, gift cards, or used for adjustments on previous orders.

The Generations Project

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Earlier this year I discovered “The Generations Project” on BYUtv. We don’t watch broadcast TV but I found it one day when I went the BYUtv website. They have all three seasons episodes available and I’ve now seen all of them. I love the concept of exploring your family history with a purpose in mind and the impact that makes on people’s lives. They even have an episode called “Do Your Own Generations Project” that helps in figuring out how to take the principles they use on the show and apply it to your own genealogy. I’ve decided to do my own generations project this summer and I’ll post about it along the way. Actually I think I’ll start tomorrow with a journal I’m working on as part of this generations project.

In each show they start with helping the person to find out why they want to learn about their ancestors, then they fill out their family tree, learn about the history of that time period and finally walk in that ancestors shoes. The last step is to share what you have learned with others and watch how it affects their lives. Most of the shows are about 30 minutes long so if you haven’t seen it, hop on over to BYUtv.

I’m sold on the concepts they teach in the show and dedicated to helping other share what they know about their families. What do you think about “The Generations Project”?