Joy Jar

Posted on May 20, 2013 by tellingfamilytales

With Zodiac’s recall many other things have slipped. So today I’m catching my breath and either catching up with some tasks or just letting them go. I decided that catching up on my joy would be a good thing in this new week, so here goes:

my beans coming up (finally)
snowing blossoms
outing to the Natural History Museum
seeing a finch in a curly willow tree
book club
Bill getting a pay raise
getting my computer backed up
rain storm
ice cream
walk with Dune
talking a nap
eating an apple fritter
fresh flowers
walking the Jordan River Trail with Zodiac
birthday brunch
patches of sunshine
Zodiac’s farewell party
Zodiac’s last eval
learning new stuff
Zodiac’s last eval as a puppy
finishing Zodiac’s puppy book
a beautiful sunny morning for Zodiac’s recall
Bill getting to walk Zodiac’s brother Zenith
raising Zodiac

Joy Jar

Posted on May 11, 2013 by tellingfamilytales

Two weeks worth of happy moments:

getting our big kennel back
beautiful day
a twilight walk with Zodiac
chocolate
blooming trees
same day crown on my cracked tooth
finishing Zodiac’s paper work
finishing Zodiac’s farewell party invites
how good Zodiac was today
a good day
Dune doing good at the dentist
the power of computers and the internet
another twilight walk
beautiful spring morning
getting some work in on the Key West history
finding two of Dune’s siblings
a good week
puppy club shirts came
cleaning up old emails
super beautiful day
“girl” time with Dune
finding a white backdrop
having enough gas to get home
walking dogs in the spring sunshine
update from Diane and Yakira
chatting with Karen
petals like snow on the ground
walk with Zodiac
Bill home early
spring snow storm
Zodiac’s last choir practice
Zodiac maturing
Sunday nap
hot lemon and honey tea

Joy Jar

Posted on April 27, 2013 by tellingfamilytales

What a difference a week can make. Last week was a mess and I got very little done beyond taking care of myself. This past week has been so much better. It feels good to be back at it.

Zodiac and Tiffany
making the 6:30 train
warmer days ahead
comfortable spring breeze
sunny afternoon
spring bulbs
Bill setting up the watering system for the garden
spring colors
warm sun on my face
tulips
the Gentle Leader
Zodiac and Dune laying calmly on the train
my eye all back to normal
a good day
figuring out my DOABLE approach
a nap with Gandy
message from Sue & Apex
Eagle with the kids at church
new blog theme
a lovely walk with Dune
the hope of warmer days
a double dog walk
a good day with my sister
70+ degrees
another puppy tooth
planting my garden
watching Dune and Eagle chewing side by side
strawberries and yogurt

Joy Jar

Posted on April 13, 2013 by tellingfamilytales

Somehow I’ve missed posting my list of happy things for a couple of weeks. Life can get out of balance sometimes and little but important things can slip through the cracks.

a good day
Dune enjoying her stuffed Kong
April
peace and quiet
sweet and cuddly Dune
getting things on my “to do list” done
tulips blooming
getting internet access back
having a girls day with Dune
Zodiac being so good with the school kids
a double dog walk
tulips
starting our garden
happy Dune!
warmer days
grape hyacinths
walking with Cherri
cute Dune
sunshine
spring rain
cuddling with our cat
walking with Dune
beautiful music
finding one of Dune’s teeth
color
Dune & Zodiac together
sewing
a momma duck in our backyard again this year
Dune’s new blanket
Tillamook yogurt
walking the Jordan River Trail with Zodiac
20% done with my Jordan River Trail goal for the year
planting my tomato starts in the garden
radishes, greens and spinach coming up in the garden
getting a haircut
strawberries
seeing “My Grandma Mary” in print
getting flights booked for my dad
a new pair of jeans (that are long enough)
a successful birthday party for my mom
listening to General Conference
getting Yakira’s book sent off
Clifford visiting
feeling more organized

Birthday Traditions

Posted on April 4, 2013 by tellingfamilytales

Iris’s 90th Birthday Party video

With my mind being on birthdays recently I started thinking about birthday traditions. A Google search brings up lots of hits on traditions for kids but not so many for grown-ups. As I think back in my life and can see how easy it is to let birthdays slip by without doing much to really celebrate the day. Some people are great at making sure they have fun celebrations in their life. Some families have well-developed birthday traditions. My family isn’t one of them. So this is an area I could use some work on. Maybe it comes from my family culture. My mom is very practical and recently my dad said that he didn’t know how to celebrate. It seems to me that birthday traditions don’t necessarily need to be fancy or expensive but it takes planning and effort to make sure they become traditions. I also think that sometimes birthday traditions need to evolve to meet the families changing needs.

Last year I had lots of fun celebrating by birthday 50 times during the year. I want to do more in the coming years to develop some good adult birthday traditions. With my birthday coming up in May it is time to start thinking about some new traditions. Do you have any suggestions? What birthday traditions do you have or wish to start with your family?

Thoughts on Birthdays (amaliavida.wordpress.com)
Book of the Week – Birthday Boy (tellingfamilytales.com)
Capturing Development – Birthday Fun – Child Development – Parenting – Birthdays – Physical Development (everydayfamily.com)
Photo Birthday Card Book – template (tellingfamilytales.com)
Oh Baby – Turning One Is Fun! (everydayfamily.com)
Adventurous birthday celebrations (ivegottolivewithaboy.wordpress.com)

Photo Birthday Card Book – preview

Posted on April 3, 2013 by tellingfamilytales

http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/invited/3433695/c77ddde0316fcb349137450e283d58af698f4887?ce=blurb_ew&utm_source=widget

I got the book done from my mom’s 90th birthday party today and uploaded it to blurb to order. After seeing the preview I might make a few tweaks before ordering. It came together pretty quickly. My biggest mistake was in not deciding what order to put the photos in before I started dropping them into the template. It took me a while to clean up the mess I made and start over. So I learned once again, that a little planning goes a long way.

It is kind of fun to take a project from idea to ready to print in just over a week. Not every project needs to be years or even months in process. Do you have a smaller project just waiting to become a reality? I challenge you to get started on it and see how quickly it really can come together.

Photo Birthday Card Book – template (tellingfamilytales.com)
Book of the Week – face BOOK (tellingfamilytales.com)

Book of the Week – Birthday Boy

Posted on April 2, 2013 by tellingfamilytales

Birthday Boy by Tom and Marianne O'Connell | Make Your Own Book

Since birthdays have been on my mind, I decided to look for a book this week about birthdays. When I found “Birthday Boy” by Tom and Marianne O’Connell, I couldn’t resist choosing it. Here is what the authors have to say about their book:

Marianne and Tom love celebrating all holidays and Skippy’s birthdays were always the best! Skippy partied at home in Sausalito, the “fake” house next door, at his beach house in Pajaro Dunes and Las Vegas.

Skippy biggest birthday was his 10th and he enjoyed it with 35 of his canine pals and their families. Marianne and Tom rented the Marin Humane Society dog park and Skippy worked the crowd like the champ he knew he was. The park’s life size bronze statue of Skippy only added to the festivities.

Tom and Marianne hoped and dreamed Skippy would live to be 17 but sadly that didn’t happen. But for every dog they say there is an angel and you can be sure Skippy and his angel will paint the town every October 21st for all the years to come.

Even if you aren’t into dogs this book has some great ideas that can be applies to other projects. I really like how each year lists some important events in the world and in Skippy’s life. It is amazing how a few photos and two short paragraphs for each year can tell so much about what is important. Even applied to a life history this approach would make a very doable history project.

Take a few moments and ask yourself if you have a project that this format would work well for. I bet most of us do. I’ve just thought of one. I want to put together a book for the dogs that we’ve raised when they retire. This would be a good way to do that. I know, another dog project, maybe that isn’t such a great example but I do think it would work well. Hopefully it will be many more years before any of our pups retire. But I could start each of their books now and add to them each year on either their birthdays or the anniversary of their graduation. Then they would be ready when retirement comes around.

Have you thought of a project? I’d love to hear about your ideas. Maybe your ideas will inspire someone else too.

Photo Birthday Card Book – template

Posted on April 1, 2013 by tellingfamilytales

lighting the birthday cake

Remember last week’s book of the week, “face BOOK“? Well it inspired me to take photos at my mom’s 90th birthday with the plan to put together a birthday card in the form of a book very much like “face Book”. I set up a spot at the party to take photos of all the guests. I brought a notebook for the guest to write a short message with a marker. I’ve set up a template for the book and now I just need to drop the photos in place. It is going to be a wonderful memento of my mom’s 90th birthday party.

If you would like the InDesign template for a 7×7 blurb book you can download it from my dropbox for personal use. These are fully editable templates from InDesign CS6. You can change the colors and text as you would like.

Celebrating Nine Decades Pages Template

Celebrating Nine Decades Cover Template

I’ll post a preview of the finished book soon.

Book of the Week – face Book (tellingfamilytales.com)

90th Birthday Slide Show – complete

Posted on March 30, 2013 by tellingfamilytales

Yeah! I got the slide show done for my mom’s 90th birthday. I would have like to have played around with ProShow more but I did learn a bit more with this project. We had it playing in a loop during her party. Thank goodness that the music didn’t end up being too obnoxious. It helped that it was an instrumental without any lyrics. I hadn’t thought that through before hand, but I think I’ll do that again in a similar situation.

The slide show is about 10 minutes long.

By the way she loved the Mary Taylor book “My Grandma Mary”. We have a few tweaks to do before it will be available for general distribution.

Joy Jar

Posted on March 16, 2013 by tellingfamilytales

Spring is really here! I guess the calendar says it arrives next week but it is really here. I’m so glad. I love having season but this year the winter seemed to last longer than normal.