This story of a Chicago family is one of the most fascinating books I've had the pleasure to design. Our client had spent years researching the origins of her family, and had a grand vision of what she wanted to accomplish with this book. It is the story of her grandparents: one descended from American slaves, originally from Africa, and the other descended from French royalty. We extracted the genealogical data from the client's Ancestry account and combined it with family photos, supplementing with historical photos to tell the story not just of this family, but of the cultures surrounding her family through the ages.
Read moreThe Mental Health Benefits of Writing a Memoir
Writing about your life is good for you.
I can attest from my own experience that life story writing can be a powerfully self-affirming journey. Looking at an overview of your life as a whole gives you a unique perspective. For me, I was able to make connections between seemingly disparate events that I hadn't noticed until I started to write about them. Seeing those connections, some things that had confused me for years suddenly started to make sense.
A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association established a link between writing about stressful experiences and improved health. The co-author of the study, Joshua M. Smyth, explains, “It actually has little to do with raw catharsis, which, I think, is what people assume.” Rather, the health benefits were a result of cognitive restructuring, or learning to see problems in a new way
Read moreBook Highlight: Mini-memoir for the Grandkids
Share stories from your childhood with your grandchildren in a custom picture book.
This week we wanted to show you a pair of darling children's picture books. Sharon and Gordon Spencer wanted to give their grandchildren an idea of what their childhoods were like. They gathered a few childhood photos and took pictures of some favorite dolls and toys that they had treasured for decades. Then they wrote a narrative in very short bits for tiny readers, and we supplemented the narrative with some stock photos and Photoshop composites. These little books were so much fun to create! They gave them to their grandchildren for Christmas: "Grandma's Dolls" and "When Grandpa was a Boy."
Read moreCurating and Digitizing Your Family History Assets
Curating and Digitizing Your Family HIstory Assets
My mom, Joyce Taylor is 88 years old. About a year and a half ago she moved out of her home of 20+ years into an assisted living home. Many of you may be contemplating a similar move or helping a parent or grandparent make this decision.
Any major move, especially if you're downsizing, brings up the question: what do you do with all your stuff? Does it go with you, or go someplace else? (Or does it just get trashed?) This question gets even more thorny when it concerns precious family heirlooms: boxes of photos, documents, scrapbooks, yearbooks, slides, memorabilia, newspaper clippings, letters, and on and on.
Read moreLink: 20 Reasons Why You Should Write Your Family History
20 Reasons to Write Your Family History
Today we wanted to draw your attention to a terrific blog post from the New York Public Library by Carmen Nigro, 20 Reasons Why You Should Write Your Family History. For each reason cited, there is a link to another publication on writing family history that could be helpful.
Read moreBook Highlight: Cadet Nurse & Fighter Pilot
Cadet Nurse & Fighter Pilot: Our Parents in World War II
We created this book as a Christmas gift from Tom's mother, Joyce Taylor, to her family this year. It's a great example of a short, focused memoir that can be compiled from a few collected interviews and photographs. It covers their experiences in a short period of time during WWII: Joyce Johnson was contributing to the war effort as a nurse in Salt Lake City, while Wendell Taylor, her future husband, flew missions over the Pacific
Read moreMaking a Family Story Cookbook
Was spam jello your favorite comfort food? Well, maybe not. But we all have some tasty stories to tell.
The “memoir/cookbook” has been become a popular bestselling genre in recent years. From Pioneer Woman to Smitten Kitchen, food bloggers and celebrity chefs everywhere have cashed in on the blending of food and stories.
Your don’t have to be a famous chef or internet sensation to create a life story cookbook. All you need is a few favorite family stories and a love of food, and a desire to preserve and share your recipes—and stories—with family and friends.
Book Highlight: A Modern Classic
Merline Leaming, A Modern Classic is the story of one of the West's premiere interior designers.
We had a blast interviewing Merline Clark Leaming, the grande dame of modern interior design in the West. Merline started her career in 1950s Salt Lake City with her husband, George, and brother, Howard Clark, by designing modern wrought-iron furniture. Merline's brilliant eye and revolutionary modern design style launched an interior design and real estate empire that brought SLC into the 21st century ahead of its time. She also launched the careers of many of America's most talented interior designers.
In keeping with Merline's taste for clean lines, we kept the book spare and modern. She chose the cover's dreamy lipstick-red linen, reminiscent of her favorite "Fire and Ice." The black lines on the cover depict one of Clark-Leaming's early wrought-iron designs. The 12" x 12" book makes a stunning ornament for a vintage Knoll coffee table.
Read moreWhat Adult Children Want to Know About Their Parents
What do you wish you knew about your parents? What do your children want to know about you? The following questions, culled from college students, can give tremendous insight into what to include in your own life story writing.
Read moreHow to Tell the Ten Best Stories of Your Life
How to Tell the Ten Best Stories of Your Life
What are your "ten best" stories? In this presentation you'll see a step-by-step method to make the process of writing or recording a personal history easier and more fun.
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We are so excited to be back at RootsTech live this year! Come by and see the Pictures and Stories booth (#1609) and see some of the many new books we’ve helped our clients create. Alison is giving two in-person classes: The Seven Deadly Sins of Building a Digital Archive, and Making a Genealogy Story Book. Hope to see you there!