Monday, August 31, 2009

book layout

both of the family tree programs i use have book capabilities. myheritage you choose book and it creates a book but you have no input as to what goes into it or what order it goes in. family tree legends on the other hand lets you customize your book - completely. what is included, what order, fonts, colors everything!! so, i do my research on ancestry.com, keep my work up to date with notes and photos and everything in myheritage, then when i am ready for a book, i export the gedcom to my desktop and import it into family tree legends to create the perfect book (in my opinion). and i also keep an excel spreadsheet for each family tree i work on to have quick access to what documentation i have found - census records, draft records, phone and address records, photos i have found. so since i am unemployed, this is my full time job at the moment. if i make the life decision and go on disability to take care of some major medical issues i have it will be my full time job for a while longer. somehow, today, i just wanted to share how i can take something that is complicated and just add to it a little :) but i know what i want and this seems to be the best way for me to accomplish it right now. now, on to a story for today. today we will revisit my introduction to the Rocky Horror Picture Show. one of the places we lived was the northgate area of seattle. the few friends i did let myself have and i hung out on "the ave" in the u district. translated for those of you who do not live in the seattle area - university avenue in the university district. we were all into heavy metal/glam rock of the time (mid 80's) and we had nothing to do except hang out and occasionally ask strangers for money as we were all broke. we were called "ave rats". but whatever, it was an adventurous time in my life. so there is this theater in the u dist called the neptune theater and they show midnight movies on the weekends - i saw a lot of great cult classics there!! so this one saturday night they are playing Rocky Horror Picture Show and everyone was like yeah lets go. I was the only one who had not seen it, but i didnt think anything of it. it was just another fun saturday night with my friends. not so much - once we get there one of my friends lets it be know that i am a "virgin" - i have never seen the movie. i dont know all the songs. and i certainly dont know why all these people in line are dressed up and have food. well i was teased the whole time we were in line. and into the theater, but then the movie started and i thought ok...... everyone will watch the movie and that will be that - i will no longer be the movie virgin. nope - they acted it out - sang the songs - and made sure that i looked a fool through the whole movie! while i was embarrased at the time, i have to admit to doing the same thing to other rocky horror virgins through the years. it is a right of passage. and in the end -- i have this story that i can tell.
well that is it for today,
peace and luv,
laura

poem for kyle

my friend kyle took his life last december. he felt that what he was going through was too much to take anymore. it is a choice i wish he had not made. my friend robert also had a friend who took her own life - her name was lydia. he wrote this poem for her and gave me permission to use it. so today you see how i used it for kyle and tomorrow i will post how i will use it for lydia.
not much more can be said about it,
so for now,
peace and luv
laura

Sunday, August 30, 2009

sometimes saturdays are lazy

ok, i didnt get very much accomplished on the family trees yesterday. i was having a lazy day. i even took a 4 hour nap :) but i did realize that myheritage - one of the software programs i use for family tree stuff (i use three programs so that i have what works best for me) - has a new merge family button which is saving me so much time. it used to be that if there were notes on a person in another tree you had to manually re-type them into your tree - very time consuming if the other persons tree had a lot of story type history in it. now i just hit merge and voila! i have the notes as a 2nd note in my tree!! so yeah i played with that for quite a while yesterday as well as the create book application it has. i like the book part on my other software because i can choose what i want in the book as opposed to it just makes the book the same no matter what. so yeah it was a rather lazy day for me yesterday. today will be better, i am much more focused!! so, story for the day - today we will have a little sister story - but first a little family history. i only have one natural brother and one half brother who was put up for adoption at birth so i have never met him. however, when my mom remarried when i was 14 he had a bunch of children with other women - at that time 1 in germany, 4 in missouri, and 1 in washington where we lived. the 1 in washington is my little sister - she was 4 when my mom married her dad and 12 when they divorced. just because her dad was an ass didnt mean i didnt still love her as my sister. now, dont get me wrong, i dont feel that way about his other children. his older children, i only met two of them and one is dead now and the other i have no love for. and his younger children - yes he had more after my mom - are my son's age so while i am now getting to know them and adore them and their children -- i am auntie to their children but kinda like a mom/sister to them. and our relationship is only begining over the last couple of years now. so....... that is how i have a little sister :) you see why i needed to start a tree to keep track of it all?? so there is an almost 10 year gap between me and my little sister, so while she was fun to dress up and all it was hard - i was a teen and didnt want her hanging around a lot when she was little. and that mostly worked out since she lived with her mom and we went to visit her on weekends and she only spent like a week a summer with us. until i turned 18 and knew i needed to not live with my mom and her dad anymore. so i went and lived with her mom and family. it was honestly what i needed at that point in my life - stability. so my little sister and i shared a room, which was actually a travel trailer that was hooked into the electricity so we had electric but had to go into the house to use the toillet or eat or watch tv ...... it was a room but it was also my privacy - shared with an 8 year old at night!! one who hated my music and assumed i was not only going to hell for listening to it but was taking her with me :) so yeah it was kinda rough since i listen to music all the time even when i sleep and she was always running in to tell her mom that i was condeming her to hell. at the time it was very frustrating but now we look back and laugh about it -- a lot! since she now listens to the same music as me. and now the age difference is not so bad. in fact i loved it when she got old enough to go out to clubs with me. but those are other stories for other days...........
hope y'all have a great sunday,
peace and luv
laura
ok, i didnt get as much done yesterday as i should have. but i did find a new thing on one of my family tree programs where you can merge with other family trees - it never had that before and it is awesome.

more cemetary shots

another cemetery shot that i tweaked the color on. sorry these are getting monotonous even for me right now. i need to get back into my creative groove and start making stuff again. maybe today - i do try every day it just doesnt happen every day.
peace and luv
laura

Saturday, August 29, 2009

digitalized cemetery photo

while playing with cemetery photos, i ended up with this rendition. i think it looks erie and awesome at the same time. i hope you are all enjoying my weirdness :)

peace and luv

research research research

now that i have added and added it is major research time. i am making sure i know where all the ends of lines are as well as any other mysteries in all three family trees. i am also looking at people for military service. i am finding that while i have never liked war movies that if i have one playing in my background (on the tv but my back is to the tv) it seems to spur me on to find peoples military background. story for today...... when my brother and i were little we spent a lot of time with my aunt and uncle - weekends, a week or so in the summer just having fun with their kids while our mom worked - anyway this one visit we were allowed to camp out in the yard. i am not sure where they were living at that time but for me, my brother and my cousin it was a great adventure. my uncle put up tents and everything. and while i dont remember everything about it, i do remember laying there looking at the stars for what seemed like hours and hours and how peaceful the world seemed. and dreaming about the infinite possibilities of my life. and my uncle showing us the constellations. and while i now absolutely hate camping i am glad for my youthful experiences that made me into the dreamer that i still am today.
anyway off to discover new possibilities in the family trees,
peace and luv,
laura

Friday, August 28, 2009

english photo play

Playing with photos that a friend took in england. they look great in digital form but am having issues getting them to print exactly how they look digitally. so i will post them on here :) then they still look good right? I am sorry I dont really have anything new right now but i have been very focused on the three family trees that I am doing. and just like i get with my art - it is all consuming right now.
I hope you all enjoy looking at the crazy stuff i make on here :)
peace and luv
laura

up to my elbows........

Ok ancestry.com is awesome!! I love it and would never say anything bad about it. however, while it is great and you can add a lot of people to your tree usually with a quickness due to public profiles and all, you then need to take the time to go back and verify that these are truly the correct people in your tree. even if it is just through census records showing that this family did indeed move in a way that would get you to where you are in life now. That being said - I am up to my elbows in research - I got my friends tree to up over 1000 people, now to verify them all, as well as the research on the dead ends that I really want to clear up. But this also tends to be the exciting part, the part where you find out that uncle so-and-so was high up in the army in WWI or find that story about aunt so-and-so falling in love with a french soldier and longing for him the rest of her life. Who knows what I will find. I guess that is part of my love for this, getting to know people that I will really never really know. Telling their story as best as I can. So, in keeping with my stories, here is one for today. When we were very young, I was 6 and my brother was 4, we lived with my grandparents in northern california. I have only fond memories of this time, as all children should have. But one in particular is that pretty much on a daily basis my grandma made us lunch of campbells chicken noodle soup and a peanut butter and honey sandwich. (Yes I still love this lunch) and if the sun was out - which it was more often than in Seattle - we got to eat outside sitting on the branches of the tree in front. I have no clue what kind of tree it was. But I think that was the beginning of my climbing fetish that lasted well into my teens. When you want to be alone - just climb up a tree. People don't take the time to look up in them.
Anyway, off to find out who I will get to know today,
Peace and luv,
Laura

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Too Excited

Well I guess I got just too excited yesterday, I worked myself right into a migraine and spent the last few hours of my day laying in my cold dark room. I think that I may have found my friend's mom's line in England, just need to really research it and make sure. I also think I found her hubby's dad's natural father's line, again really need to research it first. I really want to get that part done for his dad so that he can see it before he passes away. You have to understand, I have known my best friend since I was 8 years old and her hubby since I was 16. We all hung out together the year that I lived up there in high school and that meant we were at her house or his house or my house. ALL THE TIME!! It was a wonderful time in my life and there are so many memories - Like the time I went to her house but she was already over at his house. So he came over in a VW Bug to pick me up. Then drove through the park to get back to his place all the time telling me we have no brakes - you better hope I can stop in time!! :) Crazy times but memories that make me smile - now that they are over lol. Anyway, off to my family mysteries.
Peace and Luv
Laura

Thank Yous for my Aunts

These are the fronts of the thank you cards that I will send to my aunts - just as soon as my new printhead for my printer gets here!! In the meantime, I will send them just a short note as they do need a major thank you.

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Excitement

the birth certificate for my friends maternal grandfather just arrived from Nottingham, England. And I believe that I have found the correct family for him, I just need to verify some things before I commit to it. :) anyway just had to share....

peace and luv,
laura

name tag for a friend

I made this for my friend Olga's husband Norm. He is thinking it is time to go back to the late 40's and early 50's and I don't think that is such a bad idea. I still need to make one for Olga so that they will both have one. Then I need to get this last part that is being shipped for my godforsaken printer so that I can print them for them.

not much to tell ...

I didn't really work on any family trees yesterday. I was having a kinda blah day where nothing really interested me. I think maybe I was just overtired as I slept almost 12 hours last night. Feeling better today - on my way to research heaven right now :) hmmm story for today...When I was 12 I got real roller skates - the kind you used at the roller rink. I was going to be the next disco skating star of course!! and yes I know I just aged myself!! Anyway, I loved those skates - you would have thought that they had been welded to my feet I wore them so much. My best friend remembers always knowing when I was headed up to her apartment because they could hear the loud clunk clunk clunk on the stairs. I think when I get my new knees I will take up skating again. I miss it!!

Peace and luv,
Laura

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

closing for today

ok y'all i think i am finally caught up posting all the pretty pictures i have been working on this year. they are in no particular order and i am going to work on posting daily again ........

peace and luv
laura

Baby William

















randomness of friends and family






paternal and maternal roots


Kyle memorial




KC and Kaleb


my sister jamee





my friend dee



color play




randomness!!!