Easy Digital Scrapbooking

Making 12×12 Pages

I had so much fun trying my hand at 12×12 pages rather than doing an entire book and rushing to get them done before Christmas. I made 3 pages each for my granddaughters Olivia and Carly. I am especially excited after hearing that Michael’s Craft stores sells 12×12 frames and I will be able to frame the pages. They will make great stocking stuffers; I know Olivia and Carly will love seeing them hung on their bedroom walls. You can click on each page and see all three pages. When I have time I will be able to add more pages and then publish them for the girls. If you would like to make beautiful projects with Heritage Makers, please contact me! I would love to show you how easy it is…

Olivia Jane asleep – I always feel there is something almost sacred watching a little child asleep. It is such a perfect, precious moment, one that unfortunately is almost fleeting.

Carly is growing up so fast – she just had her hair cut in a little bob – I can’t wait to see the photos. Her mom says she is looking so grown up with her new hair cut.

Lead Me, Guide Me, Walk Beside Me

August 31st each year is a tough date for me. It was this day many years ago when as a young couple we knelt in the darkness of an empty hospital waiting room and poured out our hearts to our Father in Heaven and pleaded for the life of our 23 month old son to be spared. This little boy, our oldest son who just a few hours before had been a normal little boy scampering around our feet, lay in a hospital bed on deaths door due to a fatal type of meningitis. The sun rose that Sunday morning bringing an end to a long night of agony and opening a day of pain as we said our final goodbye to our son and went home to gather around family and friends to prepare for a life without our precious little son.

Fortunately we had a little 11 month old baby boy at home so life was merciful to us and we didn’t have to confront a home of silence and the emptiness of not having a baby to hold and rock to sleep.

As the days and weeks moved forward and the ache in hearts felt unbearable we found our hearts were comforted in so many ways. Our prayers were heard and answered not by a reprieve from the loss of our son but rather our hearts were comforted in so many ways by so many people. Our son had been called back to heaven but we had not been left alone to overcome our pain, we were blessed in countless ways.

Now so many years later the memories have not dimmed, the tears still fill our eyes but our pain is healed by the peace that we will be together again when this life is over.

I Am a Child of God

And He has sent my here,

Has given me an earthly home with parents kind and dear,

Lead me, guide me, walk beside me, help me find the way.

Teach me all that I must do to live with Him someday.

We miss you but we know where you are. Love Mom and Dad

Welcome to Our Brand New Grandbaby

Today started out as most other days until we had a phone call from our oldest daughter to tell us she was at the hospital ready to give birth to our sixth grandchild a little girl who will be named Elsie. We received the phone call this evening to say that mother and baby were both well. Little Elsie came into the world weighing 7lbs 9oz at about 7:07 ET. We are so grateful for a healthy new addition to our family and look forward to getting to know this sweet little baby. We look forward to some photos that will be coming via email tomorrow, I cant wait to add them to a storybook.

I look forward to the many stories that this sweet child will bring to our lives.

www.GoStorybooking.com

Your Digital Photos + Your Stories = Storybooks

I remember how excited I was when I received my first digital Camera from my husband for my birthday in February 2001. A digital camera, this was something I just had to have! The camera was a little silver Cannon PowerShot S100 that I could drop into my purse and have on hand whenever I saw something or someone I wanted to take a photo of. Needless to say I filled the memory card in no time at all and then needed to figure out how to save these photos to my new computer. I knew so little about technology, but felt like I was embarking on something that would be fun and enlightening.

Finally I figured out how to download my memory card, but only after I had purchased two new ones and filled them (they were so expensive…) so I really had no choice but to learn to do this as I was not about to buy another memory card and besides I wanted to see the photo’s I had taken on something more than the little screen on my camera.

Now I could look at the jpegs to my hearts content and even view a full screen shot and see every detail on each photo. I learned to fix red eye and a couple of other neat things and I enjoyed emailing out my photos to anyone who showed an interest in them.

Even though I had progressed quite a bit with my quest to move from what my children referred to as “technologically moronic” to “technologically challenged”, I still felt like something was missing – owning a digital camera was nice, but a little anti-climatic for me. I admitted to myself there was no way I was going back to using my old camera and 36mm film and stopping by my local Costco every week to drop off a roll and picking up my prints a few days later as I dropped off another couple of rolls of film – this was no longer an option, though the nostalgia was getting the better of me. 

After seeing a commercial on TV for this great HP printer that you could print off all of your photos in your own home, I rushed to the store and bought one and reems of photo paper in all sizes – I was sure that I was suffering from hardcopy withdrawals. On the way home I felt guilty for buying the printer and came home and hid it in my dressing room for a couple of months – Christmas 2002, yes 2002 (I had been going through this emotional ordeal for almost 2 years) was only two months away and so I wrapped up my printer and and tagged it from Santa for me to open on Christmas day. With a pretend surprised look on my face I opened my gift and thanked Santa, while my family looked around at each other to see who bought mom the new HP printer.

Well I continued taking my pictures and upgraded my little camera to a 3 megapixel Cannon. My excuse was grandchildren, I needed to record every minute of my posterity and believe me I did just that. Soon I had about 3000 jpeg files on my computer and I was so excited to see my little grandbabies growing and I enjoyed printing off their photos and placing them into frames, wallets and fridges and showing them to everyone. But this feeling inside of me continued to persist, there had to be more to this god everyone worshiped called modern technology! More than emailing photos and bragging about my little grandchildren and having tons of framed photos around my house. I had feelings of guilt, instead of keeping memories alive my grandchildren were turning into little jpeg file on my computer. Thousands of little jpeg files!

Then one beautiful Arizona morning in early February of 2005 while surfing the web I discovered Heritage Makers and Storybooking! I was so excited, to think I would be able to take my pictures and place them into hard bound books and preserve the story behind the photo, this was so exciting I could hardly contain myself.

I had to find out everything I could about this company and I had to become an independent Consultant for them. That was the beginning of  www.GoStorybooking.com and a life filled with preserving beautiful memories about my family, my parents and grandparents and bringing my grandchildren to life in storybooks. Little did I know that it was an opportunity of a lifetime and would become a lucrative business, meeting new friends and experiencing personal growth beyond my wildest dreams?

One of the best things about Storybooking is seeing the look on a grandchild’s face when I read them a story about themselves as the hero of the story, seeing their burst of self esteem as they recognize the significance of their little lives in our family. As we work on the stories of their great grandparents I know these little children will come to love and know these men and women and see them as heroes who played a vital role in their very existence.

My passion for Storybooking gives me so much pleasure and it is wonderful to see how everyday things can become important memories when preserved in a Storybook.

I wonder what my grandchildren are going to feel in thirty years from now when they look at books that tell the stories about a trip to the train park in Scottsdale or a visit to the Phoenix Zoo where they are the leading characters in these stories? What emotions will they experience, what memories will be relived as they read their childhood stories to their own children?

I have finally found the magic of Digital Photography - it is Storybooking!

My First Storybook

Here is my first effort at storybooking. I created a 5inch by 5 inch – also known as a brag book about my grandson. What a great experience. It was easy to do and gave me the encouragement to venture into bigger projects.