Memory Lane

I can’t even remember when I last sat down to make a post, but I haven’t been idle – I’ve been busy making memory gifts, set up a little store – Memory Lane Cottage on ebay, and nearly finished my 2006 photo scrapbook of family memories.

This year’s Christmas gifts in the Memory Lane category include: a DVD for my baby sister Eden, including all of her photos, and the 3 videos I have of her. I had about 300 photos spanning her first month through her recent high school graduation – and used iMovie to pan, zoom and set them to music. The videos were from 1989 – a visit to Arizona made by myself with my grandma and sister Alison, which I edited down to keep only the nice parts for Eden, my wedding video, which I edited down into a mini-movie of just the shots including Eden, and another video from 1997 at the beach with Eden and my cousin Trevor. Those 3 videos needed transferring from VHS to my computer, but I managed it just fine, and it was all finished up in time for christmas. The other three projects were not quite as involved. My Aunt Bernadette & sister Alison both got small versions of Hallmark Family Trees (just like the larger one shown in the photo at the top of this blog)

These were given to me by Aunt Bernadette after she snapped them up for $1 each at a sale! She thought I could do something with them, and then later she and Alison both told me they wished they had trees like mine. I reminded her that I had two to share and so I was able to give them both nice, inexpensive, homemade presents. I didn’t realize that the trees didn’t come with any frames, but I used a single pack of K&Company metal frames for each one and made the rest of the mini-frames myself with cardstock and a little bit of silk ribbon. Another gift of this nature was a 12 x 12 shadowbox frame for Eden with a papercut family tree and all of her family featured in mini-pictures.

I scored that 12 x 12 frame at Target for about $3.50! All in all, a good deal. The last gift of this nature was a scrapbook for my mother in law – filled with pictures that were salvaged from her mother’s house after her brother sold it. Unfortunately, she and he do not have a nice relationship. Fortunately, he and I have enough of a relationship that I was able to save the photos from the trash and share them to the rest of the family.

After all of the busy time at Christmas, I enjoyed working on my scrapbooks last year, and did the same this year. It seems like a good time to catch up and put last years photos in their place. So far I’ve made it through to December 9th of 2006, so I am happy to have at least caught up on that year, even though I have many more past years to scrap. I think I’ve got a good system for it now. I even spent some time with my young friend Gabby from across the street, helping her make her first scrapbook, which I gave her as a gift, along with pictures of the things we have done together. I’ve been happy to have a girl to spend time with, and together we sewed her Christmas dress, made cookies and decorated our gingerbread house. I think she will be especially happy to have pictures and her scrapbook to remember those nice times.

I will try getting back to blogging. I have a few other things to share. I just had two more successes “finding” people. Tales for another time. But it’s nice to be back to my blog. I will share more soon.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS