Welcome to the last day of our week of sister-blogging! We thought it might be a good idea to explain our little photo over there today... it's one of a series of photos we tried to take together in Apple's Photo Booth program a few years ago; we were struggling to look normal and still look into the little green camera light which is at the top of the computer screen. Retelling it now makes it seem like one of those classic sibling "you had to be there" moments. Trust us... this is the most normal one of the bunch. We're a hoot, alright! But enough about us. Today we're featuring some brilliant family collaboration projects created by team members here at WCS!
We wanted to start with the reigning queen of family collaboration projects, Angie Lucas. As Angie once declared on her blog: "I, Angie Lucas, hereby present the easiest journaling strategy ever imagined by woman: Have someone else write it!"
This first project can be viewed in its entirety on Angie's blog, and it's a terrific one. For her in-laws 50th wedding anniversary party, all the guests collaborated at the party to a mini-book filled with memories and heartfelt wishes. Angie's husband Travis snapped pictures of each guest and printed them out at the party, and Angie distributed pre-cut journaling cards to pair with the photos. Time commitment? 3.5 hours total.
For Angie's next project, she collected photos and memories to honor her octogenarian Grandma Neva; 85 pre-cut cards were sent out with instructions to write a message on them, and when the cards came back Angie simply assembled them all with a coordinated line of paper and a 4x6 photo album. How much do you think sweet Grandma Neva enjoyed her 80th birthday gift?
Next up is a simple, meaningful album that Jody Dent-Pruks created for her father's 70th birthday with the help of her sons Oscar and Byron. They worked on a list of 70 things they love/70 memories they have about their grandpa; Jody typed them all up, added a few felt flowers, and assembled them into a small 7Gypsies album. It would be easy to divide the number of memories required for years lived by more family members—either way, the impact of the gift is priceless.
Aly Dosdall created a similar project a few years ago; she compiled a digital photo book called "60 Reasons" and gave it to her in-laws at our family reunion. It included a photo of each of their 13 children (with their families/spouses) with one reason why they love grandma and grandpa from each member of each family. Instead of mailing journaling cards, Aly emailed everyone to request responses, then added them to the book as they were emailed back.
Click here to view this photo book larger
Click here to view this photo book.
Monika Wright loves mini-albums, so it only seemed natural to make one instead of a card for her mother's birthday! She recruited her children to create artwork to include. The final product is an excellent reminder to include family members in our scrapbooking; their perspectives are priceless and deserve to be included!
Amy Sorensen was willing to share a project that she created for her father, who has Alzheimer's. She didn't have images to share, but her description is so moving and important that we wanted to share it here anyway; you can download the project description here. If you have elderly relatives who may be suffering from dementia or Alzheimer's, you definitely will want to read about this collaboration.
Finally, we wanted to point out two pieces of writing that caught our eye by Terry Wright, the mother of photographer Erin Cobb. While Erin has been on vacation, her mom has guest-posted on Erin's blog The Pigbear; what she writes about should be required reading for all scrapbookers, memory-keepers, and members of families everywhere. Trust us. It's good.
Read the first post by Erin's mom, Terry, here... and
read the second post by Erin's mom, Terry, here.We've had a great time this week sharing our love of family stories with you. Thank you so much for reading!
