When he was 9 years old, my grandpa got shot in the cheek while playing cowboys and Indians. He told us this story over and over, showing us his gold tooth that replaced the one that got shot out. I made the story into an illustrated storybook for my children. I’m going to share how I did it today as part of our “Family History for Children” blog link up. This month’s theme is about creating family history related gifts, since Christmas is coming up and if you’re going to make a book for Christmas, you’ll have to get it...
I love making little books, and that has rubbed off on my children. My six-year-old is into Harry Potter so our last book-making project was a spell book. As I have prepared for Easter and followed along with the Mormon.org campaign #PrinceofPeace, I have seen many lovely ideas for incorporating the principles of peace into our Easter celebrations. I was delighted to see a little booklet created by Emilie Ahern at AYearofFHE.net – Prince Of Peace Easter Activity Booklet for Kids! Her lovely work inspired me to create a similar booklet that I’m sharing today. It’s also based on the 8...
I asked my 3-year-old daughter if she knows what it means to be brave. She didn’t. I told her that it means “doing something you are afraid of, or doing something that is hard.” Then I read Seven Brave Women with her. We discussed several different ways that everyday women in the past were brave. Seven Brave Women by Betsy Hearne is a story about the brave deeds of the author’s ancestresses. Each of them did something hard or courageous. For example, her grandmother, who was a harpist-architectural-historian, went to a men only college. There was a sign there that read, “no...
ReallyColor is a website that allows you to create coloring books from photos. The website isn’t free, but it’s very simple! Anyone can use it. After you create a coloring page with their website, you can decide if you like it enough to purchase it. You can buy photo credits for about $0.40 each if you buy 10 or more at a time (if you just buy one, it’s about $1.50). I’ve made coloring pages with other tools (like BeFunky, Picasa, and pixlr.com), but ReallyColor is unique because of the simple editing tools and the ability to create a coloring book....
What would you do if you promised your grandfather at age 15 to write his story? If you were Jackie Dougan Jackson, you’d eventually gather up all 70 years worth of letters, documents, and assorted papers stored in the attic; interview hundreds of people, and publish the story of The Round Barn, one hundred years after it was built. It would include not only the building of the unique round barn W.J. Dougan designed to house his dairy operation, but also stories of the family, workers, customers, and even the cows! We featured Jackie in our spotlight, Family History is For...
My mom has been writing a series of short stories to share with our family about her dad. I decided to illustrate one of the scenes using StoryBoard That. Eventually I’d like to illustrate each of the scenes and short stories she is writing so I can read them to my kids at bedtime. The scene I did was about picking cotton in Texas when my grandpa was a boy, in the 1930s. The software is pretty simple to use. I was happy to find that there was a cotton field background ready to use. I added some characters, adjusted...
Have you ever read the childhood diary of a parent or grandparent? If only I could have the pleasure of finding such a gem! Information about what our ancestors were like as children is hard to come by. Childhood journals, if written in the first place, often did not last through the decades. When Nan Hunter discovered one such little treasure, her family gained delightful insight into the mind of a ten-year-old boy who would become president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She shared his diary with the world in her book, “The Diary of Howard Hunter.”...
For the last several years, I have been keeping my digital photos organized on my hard drive by year and month. Although it’s nice being able to find my photos when I need them, I would like even more to to have hard copies of them to show off. My goal is to put the photos in an album or book so my kids can easily look back on our family’s memories – which is what my mother did for me. She created albums with our family and individual photos over the years for each of us kids. When I moved out, she gave me...
Two years ago, I made a book about my Grandpa Elder’s ancestors to give to my family for Christmas. I was inspired by William R. Walker’s talk in the April 2014 General Conference about learning stories of faith of our ancestors. I knew some of the conversion stories of my Mormon pioneer forefathers, but not all. I determined to find and compile all the stories and records about my LDS ancestors’ faith. One repository that I was especially eager to use was the LDS Church History Library, where all kinds of LDS records are kept, including most of the patriarchal...
Do you have a compiled genealogy book with numbers assigned to each individual? What do those numbers mean and how can you trace your family with them? If you have wondered how to navigate the long blocks of numbered text in these books, you’re not alone. Last September, my friend Gina and I were chatting about family history when she showed me a genealogy book compiled by one of her husband’s relatives. She let me borrow it. As I flipped through it, I realized how daunting this book must seem to a young person. I decided to surprise Gina by making the book more accessible to her children. Many compiled genealogy books use...
