Heritage Photo Album Project

I have been working on a project, for over a year, of scanning my Grandmothers old "heritage" photos for her, myself, and the rest our family to one day share. My Aunt and my Cousin are amazing crafters, and several years ago, put together this grand "Creative Memories" book. So all of the photos are layed out nicely with commentary as to where and when most of the photos were taken. My grandfather loved photography and made sure he documented his families life. I love looking at all of these memories. They are true treasures that our family has to reminisce into the past.

First for my project, I'm using a simple Epson flatbed scanner. The flatbed is 9X12 and the pages are 12x12, so I have to scan the top part of the page, then the bottom - on each side. And then to save time, I learned a time saving trick, to scan the page only once, and if it has 2 or 3 photos in that one scan, I go to the file folder, and copy that scanned image, and paste it however many times there are images. This saves me a huge amount of time.

And then the fun part! Cropping!! jOy! My cousin reintroduced me to the new Picasa photo software his summer, with facial recognition! All of my scans from my grandma's heritage album project show up nicely in Picasa for me to crop and tag and I can even enter a paragraph description of the photo. Since they have already written all this in the book, it's a huge help.

Why? So why am I doing this you say? Well, there is only ONE copy of each of these precious photo treasures, which are stored nicely in only ONE beautiful album! Someday (hopefully soon) I hope to finish this up and create maybe one of those nice photo books from vistaprint or snapfish or something - so everyone can have a heritage book of their own!

Picasa is such a beautiful tool, all of my work has already been uploaded to my online Picasa folder, which I've shared with the family, so they can download, print, and enjoy too!

I'm also rolling around the idea of creating a photo video, with "Grandma's" story. I plan on sitting down with her & and showing her a couple of the photos and have her tell me about each of them, in her own special way, and record her voice telling the stories.

I love to hear my grandma's stories. So I want to capture them somehow digitally for my own heritage archive. Her stories of trial and triumph, her joyous moments and her "God provided" moments. I love them all, and want to remember them just how she tells it.

One story she shared with me recently was about her "daddy" - my great, grandfather Sam Calhoun who lived in Laurel, Mississippi. Sam worked at a lumber yard grading lumber. He walked to work every day, rain or shine, sick or well. He used a piece of chalk between his index finger and his middle finger for so long, that until the day he died, he had a permanent indention in his finger. He never missed a day of work. Not one day in over sixty years! That's what grandma says. He worked in the same spot, marking that lumber with a "B, or Better." The spot where he stood would begin to buckle and bend, and over the course of his time there he wore out three floors. Yup, that's what grandma said.

Hearing that story changed my whole perspective on working integrity. Waking up and going to work, even when you don't feel like it. Doing your job without complaining, and doing it well. No matter what you are facing or feeling, make your mark everyday in this world, even if your mark is simple as grading lumber. I wonder where in the world Sam Calhoun's lumber ended up. How did his "B" or hi "Better" pieces get used?

Pretty amazing, my heritage of integrity that lies in the pages of this photo album...

Fun with Friends~

This week has been a roller coaster. i'm gonna blog about it over @ Jennblog in a few days. Still not sure if this two blog system is gonna work for me, but we shall see. I'm hoping to tame my creative writer side and have more of a home girl blogger side. LOL I don't know. We'll see.

Anyways! Keith and I just celebrated our 5 year anniversary last friday night (a week ago). We went out for Sushi (of course). to Kabuki, a Japanese Hibachi place close to our house. We were planning this great trip to Birmingham that night to eat at another one of our favorite Thai places, PF Chengs, but we bailed at the last minute. WE were just too hungry to wait that long! HAH! And plus we were just too tired to travel 3 hours round trip just for dinner. SO -- Sushi!

This week we went out two different nights with friends from our church in Wetumpka - which is about 30 minutes from our house. So it's quite a drive to socialize! We don't get to do this very often. So twice in one week is rare! The Lord knew I needed those happy times - with food.

And today we went to a fun football party with several more of our church friends, who made a delicious "country boil" - known on the Gulf Coast as "shrimp boil" - basically a hearty combo of new potato's, chunky sausage, carrots, onions and boiled shrimp...with lots of hot sauce on top. DELISH! Top that off with a crazy round of Phase 10 with the gals, while the guys sulked "in the pit" the living room over Alabama Football. (War Eagle!) Again, I think I was the lone Auburn fan.

But I wore my new grey scarf with my red coco-cola shirt. And that was fun! But, still not sure if I'm still digging this loop scarf look, it was different. But I do like different.


Can i just say Southern Moms are amazing? I mean, I've known this from my oh-so-charming southern mom & the other ladies in my family. Maybe this is all moms in general, I will have to think about this one, but it's amazing to me me to watch their herding skills. You know, when Mom A is totally telling Mom B's kids "you need to calm down or I will beat your little hiney." While Mom B is herding in all of Mom's C's kids back into the house to put on jackets and shoes with a quick reminder, "No Ma'am, No sir, get in the house!" It really is a big warm community. Can you feel the love?

I'm sure it's not just north east Montgomery ladies in particular, maybe it's more of a mothering instinct thing. Like the "talent" that I hope to someday supernaturally posses upon the birth of our first child, where I can simultaneously listen to two conversations at once, and know exactly what each child is doing at any given moment, and correct them and still counsel my BFF with the most tender consoling compassion. What a fantastic gift!

So I hung out with some pretty amazing mom friends this week. Several of them are adoptive or foster parents, which is a beauty all in a class of its own. So beautiful! A 30-something mom to over 60 kids, now that is a story! And I feel these amazing super-skill mothers have ushered me: the one track conversation non-mom, right on into their herd. And, "yes ma'am" you better betcha, I am putting on my coat and shoes, RIGHT now missy!

Cute little scarf project.

I found this really easy t-shirt scarf project on a few sites buzzing through my google reader. My nifty friend Nikki, from Nikki's NACS has my favorite instructions

>>She heard it from KevinandAmanda - who makes it with awesome orange and blue Auburn tees!

>>>and I found it on cutoutandkeep. But I thought for sure I read it first on my make up artist hero blogger Kandee Johnson, but I can't seem to find where I read that one.

Anyway, here's my version:


I had fun late one night catching up on some TV while spreading this project out on out coffee table. I used an old t-shirt tunic that had a few holes in the armpits and the safety pins just weren't working any longer (did I mention, I don't sew?) - "Crafty girl" is not first on my list of personality adjectives. But it's certainly my dream to someday become one!

My friend from church, Tiffany Anderson, is a natural. A genius craftee queen. I will show her something I love and that girl will whip out a sewing machine and fabric from her purse/diaper bag, right there in the church foyer and start making it! Well, not exactly. But she does have a genius way of creating something with no pattern or experience. Look what she made me last week, while sitting in our church parking lot at the trunk or treat! (again, just kidding). Isn't it adorable! A cute notebook cover for my journals....

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That's what I love about all off these mom bloggers and craftie gals that I follow, they have a special way of making something out of nothing. Creating beauty from junk.

I wonder what else i can make useful and beautiful, from the old things just laying around the house?

And of course, a song for this moment!

Yesterday the rains came in. Lots of rain. Black clouds over head. I was driving through the middle of it. Zero visibility around 6 o'clock, the roads super slushy, and cars driving home from work, and out to church, all moving at a snail pace. I cant even see the lines on the road, and find I'm weaving into both lanes. I realize, "This is Idiot Weather." Idiot. Why am I continuing on this journey, driven to my destination. I realized I was fighting through the biggest storm of the season, just above my head. I kept going.

Because the car in front of me was still going. Their brake lights my guide. Even when I felt that urge to merge off to the side, I kept going. My rear view mirror reflecting the cars behind me. They were depending on my lights to guide them through this storm too. That kept me going.

I don't always post music, country music at that! But this one was just playing on Pandora, and it was a moment. "Stand"

Cause when push comes to shove, You taste what you're made of, You might bend till you break, Cause it's all you can take, On your knees, you look up, Decide you've had enough, You get mad, you get strong, Wipe your hands, shake it off, Then you stand.... Everytime you get up, And get back in the race, One more small piece of you, Starts to fall into place.


Thanks: AlabamaStormTrackers

Each Saturday in the fall, Keith sports his"Alabama" shirt and I sport my "Auburn" shirt. When we go out to a store, or the restaurants holding hands, we do get a few good laughs! But we support each other in our beliefs. So two years ago I rounded up tickets and took him to his first Alabama game. And this past summer I made myclaim and said, "this is my year for an Auburn game! I believe its time!" ~~ Little did I know what a great time it would be to go see Auburn play. On two different weekends, we had free tickets dropped in our hands to go see the big Orange and Blue play. And Keith was super supportive!

The first game we went to was an evening game - Auburn vs. South Carolina on Sept. 25th. Mom called me that morning and said, "How would you like to go to the Auburn game tonight!" (FREE! from Grandma's physical therapist who dropped them off at her house that morning - Thank you Nurse PT, and Thank you Jesus!) It's been several years since I've been over to Auburn, and it was Keith's first trip - so we had no clue on where to park. We arrived about an hour early , and drove around for 45 minutes! Fifteen minutes to kickoff we finally snagged a spot in front one of the dorms, the sun had just set and the streets were all quiet because everyone was in the stadium!

We started walking, and kept on walking! Our seats - were way up in the new section at the top of the stadium. We finally arrived in those sweet free seats during the start of the second quarter! Oh yea, I was huffing and puffing up the stairs and ramps. LOL. But it was worth it. The intoxicated guys behind us made it fun for as well taking the photos for us and cheering randomly for the new sophmore player "Lutzenkirtchen" the whole time. "Lutzenkirtcehn" actually made the winning touchdown for his first TD with the Tigers, so we all busted out laughing and every time Keith and I hear "Lutzenkirtchen" - we have to repeat it like those hilarious guy behind us that night -- I love sharing inside joke moments with my hubby.

Here we are that night...

But then the next weekend we got another call from a good friend with tickets to the Auburn vs. Lousiana Monroe mid morning game in Auburn. More fun times @ Jordan Hare Stadium. Again, Keith was a major awesome husband to go and support me. I made sure he had lots of coke and boiled peanuts to keep him happy! :)

More good times with Keith and a few of our friends who love SEC football as much as he does...

Enjoying our great front row seats at Auburn!

{Thank you my sweet husband for making my heart happy this fall

and going with me to your teams rival stadium!!}

"Lutzenkirtchen, Lutzenkirtchen - Whoo!"

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