Category All About the Stories Archives - Page 2 of 2 - It's a Life StoryIt's a Life Story

Simple Steps to Posting in Instagram

I know that a LOT of people know how to post in Instagram – this tutorial is not for you!

If you have Instagram but don’t know what to do next, let’s break it down. Follow along as I take you through a posting step-by-step!

First step is to download and open up Instagram where you will be asked to sign up for an account. While you are doing that, I would suggest that you go ahead and upload a head shot of yourself to be used in your profile. (I keep the same headshot on my phone so that I have one whenever I want to set up a profile.) Remember, that when you are making a post anywhere, it is a lot more fun to be in a conversation with at least a photo of the person you are contacting! Leaving the photo blank just seems a bit creepy to me – so make sure to add one!

You can find lots of direction on what to add as your written profile, but at the very least, I would suggest that add you a few of your interests. As it relates to genealogy, I would add the surnames that you are working on as well. Of course, if you have a website and/or blog, you would want to put that URL in your profile as well! Once you start to look for other people to follow, you will start to see how valuable it is to be able to read a short blip on them and see if they line up with some of the same interests!

Once you have the account set up and you are ready to post, follow along with me as I show I posted a photo to my own Instagram account.

Your Instagram account is still open, right? Now look at the middle part of the bottom menu on your screen and you will see a square icon with a circle inside. That’s the button that you will want to tap in order to go to your camera roll or the camera itself and locate your photo to be used in the post.

So, this is Instagram and I’m just going to remind you that Instagram is all about the photo. You can add a message in the comments but really, it is still all about the photo. So when you are getting ready to post a photo, have some fun with it and try different angles as well as a few shots to decide which one you like best. If you love your photo, then that’s really all that matters at the end of the day. I wouldn’t suggest that you try to be just like everyone else.

I like to take photos of the little heirlooms that I have accumulated over the years so that I can share the stories that go with them. I will take the photo of the object or upload the picture that I want to use so that it is in my camera roll in my phone before making a post. This just makes things go smoothly and the picture can be edited in any app such as PhotoShop Express or simply using the filters within Instagram.

Once you have clicked on the photo that you would like to make your post about, then click on NEXT up at the top right of your screen. Here is what I think is the bread and butter of Instagram: the built-in filters! The little boxes at the bottom of the screen with the alphabet letters in them are the filters. Feel free to click on them all to see which one makes you happy when you look at it! If you click on the little sun icon just on top of the filter boxes, you can adjust just how much of the filter that you would like to use. Simply touch and drag the small blue circle to the right or left until you are satisfied with the look. Then either tap the “X” or “Y” button depending on whether or not you want to keep your changes.

If you look real close to the filter boxes, you can see a very blurred image of your photo and you will have a general idea of what the overall coloring will be with each filter – it just makes it a bit easier to not have to go through them all. Warmer filters catch my attention so I might only click on the ones that have some color that is pleasing.

If you click on the odd little disc (tool?) icon at the right, just above the filter boxes, it will take you to even more tools such as straightening, brightness, contrast, warmth, etc . I would just open them up and start to play with them until you get a feeling for what each one does. You always have the option to cancel the changes by tapping the “X” button or to accept the changes by tapping the “Y” button.

My favorite button to play with is the vignette and the tilt shift button. I actually used the tilt shift on this photo in order to give it a bit of depth. Play around! Have some fun and always know that you can simply start over if you end up with something you aren’t happy with! Simply tap the back button!

Once you are done with your editing magic, tap the NEXT button on the top right hand side of the screen.

Your photo is done and now you are down to just adding your caption! Go ahead and tap within the box where the words, “Write a caption” are found and your keyboard will come up. Here’s where I love to add my little story (ok… sometimes it is a not-so-little story… but it is really for me and my kids so I’m writing about the object or the photo until I am happy with the story.) I have figured out that the posting looks easier to read if I don’t add any hashtags to clutter it up. Those can wait and be added as a comment after I have made my post. (I’ll quickly discuss hashtags at the bottom of this tutorial.)

Finished writing? Then simply tap the OK link at the top right-hand side of the screen and it will take you to the final staging area.

Aha! You have now made it to the point that you can tap the SHARE button at the bottom of the screen and it will post. Yay! To me, they all feel like little presents that I am sending off in the mail. And once you have shared the post, it will show up in your NewsFeed (the little home icon). You have the ability to add hashtags now as a comment.

As hard as I try to be perfect, I always find a typo in my caption, so I have become very comfortable in using the Edit function! In order to edit the caption, tap on the ME icon (the head and shoulders) and you can now see all your own posts. Tap on the posting that you would like to edit and there will be three little horizontal lines at the bottom of the screen. Tap those lines and in the little pop-up menu, you will see the edit tool. Click on that and you can then make changes to your caption. It always feels good to know you have options, right?

Now that you have your posting, let’s talk a bit about hashtags. They are everywhere but once you think of them as little tags or search tools, it will start to make perfect sense! With my postings, I want to add the person’s name that I am posting about. After I have made several using my mother’s name as a hashtag (full name,) then I can pull all the postings up at one time to look at everything posted about my mother.

Here is where is gets really powerful! If you are in contact with relatives and they begin to post their own photos or memorabilia to Instagram and you use the same hashtags, you can now pull up their postings and yours to look at the whole collection!

You can search on more general hashtags such as “#recipes” or “#family” to locate a world-wide conversation going on. And if you see something that interests you, I would click on that photo and look at the person’s profile to decide if you would like have them added to your news stream.

It is definitely a learning process to get comfortable with everything, but once you get to that point, then it is quite a bit of fun to look and see what others are posting!

One more thing… Once you have 60 postings, you can choose to have your Instagram printed off by a company called Chatbooks. It costs $6.00 per book and as you get 60 pages accumulated, they will print off each book. I am looking forward to getting to that number. My hope is that I can print off the captions as well as the photos and then have a book about our families that I can pass down to the children!

The bonus to all of this is that my children seem to really enjoy looking at the my Instagram postings and reading the captions when they have a few minutes. (They range from ages 12 to 26.) I’m not above doing whatever it takes to attempt to make them interested in their own family history!

Yes, this all takes a bit of work, but at the end, I have done it for myself and my children and descendants down the road. They’ll have these treasures and the stories behind them to last forever!

Are you on Instagram? What are you favorite things to post and what do you enjoy looking at? I’d love to hear!

Day One Journaling Tutorial: It’s your own Life Story

I know that we all like to think that every event will be saved in our memories forever – how could we ever forget? – but trust me, they will fade and suddenly you are left with only a general memory and not all the little details that made it so special.

Day One App — explained in detail.

As promised, here is the step-by-step tutorial for the Day One app that I mentioned in my recent post titled “Its a Life Story Challenge.” (you can re-read it here!) Whether you are a parent, scrapbooker, and/or family historian, the Day One app is well worth the cost ($4.99 for iPhone and iPad.) Again, for some of you, this will be way too detailed, but I know that there are some that might find my tutorial very helpful so here we go…

Step One: After loading the Day One app onto your phone, you will first get a black and white screen. Always intimidating but absolutely no problem!

To get started, just click on the little camera icon to be whisked away to your camera photos or photo stream! The fun part is deciding which photo you are going to choose to represent your post. This app doesn’t have any editing features so I would suggest doing any fix-ups or cropping before you load it up.

Once you have selected your photo, it will come up with a little message box that asks, “Would you like to change the entry date / time to the Photo’s time?” I like to revert back to the photo’s date and time so that it keeps a record of the exact day and time that I took the photo(its metadata.) If you are using a scanned photo, it won’t have the correct date so you can then enter it in or at least type in your best guess. Don’t worry too much because you can easily change it later! With this date feature, I can easily miss a couple of days and then enter them at a more convenient time (sooner than later!) and it will appear with the correct day and time.

Step Two: Journaling! Don’t let this intimidate you. Think of this as your own little place to write where you don’t have to worry about who might be looking and judging you. This is a safe place to write down some of the little details that occurred when this picture was taken. Sometimes, I only add one picture for an entire day and that’s ok as well. I am capturing my life and this doesn’t have to be perfect.

Some people like to have journaling prompts and others like to just write freely. I would just suggest that you include people’s names and the places where the picture or story are taking place. Maybe it would make the process easier if you think about your writing as if you were telling a friend of yours the story (Maybe a friend that doesn’t know anything or anyone in your life or circle of friends.) If you do this, I think that you will find that you put a little more detail in your writing naturally!

Once you have finished your journaling for this picture, you will hit DONE at the top right of the screen. Voila! You have written your first post. Believe me, they get easier with each one. In fact, I find that I am really looking forward to taking a few quiet moments to do this every day or every other day. What I am not doing is putting any more pressure on myself to have to do it every day.

I want this to be a present to myself and a gift to my children down the road.

So, what if you want to add two or three pictures or even more? That’s alright as well. It’s your journal and you can do whatever you want, right? There are days that I have been pretty busy, especially on a recent vacation, and I wanted to capture several small stories of the day and the people with me. It is very easy to just add another picture and I’m off telling another snippet of a story.

Step Three: Once you have made your first post, you will see the photo and the journaling directly below the picture. If it is longer than will fit in that little tiny space, then you can simply scroll down and the rest of your story will unfold. Excited? I was thrilled on my first post and actually, I get a little happy after each one!

Let’s take a look at the bottom of the screen at the black menu bar. The first flag icon on the left is a link that takes you to the Day One website where you can post your entry online. For me, I am keeping my journal on my phone and backing up to my Dropbox.

[Note: You can set up the Dropbox feature back at the main screen by hitting <-Timeline <-Menu and then Settings and Sync. You will need to have Dropbox set up before you do this so you can enter your Dropbox information. If you are not familiar with Dropbox, it is a cloud storage that gives you access to your files from any of your devices: computer, mobile phone, or tablet. And the best part is that the basic storage plan is free!]

Back to the black menu bar. You will see an up arrow and a down arrow that will allow you to easily scroll through your entries. On a touch screen device, you can also swipe your finger up and down on the screen and it will move through the entries.

The (+)Plus sign brings up a choice to enter another picture or simply enter text. (Some times there just are not any pictures taken during an event, but it is still wonderful to journal about it!)

Step four: We have made entries but what if we want to print them out? This is where it gets fun again. Let’s look at the little black menu bar at the bottom again. You will see a row of three dots (***) and upon tapping that feature, you now have options! Lots of them.

The best part of this whole app is that it can make my entries into a single PDF that I can save or print out and keep. Now I have something that I can hand down to my children. I can pick and choose which pages to keep as well. [Remember that with a PDF, you can delete pages and also choose which pages to print.]

There are other options that you might like to explore as well, including uploading directly to your Twitter account. I like the idea of this being a separate part of me and keeping it under wraps until I am ready to share it with my four children. I might even think about having it printed and bound into books for each year. Who knows, but the good news is that I am doing it. It is easy and combines both of my passions for photos and family stories.

Step Five: Remember that black and white screen that you got when you first opened up the app?

You can always go back there by selecting <–Timeline <-Menu. You can access the timeline directly from here as well as a calendar and photos and even any tags that you might want to add.

[Note: Tags are a great thing to think about adding up front or as you enter a picture. If you ever would like to see all your “Beach” photos or entries, you could simply go to this area and select the “Beach” tag and all your beach entries would show up in date order. Yes, this is a very good thing as Martha Stewart would say! You don’t even have to go hunting for a picture in your archive of when you went to a particular beach, you can simply select the tag. So, of course, you have to tag your photos when you are making your entries or go back and tag them later for this feature to work. That is why it is a good thing to think about it before you begin your journaling experience. You might even write up a basic list of tag names that you might think you would like to search on at a later point depending on your own needs! Names, places, activities, etc. Just look for the tag icon when you are entering your journal entry. It will prompt you at the top of the screen to enter a tag.]

As a scrapbooker for over twenty-some years, I have a passion not only for the pictures but the stories behind the photos. And, try as I may, there are times when I don’t get all the pictures into albums… Ok, maybe even years… but if I find a group of pictures within my photo archive (which is massive,) I could then go back to my journal and find that day. Guess what? All the details are now written down! (Or I can use my tags as well as long as I keep using them.)

And if you don’t scrapbook, how does this apply? Ok, well, your children or grandchildren or great-grandchildren would be ecstatic to be able to poke around your journal and get an idea of all the things that you did on a daily basis. As a family history researcher, I would LOVE to be able to read my ancestors’ thoughts as they went about their daily lives. I can find the documents and possibly photos, but it takes a lot to be able to put yourself into their shoes and imagine what all they endured.

It’s those stories that give me strength and a foundation to live my own life. A bit melodramatic, yes, but I think that I am pretty spot-on when it comes to that desire to understand my ancestors better. I want my children to have a sense of what I was thinking as I went through part of my life. I’m fifty-three, ok, fifty-four, and I WISH that I had kept better journals during the time that I was raising my children. Now, as we are down to the last one at home, I can only hope that they will enjoy this small look into my life!

I’ve talked about it before… my mother passed away in 2000… and I still find myself looking for little tidbits of her writing or old letters that remind me about a particular time. If I don’t get anything else done in my own life, I am determined to leave a part of myself to my own children!

Please share this with your circle of friends as a gentle nudge to get started with our own Life Stories! It’s never too late — until it is too late!

Reality hits – Talking with your older generations just can’t wait

in All About the Stories by Michele Kerr March 13, 2015 3 comments

Can I ever say it enough that we all need to talk to our older family members? I’m always telling others this, but it wasn’t until I wrote out a simple Tweet yesterday that it hit like a bullet just how important it is to interview our older family members.

I started out casually browsing through my Twitter feed and came across a tweet that took me to an article posted on Crestleaf.com’s Blog titled, “Breaking Genealogical Stereotypes: Interview with D. Joshua Taylor.” You can find the entire interview here.

I have listened to quite a few talks by Mr. Taylor and of course have been watching him on Genealogy Roadshow so it caught my attention. In the article, Crestleaf asks what is important when interviewing relatives.

D. Joshua Taylor responds that you ask the person:

Who was the oldest relative you knew,
Ask them about their childhood, and
Ask them to give you a memory about yourself.

These are three wonderful interview questions and ones that we all need to jump on sooner than later. While I am still a newbie at Twitter, even though I have had an account since it started, I responded back with this:

“Thanks goodness I took the opportunity to interview as many of my elderly relatives early on. They’re all gone.”

Now, staying away from judging my tweet for its brilliance or lack of, this short couple of statements stopped me for a moment after I hit “send.” You see, I had make the attempt to talk to all my elders and my husband’s older family members several years ago – within the past fourteen years. Why specifically “fourteen?” That’s easy. My mother passed away from non-hodgkins lymphoma in 2000.

Suddenly, she was gone. Way before that we had even had discussions on what she might do if she outlived my father. And now my mom was the one that was gone. Always planning on having her around until she was past her eighties, she was gone at age 70. With her went all the stories of her past that I vaguely knew about but never had asked specifics.

I’m terribly sorry to be such a downer in this writing, but sometimes it takes a shocker like loosing a parent to jolt you into action. Lots of good came from this loss of my mother because in a way, I might not have thought too much about trying to interview all my relatives. What’s funny is that I probably wouldn’t be in the position that I am today with my family history research if she had lived a long life. I wouldn’t have felt the need to get those interviews.

What would I have missed? My great-aunt on my father’s side described both of her grandfathers and gave me quite a few details about her own father, my great-grandfather. I would have never had these details by simply searching through records and books. They wouldn’t have told me that all four generations of Julian men, including my father, were very focused on work. They worked long hours to the point that family time was cut short, but they all felt a great need to push themselves to finish what was at hand. They needed to get the job done.

Of course I knew this about my father, but after talking with her, it all suddenly made sense. And it made even more sense when I looked at myself and my brother with this knowledge. What I had held as a slight grudge against my father for always working, became something that was bigger than him – it was “in his DNA” as you might say.

Lots of other priceless stories came from these interviews, too many to tell all at once. But the striking thing about this is that they are all GONE. Every last one of them has passed away. Can we take the chance to not get the family stories written down somewhere for the future?

Finding out about your family’s history and their stories, gives you a foundation to live on.

So, my advice this time is to not fret about getting all the questions answered at once from your older family members. As Nike says, “Just Do It!”

It’s a Life Story Challenge

in All About the Stories by Michele Kerr March 7, 2015 1 comments

Up for a challenge?

This one doesn’t take a lot of time, money or even effort, but the rewards will be payed forward for generations. Let’s get started!

Routine Change #1: Day One App

Day One is a photo/journaling app (aka Diary) and it has become my newest best buddy. How could this possibly relate to family history, right?

Well, technically, the definition for family history is the study of genealogy and everything else in our lives including our “background, location, and circumstances.” In my mind, our family history starts with ourselves. My youngest daughter taught me this most important lesson when she would ask me to relate my own childhood stories to her in place of bedtime stories.

I can remember thinking that I didn’t have anything remotely interesting to tell her, but it turned out that she did love to hear all about my childhood and kept asking for more every night for quite a while. That was a big wake-up call to me and has had me thinking that not only do I need to work on my line of ancestors but I also need to keep working on my own life story.

So, back to the Day One app. At $4.99, it is definitely the most expensive app that I have ever bought (available for both Apple and Android devices) but it has some very luxurious features that make me feel happy when I use it. How about that for a description!

It politely reminds me to journal about my day and allows me to add pictures as well as descriptions of the photo. This way, as I am capturing all these great photos of my day-to-day life, the stories are being kept as well. See where I’m going with all of this? It is the stories that our children and grandchildren and/or descendants want to know about.

I search records all the time getting facts with names, dates and places, but the real treasure, in my mind, is when I find a story!

Two more points that are critical for this app is that it will sync with a dropbox account (free cloud storage for the basic level) and it can be saved off as a PDF. Now, if you think about it, you can print books that contain all your entries and have a beautiful story of your life start to unfold.

Routine Change #2: Instagram

Ok, this one also makes me just feel happy when I do it as well! It’s Instagram; plain and simple. Oh, I have had my Instagram account since about the time they started it back in 2010. Over the years, I have posted a couple of pictures and followed quite a few people to see all their beautiful posts but I haven’t ever figured out exactly what I would post. Until now…

I had an epiphany recently and it all seemed to make perfect sense. I am now posting pictures of all the wonderful things around our home that have a special meaning to me and my husband. Things like the christening gown that my mother wore, or the train clock that my husband’s grandfather owned, or the plates that my mom had accumulated. Yes, the list goes on and on which happily means that I will have quite a few things to post for a long time.

While my youngest daughter gasped that I wrote a fairly long description for my first entry, I am not letting that intimidate me. It is not like on Twitter where you have a defined number of characters. I can go ahead and give a description of the item as well as any stories and history information that I might have. Some will be short and some will be longer—I’m ok with that! This isn’t necessarily for anyone else’s eyes but my daughters, son and close relatives.

Here’s the absolutely best part of all of this: I can print a Chatbook from my postings on Instagram and I will have yet another priceless treasure documenting all the things that mean so much to me. Actually, they are not worth all that much moneywise – only memories and attachments to family that make me feel good when I see them! Once again, it is all about getting our own family stories down to be enjoyed some day down the road.

The interesting part of this is that I think my children will really enjoy these little insights into the things that they have grown up with. I’m betting that for the most part, they couldn’t tell me much about any of them. Hey… it’s not for not telling them, alright? I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt that they really want to know all this but when bombarded with all the studying that they have to do as well as work, they just don’t have time or a brain that is ready to take on anymore information.

There is the beauty in this! They can look back at my postings anytime and browse through the pictures and read as much as they want. And, they will be able to look at the Chatbooks I’m going to print as soon as I have a year’s worth – maybe for Christmas? And don’t forget hashtags when writing – I am going to give each family member a hashtag that I will use so that later, I can pull up all the entries that I have posted for each one. Now, how is that for something really cool? (I know that I am dating myself by using the word, “cool” but it just is!)

So you see, with these two really simple routine changes and you can rest assured that your own Life Story will carry on for the total pleasure of future generations.

Once again, I realize that for some of us, these new tools don’t seem so friendly, so tutorials will be coming shortly on the Day One App and Instagram for Family History. I’ll get into the details how to download them as well as how to get started to use all the different functions. When I have them ready to go, I’ll send out a note in the next newsletter!

Please share this with your friends and family! This is something that we can pass around to almost anyone that has a smartphone or uses a computer. As always, if you have any stories that you would like to share about your own method of journaling, I would love to hear about what works for you!

Conversation Starters

in All About the Stories by Michele Kerr January 15, 2015 0 comments

The next step in our journey is to make a list of anyone that is from the next generation or two (and if you are really lucky… three) back and make contact with them.

Here is a little hint: Let them know that you would like to pick their memories about their childhood, jobs, schools, family get-togethers, siblings, whatever. Just pick one area and go for it!

I know. You are always told to go and talk with your older relatives and it can sound a little ridiculous to plan an interview session, but the reward is ten-fold, believe me. They get to see you and chat and on the flipside, you might get rewarded with some family stories that are priceless. They love to hear about your lives and making a point to talk with them gives your elders the opportunity to share some of their stories.

This step isn’t supposed to sound like your mom waggling her finger at you and making you feel bad… It is just a step that you might not get to take some day and (here is a little finger waggling) will likely regret. It’s the old should-have’s and could-have’s. We all know that we won’t live forever, but here is the silver-lining to all of that foreboding talk: our stories can live on forever and ever as long as they are written down. Now, isn’t that thought enough to spur you into action?

Here are some ideas to get things going:

Take some old family photos or ask to see their own album. Instead of just asking names, point out a person and ask some questions about how they dressed, how your elder was related to them, and if they remember any particular stories about that person in the photo.
Set up your smartphone or camera to take a video of your family member once they are comfortable with talking. If you keep it in view for a while, they probably wouldn’t notice that you have turned it on! Getting a first-person recording of them telling a story is really the ultimate momento. (Can you guess why? I’ll tell you my take on it in a minute!)
Take a short family tree and see what they say. This doesn’t have to be a full-on detailed family tree; it can be just as simple as a starting with yourself at the bottom of the page and then your set of parents on top. Then their parents on top of them with little arrows. You get my idea right? I think that keeping the forms and charts on the simple side make for a more informal exchange. If they think that they have to have all the accurate dates, etc, it can be overwhelming. Just stick to the simple hand-drawn charts and see where it takes you! Let them direct where your conversation should go. Listen! (And have a pen and paper near by to jot down notes if you aren’t recording your time together.)

Quick story on why a video is priceless.

Actually, it is two stories; all very near and dear to my heart. My father passed away a couple of years ago and as we were going thru his office, I came across a DVD in a very unassuming white paper cover. His name was written on it in Sharpie with a date. What a surprise I found as I listened to my Dad being interviewed by a gentleman working on a World War II project to take down biographies and war stories to be archived. I was pretty close to my Dad but I didn’t even realize that he had been interviewed let alone videotaped. My Dad was prompted to talk about his childhood thru high school along with his entry into the Air Force. He then told about his time while enlisted including boot camp and the job that he performed while in the Service.

So, imagine my shock as I got to see my Dad talk in a very casual setting using all the familiar mannerisms that I knew like the back of my hand. Now, they would always be just a click away. Talk about priceless. It evens hits home harder because my Mom, who had passed away in 2000, is practically a ghost in any videos that I pour through. I occasionally get a snippet of her talking in the background, but she definitely was shy around cameras and even more so with video. Maybe she just thought that all the videos we took of our kids should have them as the focal point. I don’t know. What I do know is that I don’t have any video of my mom long enough to hear much of her voice and show our youngest, who never got to meet their grandmother.

Now… no need for any shedding of tears. I didn’t tell you those things to make you sad. I just want to impress on anyone that will listen that we can’t bank on the fact that our treasured family members will live forever. So, go ahead make your opportunity and let me know if you don’t feel crazy good after you have had some of these “listening” sessions! I’d love to hear your favorite story about a particularly interesting interview you have done.

First Assignment: Start with Yourself

in All About the Stories by Michele Kerr January 11, 2015 0 comments

I hope that you will join with me as I start to unfold the steps that you can take to pull together a family history that might knock the socks off the rest of your family!

As our days get busy with kids and life in general, we can put ourselves in the background. Get your appointment book out and set a time to write down your own timeline. Spreadsheets work great for this because you can insert lines to add new pieces of information. No need to start hyper-ventilating yet.

Let’s start at the very beginning… You were born, so add that date at the top. If you take a few moments, you can quickly figure out the years that you were in kindergarten and continue through college. Go ahead and add those as well. If you are married, then there is another date to add. See, it isn’t so hard. It just takes a few minutes to get started. Then as you have a few minutes each day or even once a week, you can continue to insert more dates as they come to you. By the way, this helps for resumes as well! Let’s even go so far as to start a file folder on your computer or filing cabinet of choice that will quickly become a favorite for sure.

Once you have some dates, challenge yourself to think of some stories. Write them down. I’m going to take some stress out of this by saying that you don’t have to write these stories in any particular order. A few years ago, my youngest daughter started asking me at bedtime to tell stories about when I was little. Sometimes, it took me a little bit to come up with a story that I thought was worthy to tell. But soon, I figured out that what she really wanted to hear was simply what life was like when I was little. It helped to think about subjects like summer, special events, holidays, and toys. You get the idea… She loved the stories so much that she asked every night for those stories and what I found was that I actually did have some pretty darn adorable stories that I could relate to her.

You can tell where I am going with this, can’t you? Yes, now these seemingly random batch of stories need to be put into writing. How can we pass on our family histories if we don’t include ourselves? Think of this as one of the most important things you can do for your family. If you don’t have kids yet, that’s okay as well. Think of it as the beginnings of your own biography so when you become rich and famous, you will have a head start! Then plug these stories into the spreadsheet as well; label them with a quick title so that you can easily tell which story they belong with.

By the way, it’s been a couple of years and my youngest still asks for me to relate the story of when I was a little girl and went to my first public pool. All the girls had to wear those funny caps with flowers on the sides to keep our hair kind of dry and out of the pool’s drainage system. Mine worked really well and when it came time for a body-check by the lifeguards, everyone got out of the pool except for me. Imagine this little girl in the pool having the time of her life swimming in clear water with people standing along side of the pool all waving at me! I thought it was neat and waved greetings back! Since I grew up swimming in lakes, I didn’t realize that they cleared everyone out. My mom kept waving and saying something to me but with that cap on my head and over my ears, I couldn’t hear a thing. Too funny as I remember it now and my daughter really starts to giggle when she hears me retell this most embarrassing story. If I remember right, I don’t think that we went back to that pool though! And yes, the picture attached to this entry is my photo from 1967.

I’ve told you one of my stories, now take a few minutes and write down one of your own! Come on… You can do it! What is the first story to come to your mind?

Guilty Pleasure

in All About the Stories by Michele Kerr January 11, 2015 0 comments

One word from someone that has been a wife and mom for over thirty years: Do family history research for all the right reasons and know that it will give you pleasure back ten-fold. I know that you wouldn’t be reading this if you weren’t already interested in your own family history, but putting a true value on it will give you the inspiration necessary to bring it all together into a priceless heirloom.

There are three parts to this equation. If your parents are living, your journey into your family’s history will turn into something almost magical. Aahhh… you laugh at me, but continue on with this and then come back and tell me different! When this project is brought out at your next family gathering, it will spark conversations that will leave you with all sorts of new stories to be written down. As for yourself, you might just discover that looking back at your own family tree, with all its ups and downs, will give you a new sense of belonging that might have gotten lost along the way. I love the sense of ownership for my home state and beloved country that I have gained from the journey into my own family’s history. Then we have the next generation, our children, and knowing that the discoveries you make about their ancestors, will affect just how much attention they will pay when it comes to learning about history in school. Actually tying one of their ancestors to a particular time in our country’s history makes a huge impact on them — especially in the elementary age group. Do I have any particular studies to back this statement up? None at all. It is all from my own personal experience and watching my own four children grow up.

Add this excitement onto that same sense of belonging and you would think that it should be a requirement for everyone to delve into their own family history. There you go again…snickering at me. Or was that a snort I heard? If everyone leaned about their past, think how much better we might all feel about our own lives. How much more might we be tempted to get involved in not only our own state but in our country? If we could see some of hardships that our families endured, how could we not be affected and think differently about our own lives? Whoa… this is getting a little too deep, but hopefully, you see where I am going with this.

I have to tell you that as for myself, I have gotten so much more than just knowledge from working on both my own family history and my husband’s family. The feedback that I have received is enough to almost make this girl blush! Not too long ago, my mother-in-law’s brother passed away which was terribly sad for this very close family. The good part was that my mother-in-law had the chance to spend some time with her brother and guess what he mentioned to her? He loved the book that I had made for their family several years ago. Of course, after we got done talking, I had to immediately go and pull it from the bookcase to look through again and what I noticed was how inviting it was to look through. Bare with me as I explain! I am not trying to be boastful about my scrapbook prowess; really! What I want to get across it that it wasn’t your normal family history book filled with pedigree charts, census record printouts, and death certificates. It was done more like a picture book with snippets of really interesting information. While there is definitely a place for all the documents that come along with a well-done family history project, making that connection for the reader is really almost as important.

So many stories… I hope you don’t mind! They all help to make a point that I want to get across in the midst of all my attempts to entice you to take this project on. My youngest daughter is in her middle-school years. In Indiana, elementary students study their state’s history in 4th grade. Early in the school year, I approached her teacher to suggest that I come in and talk about Indiana’s pioneer history. As the genealogist for The Society of Indiana Pioneers, I have had the opportunity to read and hear a lot about this topic and I was anxious to share some interesting snippets that I hoped might catch their attention. As usual, working with my daughter’s classmates was such a wonderful experience — they really are so much fun at this age! To my surprise, I was asked to talk in front of the entire 4th grade (4 classes worth.) What was a little (…OK… a lot intimidating) for me at the beginning, quickly turned into a blessing for myself. The best part came at the end when I asked if anyone knew any of their own ancestors. I was blown away as the hands shot up and it was a good thing we had a few minutes left because they were definitely excited to relate to me all about their own famous ancestors. You could tell that some of the children were really having to put on their thinking caps to try and remember who one of their ancestors were that would equal some of the well-known names being mentioned by their peers. This was fascinating to watch from the front of the class. You would have to ask my children if this rings true, but I am pretty sure the idea that they might have been related to Pocohontas gave them the incentive to listen and learn just a little bit more when this time period came around in social studies class! The most important part of this whole story is that each one of the students that had some knowledge of one or more of their ancestors has some tie to the history of our country. That tie is what will make them not only be a great person when they grow up but will also make them a great part of our country and its future!

Goodness… I am almost out of breath as I finish this posting. You might be thinking that I should have tired fingers from the length of this post, right? Anyway… back to guilty pleasures. There is nothing guilty about this because it is a win-win for everyone involved. Take it on and then report back to me and let me know if I have lead you astray!

All About the Stories

Simple Steps to Posting in Instagram

I know that a LOT of people know how to post in Instagram – this tutorial is not for you!

If you have Instagram but don’t know what to do next, let’s break it down. Follow along as I take you through a posting step-by-step!

Yes, this all takes a bit of work, but at the end, I have done it for myself and my children and descendants down the road. They’ll have these treasures and the stories behind them to last forever!

Day One Journaling Tutorial: It’s your own Life Story

Day One App — explained in detail.

Reality hits – Talking with your older generations just can’t wait

Who was the oldest relative you knew,

Ask them about their childhood, and

Ask them to give you a memory about yourself.

It’s a Life Story Challenge

Up for a challenge?

This one doesn’t take a lot of time, money or even effort, but the rewards will be payed forward for generations. Let’s get started!

Routine Change #1: Day One App

Routine Change #2: Instagram

So you see, with these two really simple routine changes and you can rest assured that your own Life Story will carry on for the total pleasure of future generations.

Conversation Starters

Here are some ideas to get things going:

Quick story on why a video is priceless.

First Assignment: Start with Yourself

Guilty Pleasure