Posted by admin on July 3rd, 2008 — Posted in Creative Arts
Finding your long-lost relatives is now much easer, thanks to technologies that enables you to build your family tree.
What is a family tree?
A family tree is a record of your ancestors. It is usually represented by a genealogy chart that shows family connections. The chart typically contains the names of individuals that belong to the family, important dates such as their birthdays, states or countries where they live, and sometimes their occupations. Each individual person is connected to other persons using lines that represent different types of connections such as marriages, etc.
Building your family tree
There are easy ways to build your family tree. There is no need to place expensive phone calls or travel to all parts of the world just to meet your distant cousins. A lot of family tree software can be bought at reasonable prices, and some are free. Family tree software usually has very user-friendly, step-by-step tutorials to help you get complete the tree. It can help you organize all the data, pictures and heirlooms you have from your family. Best of all, it can search online databases of family histories, so that you can access related information and decide if it is connected to your tree. That’s a fast and easy way to find all your relatives.
Sharing your family tree
You can share your family tree either online or by printing out copies and giving the, to your relatives as presents. You can even put them all together in a CD-ROM, or create a website for everyone in your family to access.
Sharing your family tree to an online database is an excellent way to link with other family tree researchers who may be a part of your ancestry.
Family Tree provides detailed information on Family Tree, Free Family Tree, Family Tree Makers, Family Tree Charts and more. Family Tree is affiliated with Family Reunion Ideas.
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Posted by admin on May 23rd, 2008 — Posted in Creative Arts
Have you re-modeled your bathroom lately? If not, maybe you should take notice that avocado green and harvest yellow are no longer the rage. You will be quite astounded when you start looking around at options for your new bathroom. Modern bathroom design has really gotten creative and you can find sinks, toilets, faucets and all the fixtures in a huge variety of unexpected designs, colors and styles. Instead of simply tearing down your hideous wall paper and repainting your bathroom, think about getting some new fixtures to spice things up.
Modern bathroom design is all about looking cool and unexpected. You may be slightly overwhelmed by your options as you take on this project. But keep in mind the size of your bathroom, the color scheme you have picked out, and the prices of the items you are looking to purchase to decorate your modern bathroom. It is not uncommon to see sinks that look like they are floating above the countertop with a faucet built into the wall to look more like a shower head. Tile work is also an attractive feature of modern bathrooms. A little bit of special tile design in the shower or on the sink countertop can really spice up your modern bathroom.
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Posted by admin on May 10th, 2008 — Posted in Creative Arts
Many people like to add words to their scrapbooks. Words help to tell the story behind the picture. There are several ways to add words to your scrapbook pages.
One way to journal is through premade words and phrases. You can find stickers, diecuts and word cutouts, all with different phrases. You can also use alphabet sets to create words on your pages. One page I did has my daughter’s four high school pictures, one from each year. Down the middle of the page I put the letters DPHS. In 50 years, when she looks at the page, she’ll know those 4 pictures were her four high school pictures.
Other folks enjoy writing in their albums. If you are going to write on the pages, choose an ink color that matches the color theme of your page. You can write directly on the pages, or you can write on paper and then attach the paper right to your scrapbook page.
How much, or how little you journal is completely up to you. In some cases, I just wanted a year attached to my pages, so that my kids would have a general idea of how old they were at the time. In other cases I wanted a city name or building name to remind me of where I took the picture. In yet other instances I wanted to put people’s names and a little bit about the people in the pictures.
I know some folks who included song lyrics or poems with their photos. They believe the song lyrics or poem truly tell the story of the photos on that particular page.
I have several photos of my own grandmother. On page one, I have just one photo of her, and then a lot of journaling, speaking of where she was born, what year she was born, where she grew up etc. On other pages, I put many photos of her, with very little journaling. It really depends on why you are making the album, who the album is for and what information you want to add with your photos that will determine how much journaling you’ll do.
If your children are young, or your grandchildren are young, it’s fun to ask them to write something each year and include that in the album so they can see their writing as they grow up.
Sometimes, if I have a lot to say, I’ll type it on acid free paper and then cut out what I’ve typed and add it to the page. Typed words will allow me to say a lot more than if I write the words.
Often, we want to include a photo or article from a newspaper on our scrapbook pages. My suggestion is to copy the article onto acid free paper, as the newspaper will yellow and crack with time. One friend has a son who was on the high school football game during his 4 years in high school. He was often written up in the newspaper. She copied every picture and story written about him and he now shares those stories with his own son.
Another technique I use with journaling to cut shapes; ovals, hearts etc. and then journal on those pieces of paper and then attach to my scrapbook page.
If you are making a scrapbook for a friend, it can be fun to share your thoughts, versus just telling a story. For example, maybe you and a friend had a girl’s night out and took some photos. You can share “I remember how much we laughed and laughed this night. My stomach hurt from us laughing so much”. This shares not only photos but you are also sharing yourself with your friend.
Acid free index cards are great for journaling. They are just the right size to write on and then attach to your scrapbooking pages.
There is no right or wrong way to journal. The key is to have something in words to help tell the story of your photo.
Audrey Okaneko has been scrapbooking for several years now. You can reach her at audreyoka@cox.net or www.scrapping-made-simple.com
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Posted by admin on April 1st, 2008 — Posted in Creative Arts
I know I keep saying I don’t like to do articles on poetry, but I do, maybe because of all the writing in the world out there, I respect poetry above all the rest.
My wife was looking over a poem of mine today, translating it actually into Spanish, and she said, “You put a noun where a verb belongs, and if you put another verb in, it will be two in the same sentence. And I said, it is not a sentence, it is a line within a stanza, and it compliments the direct object. To be honest with myself, I really couldn’t find the word I wanted so I made up the word to be presented as a plural adjective so I could push in what I wanted to end the line.
Then I said to myself: she is trying to help, and it makes more sense to her (not to me), so I looked at the whole poem, and figured if I had to change that one word, I’d have to change the whole poem, the whole two stanzas, 10-lines. You can’t write a poem, no more than you can order creativeness, it doesn’t happen that way. So I said, let me look, and see if there is something in this poem beyond the word that can save the day. And I restructured the whole poem, and created a deeper meaning than what I wantedbut was happier with it, and left the word completely out, and my wife fell to sleep in the chair. I wanted to show her my accomplishment; I mean I had to stop everything in my life to ponder on this, to see if I really wanted to change it. I think I did it for her.
Right or wrong, it doesn’t matter, what does, is approach, or attitude; now let me start all over again.
I have four corners to my world, north, south, east and west, better put, God, myself, my wife and poetry.
First thing I’ve realized long ago in poetry was thisyou take out of poets or poetry what you like, throwing the rest away. Good or bad, if it’s not for you, then why force-feed yourself. Thus, if you like what someone teaches you, it is good for you, if not, why argue about something or someone who is not for you. If you don’t like what I say, don’t read me. If you do, then fine; don’t conform to music that sickens you; that way you can keep a good attitude. When Elvis was making a record, if someone was in the area that bothered him, he’d stop the production and leave. It makes good sense, you cannot be creative with a bug in the nose, and that is why he was good, or perhaps one reason.
I was going to give a long example of an event that took place back in l985, when the Ronald McDonald House of St. Paul, invited me to a presentation, but I will make it shorter than what I intended to. Anyhow, in the process of me attending the presentation, they had asked me to do a small story, as the one I had done, “The Tale of: Willie the Humpback Whale,” back in l981. Well I did, but it wasn’t finished, yet I brought it along, was going to give it to the officials, for review. During the presentation, one of the officials looked it over, said something like this: if only you could take the rhyme schema out, and change the subject from turtle to a human being, and so for the and so on.
He was rude and demanding and I could go on, but I said: “You know what you want, go get it,” and I got up and walked out. They didn’t need me or want me as far as my creativeness went, and had told me over the phone, they didn’t know what they wanted, but I guess found out what they didn’t want. So instead of me trying to pretend, and fit in, I didn’t want to waste my time or theirs. If I lost anything, it was perhaps a potential future with an ongoing who knows what: I mean I was volunteering my services.
Anyhow, the one book I had done on the whale went up for a Pulitzer Prize, and I got a nice letter back, but not the Prize.
[Meaning of a Poem] Sometimes the poet gets lost and doesn’t’ even know his subject himself, or so I’ve noticed in much poetry I’ve read. Most of us think it is in the title of the poem, but could be to the contrary.
The problem comes not when he finishes up on a subject per se, but when he hobbles on, when he has already named it. It’s kind of like sitting down with an old friend and running out of things to say, thus, you grab whatever pops up in your mind: this creates in the reader confusion. If it is said, leave it alone, we don’t need to pound a person with it. Faulkner does that sometimes, and it irritates me, but he does it for his own reasons: he gets lost also, so do not stop writing if you are…just slow down.
I hate to say this, but I will: arrogance is good, a little good in poetryin a poem, if done right, just so you don’t take it to heart, and display it outside of the stanzas. What I write, I write because I want it there, usually, and I like a lot of imagination tucked in the corners. And thus, attitude and meaning are important ingredients in a poem; the reader can see it, feel it. The reader is no dummy, they may not write it, but they know it. Sometimes they are the better poets, not because they wish to write it, but because they love it, and those are often the ones who appreciate it more, and don’t like it mopped around on the floor; they have a good inner eye; we poets, are perhaps the ones with the eccentric eye, somewhere in the back of our minds trying to unveil the monster.
Let’s see if I can say this right: never write a poem that should have been written because someone told you they wanted to hear it, write it because it should be, perhaps, and it is something you overlooked, and would have done, but not directed to do in particular, you lose the creative touch; or at least I do, and the meaning of the poem becomes stale.
See Dennis’ web site: http://dennissiluk.tripod.com
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