Thursday, December 28, 2006

Preserving Memories, A Theme For 2007

New Years is right around the corner and it's time to write up your genealogy resolutions! (I won't have anything to put in the Carnival if you don't help me out here, so get writing and submit your articles!) I'll be writing mine up tomorrow!

I've picked out a theme for myself for next year because I believe I'll accomplish more if I focus my time and efforts in one direction. So I've decided to dedicate next year to preserving memories. I've identified 10 items that I can/should work on. All of them involve preserving memories, either mine or those of someone close to me. Here they are in no special order.
  1. Redo Family Cookbook: involves retyping all the old recipes as well as collecting and editing any newly contributed recipes. Also need to collect photos of those whose recipes appear in the book.
  2. Write, edit and publish one family history (LIPA): involves identifying missing info for direct line ancestors, gathering photos, learning about the history of the area in Poland, and typing. Lots of typing.
  3. Put documents for one family online (LIPA): Could be done in tandem with #2, this would involve putting the documents online for one entire family and typing up the relevant information.
  4. Convert family videos to DVD format: involves going through and watching all the tapes, making notes, putting in basic edits and burning to DVDs. Would probably need help with this one.
  5. Burn photo collections to CD/DVD: This involves collections of photos from family albums of relatives. Would need to enter captions and identifying information for all pictures.
  6. Start writing memoirs: This involves typing up moments in time from my life, special events, special people. Lot of fun, lots of typing.
  7. Scan our family photos: go through and identify all the photos of the kids when they were small, scan them, catalog them, and burn them to CDs.
  8. Digital scrapbooking: this one has so much possibility for creative fun! Could make meaningful artwork, books, etc.
  9. Interview my mother in law and scan her family photos: involves recording an oral family history, scanning all the family photos and yearbooks, cataloging everything and burning to DVDs. Family movies are already done :-)
  10. Scan my husband's photos and stuff: There's basically one box of stuff but it's packed full of photo albums and scrapbooks his mom made for him.
I haven't decided which ones I'll tackle yet. Obviously there are way too many projects to get done in one year but hopefully I'll be able to accomplish 3-4 of them. That would make me very happy. In all honesty, only items #6 and #8 sound like fun to me. The items that involve basically just scanning are the ones I dread the most. I'm going to have to work on ways to get them done very efficiently and as quickly as possible so I don't expire from boredom ;-)

I'd like to find time to edit my novel too (no, I haven't reread it yet... being sick for several days has totally messed up my plans for this week and I haven't gotten much hobby time yet :-( I'm hoping to get to it soon.

In the next few days I'll make a decision on which of the items above I'm going to start the New Year off with. I have an idea about which I'd like to start with... stay tuned to find out which it will be!

I want to say a special thank you to all those who've sent their well wishes to me. Your kindness means a great deal. I'm happy to report that I am finally back to 100% :-)