OK. Here's the deal. As you are all aware, I have new hobby. You know this because I pester you for pictures. And I will continue to do so. Get used to it. I take these pictures as well as many that I got from my Dad and other members of my family and those I have taken over the years, and put them into digital scrapbook pages. I use the computer to do this because I love my computer, and because I am too cheap to spend the money on regular scrapbooking supplies. Well, maybe not too cheap, but I just can't justify spending the money, and I don't have space in our apartment to store supplies. Hence, digital scrapbooking.
Now, you may or may not be interested in what I am doing with these pictures that I keep bugging (that term "bugging" comes from the 60's. I am a child of the 60's. Can't help myself. I also like the word "groovy.") you for. I hope you enjoy them, but if not, that's OK. I do this for my own pleasure and if you like them, that's a bonus. But I need a way to keep them so that when my computer crashes, and it will, you know, I will not lose them. Even my new external hard drive will not live forever. So here is the plan.
I have started this blog to have a place to display my scrapbook pages. Yes, I know that I already have a website that hosts photos, but I have discovered that if anyone wants to print out a page or two, the quality from the photo sharing website is not the best.
So, I have also opened an account at "4 shared," which gives me oodles of space and makes it possible to download each page in a zip file, at the full printing resolution. I can put a low resolution page on this blog and link it to "4 shared" for anyone to download. This also gives me an additional backup for the computer crashing thing. Pretty smart, huh?
Sometimes I journal my pages, and sometimes not. Depends on my mood and the amount of space on the page. There are stories behind many of the photos, and I want to record these stories for anyone who might be interested, and also for myself for when my memory gets worse than it already is. I also plan to sneak in some genealogy here and there. I believe it is important to know your heritage. It gives you a sense of who you are and what those who went before you have contributed to make you the person you are today. I have tons of names and dates, but my interest is more in the people themselves...who were they, what did they do and why.
Finally, I am not happy with some of my earlier pages. Frankly, they are somewhat sucky, due to the fact that I didn't know what I was doing, and I didn't at that time have as many good digital scrapbooking graphics as I have now. So I am in the process of redoing some of the pages. When I first started digital scrapbooking, I felt compelled to use nearly every embellishment on every page. I have since simplified my style to focus on the photo and not the graphics.
All of that being said, here goes!
This photo was taken in the spring of 1910. Dad is the baby and his sister, Clarice, is holding him. They are seated in front of the first house that my grandfather, Clifford Alton Matheny, built on the land he homesteaded near Blackduck in 1904. Some years later, he built a new, more modern house that was stucco on the outside and had a second story for the children's bedrooms. Dad told me that they built the new house around the old one. They tore down the old house as the new one went up. The new house had electricity, but no running water or indoor plumbing. I remember that water was pumped using a hand pump just off the back door of the house, and the outhouse was a short distance in the same direction. Water had to be carried into the house, and I remember that the drinking water was in a white enamel bucket sitting on a stool by the kitchen door. There was a metal dipper in the bucket, and when someone wanted a drink of water, they filled the dipper and drank from it. It was the best tasting water I have ever had, and I don't think anyone ever got sick from drinking from the dipper. Folks were alot tougher then.
This photo is also of Dad and Clarice, and Dad said it was taken in the fall of 1910. Clarice's job was to watch over her baby brother, and she continued to do so for over 90 years. They probably had one of the closest sibling relationships that I know of, and even when both were in the nursing home in Blackduck, they enjoyed each other's company. Dad is wearing a dress in this photo, and he said that was common practice back then for a boy to wear dresses until about the age of three years, when he was old enough to manipulate the buttons on the fly of a pair of pants.
I have always treasured these two photos for the fact that they are now nearly 100 years old, and they are the only photos I have of Dad as a baby.
To download these scrapbook pages, click http://www.4shared.com/dir/5501571/98d99748/sharing.html
Love,
Mom
No comments:
Post a Comment