Liv's Tree House

Today I'm going to add to my #CrazyBusyHelps series with some tools provided from Adobe Spark.  I'm going to focus on their use from a family history angle, but certainly there are many other uses. So I've been teaching about using Adobe Spark for Family History for a few years now and I really do love it, so I thought blogging about it was long overdue. Adobe Spark has 3 different projects you can create, posts, pages and videos.  I've used all three for Family History purposes and I'll give you a quick example of each: GRAPHIC Are the easiest and quickest creations you can make, basically think of it as creating a meme, collage or social media post of some kind.  I've used it mostly for making images to go along with my posts on the blog but my friend Jana Greenhaulgh from the Genealogy Kids blog gave me the idea of creating posts for holiday's and other events to share with your family about their ancestors.  There are many ideas out there, but...

Why it has taken me so long to get to Google Drive is a little baffling as it is one of my most used most relied upon helps in my busy life.  Perhaps it's because it has so much to offer that there ends up being a lot of information to compile into a simple blog post.  Google Drive has several products within the Drive itself, so we'll explore those deeper in other posts.  Today we'll focus on the Drive as a whole. The best thing with google is--as always-- it's free.  Drive was created years ago.  It's had a few name changes along the way, but it is basically a substitute or replacement for many of the tools and programs found in Microsoft Office.  When I first made the transition, I kept Microsoft on my computer, but now in the days of cloud computing, I literally never need anything other than what is available on Google Drive. What problems does it solve? Have you ever needed that project you've been working on, but--"snap"--it's on ...

Here's the recorded webinar I taught through BYU Family History Library last week: Here are the slides with live links from the webinar: Let me know if you have any questions or suggestions. Thanks for attending! For more webinars from BYU Family History Library visit their homepage. Share what you've learned by sharing this button: Discover other tools I recommend for people in a crazy-busy life:

If you haven't noticed yet, I LOVE finding out about new technology in general, but finding new apps that make my life easier is the best kind!! SO the tool I bring to you today is Qeepsake ----- Qeepsake is an app my sister introduced me to a few months ago and I immediately fell in love. It was built to be a modern day baby book, but I've found that it can do much more than that.  All you have to do is signup and set up your account to get things rolling. They have a free version or subscription versions.  The free version is totally adequate, but of course I've found myself on the paid plan because some things are just simply worth every penny, this one definitely is!! What problems does it solve? Documenting important events in your kids' lives; Tracking milestones; Capturing the cute things your kids say; Journaling to let your kids know how you feel about them. Asking the question you wouldn't have thought to ask. Providing great oppor...

I haven't joined the blog link up for a while but I really didn't want to miss this one because I LOVE the topic.  Admittedly, I could step up my game when it comes to teaching my own children genealogy skills, but as I got to thinking about the topic I realized that while I haven't ever sat down and tried to work on the family tree with them, I have taught them some valuable skills through regular play. I'm honestly pretty averse to a lot of the family history for kids ideas out there because so many require a lot of front end work just to prepare said activity before you can start doing it with your kids.  Due to my #CrazyBusy life, usually finding an activity like that just ends up NEVER HAPPENING. :)  So . . . over the years I've found some great games for teaching and learning family history alongside my kids, which I love!!  So for this post I'll share 5 of my faves: Roots & Branches : Built for ages 4 and up, Roots & Branches is an awesome way to...

Part 3 of my #CrazyBusyHelps series.  Admittedly, I haven’t tried many other calendars, so I suppose many calendars have many of these same features. However, at a fairly early point in my electronic life, I discovered Google makes calendaring easy by offering a little bit of everything.  That way I can have one account that can do countless things, so for me, I choose to use Google Calendar along with all my other Google products. But an online calendar that can be installed across all your devices is a MUST HAVE for us Crazy-Busies. There are some of you out there who are going to argue with me--I know because I have a surprisingly large amount of people still show up to various meetings with a notebook and no electronic device.  To you I must say: it’s time!  I seriously can’t believe how many people don’t use Google Keep, Google Drive, or Google Calendar; I honestly have no idea how they keep their life in order.  Hats off to those of you who can use the tru...

Part 2 of my #CrazyBusyHelps series.  Ahhh…..Google Keep! Of all the things I could not live without, Keep ranks extremely high on my list.  It’s literally my brain most of the time.  One of the most common things people say to me is “I don’t know how you do it all!”.  I say to you, I could not do it “all” without this fabulous tool, and lots of prayers. What problems does it solve? The jumbled brain problem…. Do you have endless tasks and to-do’s floating around in your head, and you're just trying to keep them all straight? Have you ever gotten to the store and realized you forgot your shopping list? Or come home from the store to realize your spouse needed just one more thing? Do you have “I keep forgetting to…” syndrome? Started that Honey Do List lots of times, but can’t see to keep track of it? Trying to remember all the things you need to pack for your trip? Want to remember a great quote you heard? Haven’t figured out a good menu-planning solution? Google Kee...

You’re going to hear a lot about Google over the next few days, because--let’s face it--Google has absolutely tapped into what we Crazy-busy’s need, and I for one am sincerely appreciative. We’re kicking off the series with Google Photos, mainly because they recently announced on their blog an exciting new feature called “Shared Libraries,” and it’s going to save you tons of time. But we’ll get to that in a minute. Why Google Photos? What problems does it solve? Every photo problem, but seriously… Do you have endless digital photos in endless locations? Phone, computer, tablet, external hard drive, thumb drive, CD’s or DVD’s Have old hard copy photos from pre-digital picture days? Keep promising to send pictures to certain someones and keep forgetting? Need to find a picture of your dad for father’s day? Want to preserve your favorite trip pictures in an album and share them with the whole family? Why not give them the opportunity to contribute their trip photos? Ever wanted to make a...

I’m excited to kick off a new chapter of my blog.  I’ve been incredibly inspired recently amidst my “crazy-busy” life. I’ve always been on the busy side.  I get it from my mom. It’s one of those learned, possibly inherited, traits.  But when people would make comments about my busy-ness in the past, I didn’t ever feel like I was that busy.  Until recently, that is.  I totally have “Oh, I can take care of that syndrome,” and most likely if you’re reading this, you struggle with the same problem.  It’s not a bad thing, the world needs people like us, BUT the last month or so I have felt all of my commitments surfacing to a head.  I’m learning a lot about not only delegating, but truly letting go when I delegate, and the results are actually surprisingly awesome! So in the middle of one of my, “oh crap, what have I done to my life” moments the other day, I was trying to validate my overwhelmed feeling by listing in my head the list of responsibilities on ...