Liv's Tree House

Engaging the Family in Telling Your Family Stories Class Materials: Slides Syllabus Other Links: Liv's Animations

One after another. There seems to be a huge influx of awesome opportunities to learn this time of year every year, it always gets me rejuvenated and excited to share and build my family tree. Spanish Fork is hosting their annual Family Discovery Day which is always an amazing event.  I'll be teaching a few classes there and participating in all of the fun happenings. Here's some info if you'd like to join me:

This photo of my 2nd great grandparents on my dad's side, Charles Arthur Welch & Mary Loiza Hinckley, has always been my very favorite family history photo.  I have it displayed prominently in my new home "family history" office.  There's something so perfect about their middle-aged selves, the years worth of ups and downs that they have surely experienced together, holding their heads so slightly tilted with affection, softly expressing their sincerest feelings of pure love that warms my heart.  In a time when most photos were stern or solemn, these two so naturally held a pose that shows their truest affections.  I love the soft smile on my dear grandmother's face, it tells of sincere and content happiness and love.  When I look at it I'm reminded of the times when I just breathe in the same feelings as I admire the wonderful man I was lucky enough to marry, with him everything is just whole.  I feel much the same about Charles's expression, but in c...

So this little puppy came in the mail today! I was super excited to win the WeGather raffle at RootsTech . I feel like I never win, and I honestly didn't know I entered to win, so winning was a complete surprise.  But--I do not write simply because I won.  I have to report on WeGather because it's awesome, and I love the developer! Stories are the currency of our past, present and future. Without them, we are bankrupt. Since family photos trigger those stories, we should save and share them. --   Rachel LaCour Niesen So I met Rachel at her booth at RootsTech, but I had been following her site for months before that. I absolutely love her, I love her passion, her drive, her mission, and all that her site stands for.  We share our passion for photos and stories and she's got some amazing resources. I've learned some great tips and tricks from following her.  She has great insight into photos and stories and how they can impact who we are and who we can become....

I've been teaching this class for a few months now and have quickly gathered so many great resources that I want to share, but 1 hour just never seems to be enough.  So I'm going to share some of the class info here, just so class participants can come here to learn more since we won't have a change to address all of the cool programs out there. First of all here's the class syllabus and slides so you can go visit the links and play around with the programs yourself: Download the class syllabus with live links. Then here's a playlist of tutorials I created on YouTube for helping you see how you can use the different programs for your family history creations.  DISCLAIMER: They are FAR from professional, just tutorials I put together quickly using free programs, so I'm sorry they're not higher quality, but hopefully they'll still be helpful. If you have questions, feel free to comment here, or on the videos, or just email me.  Hope you have tons of fun ...

My Why... I referenced this book in my original blog post for this blog, it's definitely MY WHY, why I love this work... Building this book gave me a whole new perspective on the value of researching and learning about your ancestors. I used a program called Heritage Makers to create it. ( If you'd like me to share a copy with you just email me and let me know your Heritage Maker's account number.) Not only did I come to know and love my grandmother in a whole new ways when I made it, but I was also privileged to get to know another special ancestor...My Grandfather Willis A Chatterton, who was obviously a prominent character in her book. He had passed away when I was only 2 years old, so I really don't have any memories of him, and I can only think of one picture that I'm even in with him before he died, so there's not much to go on. I grew up hearing stories from my dad about what a crazy driver grandpa was and from my mom about how he was always the first...