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Family History Tip of the Month
--by Steve Blodgett, Accredited Genealogist

Family history is genealogy brought to life. Names, dates and places may provide structure for our ancestral model, but life’s experiences supply you with a personal connection to your progenitors. What are some of the things that can help you get you into the mind and heart of an ancestor? What things will show you evidence that they are real?

1. Pictures of individuals and families.
2. Letters and writings about or by an ancestor.
3. Stories re-told by family members.
4. Personal artifacts such as articles of clothing, lockets, or tools.
5. Events in the life of an ancestor that coincide with history.
6. Official documents and records that show your relationship with family.

Be careful. Finding even one of these can supply you with energy enough to uncover more than you imagined about an ancestor or his family. When you come to know them you will know yourself.

FAMILY REUNION DISPLAYS
--by Candace Lehenbauer, Designer

Involve old and young at your reunion with a table display of historic photographs and interesting family history items. This would also be a great place to display a Family Tree Art Ancestor Poster. A few months in advance you can ask for items to be placed on the table, and that will give you a good idea of the space required. An example of items to bring would be quilts, cross-stitch, geneaology chart, coat of arms, special family artifacts, national flags, etc.

If your reunion is only outdoors, try and pick a nice shady spot to reduce sun damage to your display. You could also place a clear vinyl tablecloth over the table when all is displayed to protect it from a little rain. Be sure to label each item and to whom it belongs to, as well as provide a time that they need to be cleaned up. Also label who is in the photographs as well as who created the artwork. If it has a story, tell it!

A good design for a table display is to have text that you can read from far away as well as up close. Get their attention with a big header, and keep them interested when they're right up next to the table. Keep your font/writing consistent.  Only use one or two fonts if you use a computer.  Use classic fonts for any body text, such as Helvetica, Times Roman, Garamond, Gill Sans, or Futura. Save your artistic fonts for headers only.   It makes it more comfortable for others to read.

If you want to go the extra mile, make a game or a matching game with the items displayed. Anything to make your display interactive will make it more memorable and interesting.

The Family Tree Art Ancestor Poster - an easy fund-raiser
--by Julia Lloyd, Designer

This amazing piece of art will pay for itself and your reunion expenses too when you take advantage of our great reprint price of only $5 each. Order enough for every family, child and/or grandchild and sell them for $15 to $25 each. You can easily earn enough to pay for the design which includes an archive CD with all files, as well as pay for other reunion expenses or save the profit for next year's reunion! Think ahead because we need 3 weeks to design your poster. The Lewis family recently had great success with this technique and even auctioned off a signed and framed print to the highest bidder. Great Grandma Adams who is the first generation depicted on their poster and only one living, autographed the print for the auction. Visit www.familytreeart.com/products/ancestor.html for more information.

Make your own T-Shirt! Great gift idea.
--Candi Lehenbauer, designer

Have you tried making your own personalized t-shirts or pajamas? If you have an inkjet printer and a scanner you're set. In this example we used a child's drawing of herself, and put her name with it. You can create borders in any Word Processing program, or you can draw it by hand w/ a sharpie marker and a ruler. 100% cotton light colored shirts work best. Make sure you print out a test sheet first. Avery tshirt transfers can be found at Office Max, Staples, or even Kmart stores. We've found that they are usually less expensive at the Kmart/Wal-mart stores than an office supply store. Have fun creating a gift that will mean something special.

Image File Formats - which to use?
--by Wayne Fulton, www.scantips.com

Briefly, the three most common image file formats, the most important for general purposes today, are TIF, JPG and GIF.   I propose we also consider the new PNG format too.

TIF file format is the undisputed leader when best quality is required. TIF is very commonly used in commercial printing or professional environments.

Web pages require JPG or GIF or PNG image types, because that is all that browsers can show. On the web, JPG is the best choice (smallest file) for photo images, and GIF is most common for graphic images.

A common question is "How do I make my image files smaller?".