More Life Story Pages

School Picture 1924



Some of my work friends get together once a month to scrapbook at a friend's house.   So I did some more work on my parent's life stories.  Mostly my Dad's at this time.   This one is a school picture.  I do not know which boy he is.



First Holy Communion 1925

 This is his First Holy Communion in 1925.  In this picture he looks so much like my brother, or my brother looks so much like him.  You think you where looking at the same person.  The apple didn't fall far from the tree.   I really like this package of blue and brown paper I found for his pictures.  I thought my Dad looks a little old for First Holy Communion, I thought I made mine at age 8.  I wonder why the delay, or was this really confirmation?  I made mine at 11.  But in his own handwriting on the picture he wrote Holy Communion.  I guess maybe things change between 1925 and 1959. 

Graduation 1926





Dad's graduation from St. Fidelis Catholic elementary school.  My dad told the story that he was the last graduating class from St. Fidelis. So all these years I thought the school was closed. I was surprised after a Google search to find that it is still open. When I study the class picture of 1924 I noticed that it is a wood frame building now the school is a brick building I am guessing he was the last graduating class from the wood building that was replaced with the brick building. That is  my dad for you his stories have an interesting twist to them.

Christmas at the Hartmann's 1940

This picture I am going to place in the place in the album I am making for the Grandparents.  What I know about these pictures was that everyone liked to go to the Hartmann's.  My aunt Em told me that there was good food and good company and happy times for holiday dinners. This is the house my grandfather and Dad built and the same house I lived in until I was 11. My dad took over the tradition of having holiday dinners at our home. My memory is more of chaos too many people, too much cooking, too much cleaning up. Also as a kid I had to sit at the kids table and since I was the oldest cousin, I didn't think this was very much fun. The kids sat in the kitchen. 

My Maternal Grandmother

On this page I have a picture of my maternal grandmother this is Minnie Elizabeth Spahn in 1905 in her graduation from nursing school picture. Isn't she beautiful.



The start of my life story



Earlier this week I was still very excited about the Here's What Happened pages that I just had to use the page for 1948 the year I was born. Though this is the first page of my life story that I've started. I'm not planning to do a lot on this right now but I couldn't resist doing this one-page.

This has been a lot of fun working on these pages I'm getting kind of excited about sharing these with my brothers when they're finished hopefully they will enjoy them.

A Duh Moment

This morning while at work I had a Duh moment and I had to wait until this evening to post it. 

I know that the family story is my grandparents, my Dad's parents did not like my mother because she had been previously married and that marriage was annulled.  (According to my parent's marriage license.)  They considered her the "Gay Divorcee"  and not good enough for their son.  So the story continues they waited until my grandparents were gone to get married. 

After I started doing my Genealogy and paying attention to dates I realized that my grandmother has been gone three years and my grandfather two years.  So why the wait?  This morning while at working and showing one of my co-workers my lovely pages.  I was reading the area on Politics and look what I notice!

Is it because they waited for WWII to be over!  It sure looks like it.  The war ended in September and they were married October 9, 1945.

My Dad was exempted from going into the service during WWII because he was a New York City Fireman.  I would think it was still a very busy time for firemen.  Plus an unstable time in the country. 

I'll never know for sure but it sounds reasonable to be.

One small step for me and my ancestors.

Two More New Fun Pages

This is how I did the page for the year my Mother, Edith was born. I printed a scan copy of the youngest picture photo I have of her.  I used colored card stock and added a couple of cute things in the plain corners.  I did a punch design on the top and bottom borders and placed some color paper behind it. 

I like it!

For my parent's wedding day I used  

paper with a design.  Again I printed a copy of a scan photo I had.  I had a hard time deciding what color paper to use.

I did these two pages this way since I didn't want to totally rearrange the completed pages .

How I Used My Fun Page

On the first page I just added them in spots so the Birth certificate was not covered.

On the second page I moved the picture up and moved the one journal entry down. Luckily I had only used a little bit of stickem.

I finished a front and back of another page.  This page I just framed the front & back of a hard card stock page my Dad had made.  I wanted to keep that intact since it had his writing on it. 

Double click on pictures to see a larger version.

Here is my Dad with his Mother and Father in 1913, Queens New York. Mary Jirak Hartmann and George Joseph Hartmann.  In the first picture on the left you can see part of a car right next to my Grandfather.  I don't now who it belonged to. 


One small step for me and my ancestors.

This is Fun

Last Saturday when I stopped in the Scrapbook Barn to to look around for a few minutes and I found this fun page.  Here's What Happened!  This is the year my Dad was born and I thought I would add it to his Life Story pages I am making. 

1912 Happenings

It is fun to see names of people I knew from TV who were born the same year as my Dad.  As well as my too favorite cookies made their first appearances, Oreo and Lorna Doone. I haven't decided yet if I want to cut each area up and place them on different pages or if I want to add a picture to the middle.  I wanted a couple of other years like 1916 when my Mother was born and 1945 when my parents were married but the shop didn't have them.

I Googled the name of the company and found their website, KCK Creations and was able to order more pages.  I'll keep you posted on how I use them. 

Sorting Saturday: George Joseph Hartmann

 
A while back I did a post about sorting old pictures and making scrapbook pages of those pictures and a bit of a life story for my mother. Recently I began doing the same thing for my dad's pictures.

Baby Picture about 3 months old

My dad didn't speak a lot about his early life so it's kind of hard to fill in some of the details to his life. I will definitely write the ones that I know.

First Holy Communion

So here the first three pages I made for your viewing pleasure.  In this picture my Dad and brother look so much alike at the same age.  The apple didn't fall far from the tree.

Funeral Card Friday: Edith Hartmann

While looking through a folder of old photos I found my mother's funeral card. It was really a surprise to me to find this card. Of course after I found the card I thought "I remember that."   

I also found a second copy of the funeral card from my mom Annette.  I previously posted about her funeral card here.  I am now going to place both of these cards in the memory books I am making for my mother's.

Tech Tuesday

Today on tech Tuesday I would like to review Dragon Naturally Speaking. This is a speech recognition software that types what you speak. I only received my software on Friday so I've only had a couple of days to work with it.

The first thing I used Dragon for was to write a blog post, I did that particular post in a Word document. Today's post I am doing right on the blogger new post page. I found working in the word document a little easier than working on the blogger page. 

I also use Dragon for writing an e-mail right in my e-mail program without any problems. The activity I enjoy using Dragon the most for was transcribing a letter. I was able to read the letter and have Dragon type it a lot faster than I would've been able to type the letter.

There is a CD that comes with the program that teaches you how to use the program I have not completed viewing the CD but I strongly advise it. I particularly like this program since I'm not a good speller and this improves the spelling in my documents without using spell check. The hardest part I found is keeping my thoughts organized in my head and dictating them. I have noticed as I'm using the program more that my dictation is flowing better.

It will take you some time to learn all the new commands. Do I think this program is for everyone?   No, but I enjoy it and I'm glad I have it. I just reviewed this post for spelling errors and there was only one where two words ran together, I usually have multiple spelling errors. Spell check is my favorite invention.

The other little tricks that I've notices you must be sure your microphone is off because as you reread something out loud it will start to type it. I'm also noticing that the accuracy of the word recognition has improved since my first use of the program.

If you are a slow typist I would highly recommend this program. Is it a must have? No.  Is a nice to have? Yes.

I would have some time limitations on when I can use this as the location of my computer is by the TV room it would be difficult to use the Dragon Naturally Speaking with the TV on in the background plus you'd be interrupting the TV watcher as you're speaking.

I purchased the home edition and I am including a link here. I did not pay the price that they are presenting here on their website I paid a lot less on QVC. So shop around for a deal.