Several years ago I wanted to gather and display pictures of our ancestors in our home. I wanted to put the pictures close to the t.v. and entitle the entire display, "The Stuff I'm Made of." I wanted our kids to become familiar with their ancestors' faces and remember what they're made of when they're tempted to watch something they shouldn't.
I wanted pictures of our ancestors when they were young, not old, so that we could remember them in their vibrancy. I also wanted to be able to see the family resemblances, which is easier to do with young pictures.
I wanted to include details of our ancestors' lives such as their education, where they were married, their hobbies, eye color, hair color, height, where they lived, what their profession was, where they served a mission, etc.
I thought it would be fun to include pictures of things that remind us of them such as their school logo or a ball for the sport they liked most. You can see that this last one didn't get included because those little extras would have just taken up too much space and caused too much clutter.
I tried to use background paper that would represent the people/person in the pictures. For instance, if she was a teacher, I used paper with letters on it. If he liked the outdoors, I used paper with grass. For those who lived during the typewriter, I found a font that looked like a typewriter. For those of us who lived during the Times New Roman phase, we got that.
I showed this during one of my RS lessons recently and several women were in awe over it. The stake RS president is in our ward and she asked if I could bring it to share at a stake RS event. It seemed to me to be a big hit there, too. I've always thought it was cool, but I've always liked history stuff. I didn't realize others would also like it, which is why I am writing this post.
The whole thing took 40+ hours. Most of the time was spent gathering the information about the ancestors. This project includes 4 generations.
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