How Creativity and Hobbies Make a Healthier You

This post was updated in 2022.

"Health" trends and crazes today seem to focus on things like clean eating, keto, and paleo, or kettlebells, marathons, and spin class.  Health goes beyond the physical, however, and it's easy to overlook the health and wellness of the heart and soul.  Today we'll look at two ways to improve your health--hobbies and creativity--and a great way to incorporate both in a meaningful, lasting way.

CREATIVITY
You've probably been hit with a sickness during a stressful time.  According to {Dr. Chris Gilbert}, this is--as you may have already guessed--no coincidence.  She says a full 80% of visits to a primary care physician can be traced to emotional issues.  Aside from stress, this is due in large part to keeping emotions contained instead of expressing them or cognitively working through them (which, by the way, I'm the queen of).

Dr. Gilbert takes emotional expression even further!  She says, "When internal emotions are externalized as art, ... inner conflicts that suppressed these emotions are lessened, and physiological stress responses —such as chronic over-secretion of cortisol and adrenaline — are greatly reduced.” 

Think about that!  Creativity contributes to health and well-being in very real ways.  You can find a great list of ways to creatively express your emotions at BayArt's lovely article, {"How Creativity Can Help You Be Healthier."}

HOBBIES
My friend Lori at Choosing Wisdom wrote recently about why {picking up new hobbies} is so good for you.  She explained that there are two kinds of stress:  bad stress (we all know what that is) and good stress called eustress which is the rush of excitement and joy when we're engaged in something new.  

As Lori says, "Hobbies provide a break with a purpose.  ...When we get complacent in our routines, we are neglecting to challenge our brains."  She refers to research on the mental benefits of having hobbies, including lower depression, and the physical benefits, including lower blood pressure and cortisol.  So hobbies help with the bad stress, and with the good stress, too!

TWO-FOR-ONE:  A CREATIVE HOBBY
Many people have the mistaken belief that they are not creative.  In reality, though, {trying something new stimulates the brain}, so creativity is increased!  And literally, by definition, if you create something, you are creative.  If you have an idea, create a plan, make a cake, build a fence, take a photo, you are creating something.  As {Dina Tibbs} said, "As humans, we are, by our very nature, creative.  Our entire lives are nothing but creations."

Let me encourage you to start a creative hobby that will contribute to your physical health and the health of your heart and soul WHILE AT THE SAME TIME providing {lasting benefits to your loved ones}, such as an increased ability to cope, a decrease in stress and depression, and a greater sense of gratitude, purpose, and belonging.  Start memory-keeping.  Start preserving your photos and the stories that go with them in a tactile way--a book or page that can be seen, held, and loved.

Preserving photos in print and writing down your memories and experiences is cathartic and grounding, but it also gives you the benefits of creativity (creating something) and a hobby that I just mentioned.  In addition, recording your own stories and the stories of your family has been {shown to influence children in profound ways}.

I have been memory-keeping for as long as I can remember, and helping people with theirs since 2005.  The best tool I have seen to preserve photos and memories and stories in digital photo-memory books (or with digital scrapbooking) along with permanent, private cloud storage (with no maintenance fees) is FOREVER.  

Physical health is important, but don't forget how much your heart and soul contribute to your physical well-being, too.  Start your new creative hobby, memory-keeping, today, and find out just how good for you it is!  You can get started at the {"How to Get Started"} tab at the top of this page.

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My Favorite Products for Family Connections

Quality time, conversations, recreational activities, family dinners, and parent-child “dates” all contribute to family connections, but there are other subtle but meaningful ways to strengthen family ties.  

The activities I mentioned need to be repeated– as well they should –to develop family connections, but it’s also helpful to scatter opportunities around your home and among family members that can be gone back to again and again.  There is a whole wealth of products just waiting to be used to increase family connections!  

 A lot of research has been done on {the effects of family stories on kids}.  Kids who know their family’s history and heritage have better coping skills, higher self-esteem, lower rates of depression and anxiety, greater empathy, and more resilience.  Interestingly, the family stories don’t even need to be about a big event to make a difference.  Stories about perseverance, overcoming hardship, learning to laugh, and working toward a goal make a big difference to children.  Finding avenues, then, to tell your family’s stories, is well worth the search.

You might remember when I shared {Four Creative Ideas for Sharing Family Stories} last year.  I suggested storybooks, playing card decks, family cookbooks, and everyday reminders like wall canvases that can be seen every day.  These remain some of my favorite products for creating family connections.  Items that family members can see, pick up, or play with help form connections while educating them about their family on the sly.  To see those fun products again, just click the link.

Most people don’t think their own story is a very big deal.  Writing your life experience, though, has tremendous potential– it can not only help you {“know thyself,”} it can make you more real and more approachable and accessible to other family members, especially kids.  When kids know that grandma and grandpa went on dates, or that mom got a scholarship or struggled in school, or that dad had a super crazy hair style when he was 15, those kids connect.  They see the adults in their lives as real people.  They can recognize things they have in common with those adults, or things they can appreciate.

Some of my favorite products for this purpose are “Before I Was” storybooks. It shows kids that Mom/Dad/Grandma/Grandpa was a baby and a teenager and had hobbies and summer jobs and first dates, all before the kids knew her/him.  It gives life (and context) to the adults in kids' lives.

Get started creating your stories here.

Don’t worry if you’re not sure how to start writing your story.  There are lots and lots of resources, including this article, {“Questions to Help Write a Life Story.”}  I really love the experience of Grandpa Wozney there because it shows that every story is worth telling because every story is precious to someone.

{Personal messages} are also a great method for creating family connections.  Telling someone what you love about him/her and what qualities you enjoy or admire in him/her go a very long way, for both adults and kids.  Making a simple list in a card or notebook is lovely, and so is publishing it in a book that can be pulled out again and again, like these.

While the books, canvases, family games, and things that are for everyone in the family that I have mentioned so far help really create connections among family members, something uniquely personal packs an extra punch.  Not only have you encouraged and lifted another person in the family but you have also clearly gone to some effort to make sure he/she knows.  It’s more than just, “Great job, buddy.”  It’s thoughtful and is obviously something that you intend to have great meaning for that person.  And it will show.

Sometimes creating connections happens without us even noticing.  Sometimes creating connections requires a little creative orchestration.  These family connection-creating products can be gifted for special occasions, of course, but they can be created and shared just because your family needs it. 

And what better reason can there be?

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This post was originally published at www.livegrowgive.org on February 16, 2018, by Jennifer Wise.  Read more #familyhistoryfriday posts by clicking the hashtag below next to Labels.

My Favorite Story Products (with storytelling resources, too!)

There’s an old African saying that when a person dies it’s as if an entire library burned to the ground.  I actually think about that a lot when I encourage people to tell their stories and the stories of their loved ones.  Nobody thinks his or her story is all that important or special–but if you don’t take the time to tell it, you’re lost to the world {within a couple of generations}.  Your “library” of knowledge, experience, love, and lessons has essentially burned to the ground.

Sometimes when we talk about recording a life, writing a story, I think it’s easy to feel overwhelmed or think that you can’t write a life story if you’re not “a writer.”  It’s just not true.  If you need help kicking that idea out of your head, jump back to {Mythbusting: Memory-Keeping Myth #4} to find out why “I can’t write” is a myth–and learn two ways to overcome it.

"Your intuition knows what to write, so get out of the way."  ~Ray Bradbury

So let me give you some resources for writing a story--yours or a loved one's--and then I'll show you my favorite products to bring them to life.

These {Interview Questions to Help You Write a Life Story} I collected have quite a few questions (from three sources) so you can pick and choose the questions you like. I think they are great to use as-is, but they might spark ideas for other questions and topics you'd like to cover.

Here's another great resource.  Over the past several months, I’ve been enjoying articles by Rhonda Lauritzen and Rachel Trotter about life stories and family stories at their blog at {evalogue.life}.  Late last year, they published My Life Story:  Thoughtful questions to tell your story or interview someone you love.  It’s a lovely little booklet with about 70 or 80 thought-provoking questions to help you write your story or the story of a loved one.  

Rhonda asked me to review it for amazon.com (and as thanks sent me this little printed copy shown here, along with a nice thank you note, shown behind).  The My Life Story booklet is available on Kindle for a few dollars, or you can get a physical copy for a few more, both {here (on amazon.com)}.

Another great resource is printable Story Maps (PDF documents) from Heritage Makers.  They are available in the following topics, and I'm including links to each one individually:

• {a life story}
• {a grandparent story}
• {a parent story}
• {a love story}
• and even {a baby story} (could be used for an adoption story, etc.)

As promised, I’ll share with you my favorite products for publishing your story.  Writing it down somewhere is great, but if you’d like to preserve it in a sturdier way, publishing it in a book is ideal.  

(Plus, a book is more likely to be seen than a computer document, and you don't have to worry about computer crashes or unreadable files that way.)

an 8x8 life storybook

My go-to products are heirloom-quality!  The books can really become unique treasures if you want to add digital art, background pages, etc.  I made {my mom’s life storybook} this way after she passed, and it is an absolute gem. 

Click here to get started creating a storybook.

UPDATE 2021:  To make creating your books as simple as possible, I recommend the Design & Print platform at Forever.  The beautiful pre-designed templates are free to use, and you can choose from a variety of page options that fit your needs, from half text-half photos, photos-only, or text-only pages.  This short overview of using a template with Design & Print will give you an overview so you can see how easy it is.

For more flexibility and full creativity, Forever's Artisan digital scrapbooking software is fabulous.  Here's more information on Artisan:

Note that Artisan is almost always on sale.  Click the "deals" tab here to see the current sale.

If you're looking for very simple book publishing with minimal photos, I know several people who have used and liked {BYU Print & Mail}.  I think this is a great option if you don’t have photos to include in your life storybook (although I honestly hope you do because they really bring a life story to life, so to speak).  My sister used them to publish a couple of books (a family history and a novel) that didn’t have photos, and we were very happy with the result. She had one printed with a soft cover, another with a hard cover.  They were both really nice!

Whose life story needs to be told first?  A parent’s?  A grandparent’s?  Your own?  Start with {who lives in your memory}.  The hard truth is:  we never really know how much time we have with those we love.  Make sure their stories are preserved and not lost.  This is a gift like no other.

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This post was originally published at www.livegrowgive.org on February 9, 2018, by Jennifer Wise.  Find more #familyhistoryfriday posts by clicking the hashtag below next to Labels.

Dear Burned-Out Scrapbooker,

updated 2021

Dear Burned-Out Scrapbooker,

I know.  You're just so busy now.  You know how important your photos are.  You want your kids to have their memories.  You know how good it is for your own heart and soul to take the time to sit down with your life experiences and make something beautiful out of them.  But things have changed and you just don't have the time any more.

To make matters worse, you feel guilty that those pictures are just sitting there.  Waiting.

SOME DAY.  Some day you are going to get back to it, get caught up.  Why can't they come up with something simple and quick?  Why can't there be a faster way to make sweet records of photos and memories?  It's so important!

Welcome to the day your dreams come true.  

Chances are, the pictures you're taking these days are digital.  Why not make scrapbooks that are digital, too?  You get to skip the step of printing photos, and digital scrapbooks come together a lot faster than hand-scrapped ones.

Take it from someone who has been doing it for 10+ years and is always caught up on digital scrapbooking!  

Digital pages come together quickly because--depending on which method you choose--you can use a pre-designed template, or you can use the "copy page" feature so you can copy entire pages with the click of a button, then just change out photos and text without having to re-build each page!

This also means you can make multiple pages for multiple kids with just the click of a button!

Creating digitally is just faster, but you'll get the same beautiful result when you print your digital scrapbooks.

Here are the three heirloom-quality platforms I recommend (and use and love).  Having three different options means you can choose time-saving templates or creative-time flexibility of digital scrapbooking software.  See what you think:

One great way of catching up on photos if you have a lot to preserve is the Family Yearbook!

This article, {One Solution to Too Many Photos:  A Family Yearbook} explains the organization of Yearbooks, why some Yearbooks are head-and-shoulders above the rest, and even gives a detailed plan for how to catch up preserving photos if you're behind!

AND THERE'S A VIDEO TUTORIAL AT THAT LINK, TOO!

For really simple family yearbooks, here's a great option to consider:

Or if you want to take your creative love of scrapbooking and go digital, you can make yearbooks with this program as well:

Oh, burned-out scrapbooker, you're one of my favorite people.  You know the value of what you're creating for your family.  I especially love helping YOU find easier ways to do it because you already know it's one of the best things you can do.  

With Love and Well-Wishes,
Jennifer

P.S.  Come work with me on your photos!  See this link for the next Yearbook Boot Camp, or email me at photoandstorytreasures@gmail.com to host your own Yearbook Boot Camp online with just your friends.

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February #friyay!

Welcome to our second #friyay, where we find out from actual users why Heritage Makers is fantastic.  Today's #friyay comes from a dear friend, Casey, who was one of my first Heritage Makers clients back in 2005.  She has created some beautiful gifts for her family using Heritage Makers hardbound books over the years.  She has a knack for focusing on what's meaningful and lasting, and she shares it generously.

We have a 2023 UPDATE:  Heritage Makers and Snap2Finish became YPhoto under Youngevity (which purchased Heritage Makers in 2013).  YPhoto uses only templates, so the creativity showcased here is no longer available there, and they also no longer have capability to print previously-created projects like these from the old system. YPhoto is not a photo storage site like Heritage Makers was. 

Best-in-the-industry quality and permanent cloud photo storage with guaranteed privacy are required for anything recommended here by Photo & Story Treasures, so we highly recommend Forever for:  

·        creative digital scrapbooking applicable in a variety of photo products using Artisan software

·        easy photo-memory books using free AutoPrint and Design & Print software programs

·        private, permanent, secure, and guaranteed photo and video cloud storage (triple-backed-up and bank encrypted)

·        white glove digitizing services for old memories like VHS tapes, slides, old scrapbooks (scanning), 8mm film, audio tapes, and much more

Learn more here to  find similar products at top-quality with a 100% satisfaction guarantee.

My Favorite Photo Products

This month on #familyhistoryfriday I’d like to share A Few Of My Favorite Things–some of my favorite products that make life more meaningful!  As you might guess, these will be photo-, story-, and family-related.  Today I’m excited to show you some neat things you can do with your photos.  Here's what I love:

The Yearbook:  All Your Favorite Photos from One Year in One Place

I’ve {mentioned it before}, but this remains one of my all-time favorite photo products.  I think it’s especially helpful (since it’s already organized by month) to help people catch up preserving their photos because you already know where every photo goes.  (Halloween photos  from 2013 go on the October pages of the 2013 book.)

You can have just two pages for each month, or you can add extra pages.  So often we feel like if we took 100 pictures, then we need to put 100 pictures in our books.  Where’s that rule?!  With the abundance of photos most of us have, it can be wise to have to pick your favorites.

UPDATE 2021:  I love this method for creating yearbooks, both because the product itself is heirloom quality and because the templates are amazingly easy to use, meaning you can have a whole yearbook done in no time!

  

Digital Scrap Pages (loose leaf) 

Since I started as a traditional/paper scrapbooker years ago– before digital existed –I like the loose leaf version of preserving my photos and stories.  I like being able to add in kids’ artwork or class photos as well as movie stubs and plane tickets and other 3-D items.  It's just how I roll.  And I love how much faster digital scrap pages are to make than paper ones since there’s the lovely little “duplicate page” button in my digital scrapbooking program.  (That alone is an ENORMOUS TIME SAVER for me!!)

UPDATE 2022:  Photo and Story Treasures recommends Artisan digital scrapbooking software for looseleaf pages in 3 sizes.

I know quite a few people who are trying to make the transition from hands-on memory-keeping (scrapbooking) to digital.  I think digital scrap pages are the perfect way!  They allow you to have multiple types of pages in one album–some hand-scrapped, some digital.  They allow you to swap back and forth as you use up papers and stickers and other embellishments.

Calendars

Another fantastic way to preserve your photos and make sure they’re seen and loved is making a calendar.  A family calendar at Christmastime has been a STAPLE in my family for about 10 years.  Each month has pictures of the family members with birthdays that month.  It’s especially meaningful to us now that my mom has passed away.  Every January, her birthday month, we get to see pictures of her–as a little girl, in her 70s, as a college student, holding grandbabies, etc.  It’s a gift.

Home Decor with Your Own Photos

I think one of the simplest ways to enjoy and share a precious photo is hanging it on a wall.  From metal prints and posters to canvases and wood prints, there’s no better way to capture a moment in time and share it with the world.

Home decor with your own photos can be a beautiful way to keep someone close who has passed on.  It’s a meaningful way to remember a loved one.

Get started with any of these top-quality, meaningful photo products at that link.

These favorite photo products of mine have been created, used, enjoyed, loved, and shared for years and years.  They bring meaningful connections to my home for everyone to see as well as to my family members in their own special moments.  

Never underestimate the power of a photo.

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This post was originally published at www.livegrowgive.org on February 2, 2018, by Jennifer Wise, and was updated in 2021 and 2022.  Find more #familyhistoryfriday posts by clicking the hashtag below next to Labels.

Photos to Conquer? Start With Organization.

Being consistently caught up preserving your photos starts with organization.  If you have a lot of years’ worth of photos to catch up on, organizing them first is key.  How will you know where to start if you don’t know what you have?

I’ve held on to a great piece of advice I got a few years ago, which was that if any activity takes longer than 15 minutes, it should be on your calendar.  Otherwise, you never “find time” because you’re not making time.  

#1 Set Aside the Time

So the first must-do when organizing your photos is to set aside time for it.  Don't try to "find time" for your photos.  Make time.

Put it on your calendar.  Then honor yourself by keeping your appointment with yourself.  Treat it like you would a doctor's appointment or a haircut.  

If you're not sure how you might make time, consider the first Saturday of every month, or every Friday over lunchtime.

Or, what about this 10 Minutes Daily Plan?  Check it out and see if it might be a good fit for you:

#2 Sort Your Photos

Second, you may remember from {When Photo Overload Becomes Photo Overwhelm} that you really need to SORT your photos.  If you only have 30 photos of your grandfather, just keep them all.  That’s easy.  But if you have pictures of the ground or someone’s finger, if you have 45 pictures of decorating your Christmas tree, just choose your favorites.  

You need to choose a manageable amount of photos to preserve.  

(For tips on what to do with the extras, or tips on how to know what to keep, {click here}.)

You can find a more detailed guide to sorting (and organizing) in the Photo Organization and Preservation video (from a class I taught) below.

#3 Label as You Organize

Third, LABEL!  Everything needs to be labeled as you organize.  Make a note of dates–when was the picture taken?–and who is in it.  

A picture isn’t even worth anything if nobody knows who is in the picture.

Of course, pictures come in two flavors:  printed photos and digital photos.  Let's look at how to organize each.

ORGANIZING PRINTED PHOTOS

You can go one of two ways with photos that are already printed.  1- Put the photos in a scrapbook or album.  2- Digitize (scan the photos) to preserve them in a {digital photo-storybook or digital scrap pages}.  Either way, you'll need to get those printed photos organized first.

I suggest organizing physical (printed) photos in physical folders or envelopes.  Be sure you DATE the folders, though!  I suggest a large folder or envelope with the year, then smaller folders inside with months and years.  For example, label a large envelope “1994,” then label smaller envelopes inside “January 1994,” “February 1994,” and so on.  Put your photos in the smaller month envelopes.  Then you’ll know where to find everything since it’s organized chronologically.

Here’s what I did.  

My parents were really good at putting photos in albums and writing a little something next to them.  However, before my mom died, she gave me boxes of mementos that included quite a few photos.  As I prepared to make her {life storybook}, I found photos I’d never seen before and lots of mementos that needed to be scanned so I could make the digital book.  

I sat in the middle of the room and started organizing by decade.  Anything that happened in the 1970s went in one pile, the 60s in another, and the 50s in another, and so on.  After I organized by decade, I got 10 folders for each decade.  I put 1970 in one folder and marked it with a sticky note.  I put 1971 in another folder and did the same.  Pretty soon, I had all my mom’s 72 years’ worth organized!  I could find anything.

If you don't want to preserve the hard copy (printed) photos in a scrapbook or album but instead prefer to digitize them so you can preserve them in a {digitalbook or scrap pages}, you’ll need to first have them scanned.  

Digitizing photos is a great way to share them, and digital books or scrap pages are an easy way to get multiple copies without extra work.  Scanning services can be hired out, or you can do it yourself using several methods--find scanning information here.  

Once they’re scanned, you’re ready to organize your digitized photos.

UPDATE 2021:  For white glove service for your photo scanning, try the Forever Box!  Order a box, get it in the mail, fill it with photos, and send it back.  Your photos will be scanned and digitized, with white glove service, in a couple of weeks.

ORGANIZING DIGITAL PHOTOS

First things first.  If you don’t know how to get your photos from your camera or phone to your computer, I walk you through it in this 5-minute video.  The video is specific to a phone, but it's similar with a camera.  

Once you’ve gotten that far, you’re ready for the organizing part.

If you're a metadata guru, by all means:  Do your thing.  If you are a person with a camera who loves pictures, consider this simple approach (or watch the video below for a walk through all of this):

Digital photos add a little bit of an extra challenge because they’re files.  As such, they have file names, like IMG_0889.  Your computer will automatically alphabetize your files, which puts them in chronological order.  I actually don’t recommend you go in and change the name of your files.  (Unless you've already mastered a system where you can do that.  Most people struggle with it.) 

Sure, you could change IMG_0889 to firstdayofcollege.jpg, but the problem with that is that when you go back to find it you may not remember what you called it.  And triptothebeach.jpg might be from 1999 or from 2017.

However, if you get a new camera or have some photos from your phone and some from your camera, your files will not automatically be listed by date since they have different names.

My suggestion is to keep the original name of the file, boring as it is, unless you need to add a little something to keep it in chronological order.  For example, my father-in-law and my sister-in-law and I always share photos after we get together.  My father-in-law’s come to me as DSCN_1234, and my sister-in-law’s come to me as 100_1234.  So in order to use my photos and theirs and keep them all in order, I will rename them all to fall in line, like DSCN_1111, DSCN_1112, etc.  Sometimes I will add a little something on the end if I am running out of numbers, like DSCN_1113a, DSCN1113b, etc.

Hooray!  My Photos are Organized.  Now What?

After you’ve organized your photos, you’re ready to preserve them–you’re ready to save them in a tactile way that people can see, hold, and love.  This allows the photos to be interacted with, and that’s how memories are preserved and connections are made.  This is the only meaningful way to store a photo.

Just don’t forget that after you’re done patting yourself on the back and jumping up and down now that your photos are organized (which you should do!) you need to keep doing it.  Don’t let the photos you take this month and next month stay on your camera until 2027.

A wide variety of high-quality products from the heart can be created and published
{following these steps}.

There are a lot of options for preserving your photos in print (publishing them).  I’ll be a broken record again and just say that you MUST use a high-quality way to preserve your photos.  You don’t want your book or album falling apart in 5 years.  And you MUST find a memory-keeping method you actually enjoy doing.  It makes preserving photos and memories so much easier!

One of my favorite methods is a digital yearbook, which you can learn about at {this link}. Because of the way it’s organized, it just comes together very quickly.  Or if you'd like the creative flexibility of digital scrapbooking (creating using your computer, then printing your book professionally) better,{you might love my favorite digital scrapbooking method here}.  Both are printed using the highest quality in the industry.

Make this year your year!  Conquer those photos.  Calendar your plans.  Commit to yourself.  

It’s a gift of wellness of heart and soul, both to you and your loved ones. 

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This post was originally published at www.livegrowgive.org on January 26, 2018, by Jennifer Wise.  More #familyhistoryfriday posts can be found below by clicking the hashtag next to Labels.

guest post: When Photo Overload Becomes Photo Overwhelm

The 21st century gave us this cute phrase:  "photo overload."  And it's cute until it becomes photo overwhelm.

I talk to so many people who are just overwhelmed with their photos.  They have too many, don't know what to do with them, and really feel like they're being crushed by their photos.

It prompted me to write this post on the Evolve website that I'm a contributor for.  This post has four steps to climb your mountain of photos, introduces the concept of EXTRA, and gives some perspective you may not have thought about before.

I'm so passionate about this!  We are losing our photos.  The most photographed generation in history is quickly becoming the generation without photos.  It's a tragedy.  So I want to help people avoid it!

You can read the post right here:  {"When Photo Overload Becomes Photo Overwhelm."}*

And don't forget to share what inspired you.  There are social media links at the bottom of this post as well as the original post.

Preserve your photos!

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*UPDATE:  Of necessity, the post from Evolve was moved to LifeTales Books in 2019.