Art/History
Several years ago my mom spent a week in Pennsylvania visiting an Amish family. They had no art or decorations on their walls save one thing: A family tree.
Photograph from Martha Stewart
Decorating your home with your family history is an amazing way to connect your family with the past. I love the idea of connecting my children to their roots.
Like all families, we have a few skeletons in the closet… and we have some wonderful ancestors, who live admirable lives.
I have a few pictures of our ancestors in our home:
This photograph is of my great grandmother and her family. She is the older girl in the picture. I look at the pictures and can see family resemblances.
These photographs are of my ancestors, Louisa Kent Booth and her daughter Hannah Booth Morgan. Louisa was born in Calcutta, India in 1836. Her father was a British officer and her mother was Bengali. I loved to hear stories about her when I was young. She was quite an amazing woman. She immigrated to the United States and left behind a life of servants and luxury for a life of hard work on the Utah frontier.
I want to have a framed family tree for our home, and have been looking for the right one. I found a free template at Martha Stewart.com which could be printed and then copied onto a large sheet of paper.
I also found a wonderful website which sells family trees called Grill Your Granny.
I love the Celtic Rose tree, but they have many wonderful options ranging from 3 to 8 generations.
Surrounding my family with pieces of our history is a great way to remind us all that the lives we live now really do matter.
Amazing! You’ve got a relative from India. How sweet and unique for our little area. We have a good friend from India that comes to eat dinner at our house once a month. He was there yesterday. He’s a great kid.
The Martha version is my favorite, but how did you make it work?
What paper, and method?
Bridgette, that is my hang up. You can have it printed large at Fedex Kinkos… but they only have white paper. You can create a document with textured paper in Photoshop, which they can print, but I don’t know how it will look. And it’s expensive, around $9 a square foot. Grill Your Granny trees are actually more cost effective, and they are really well done. I would love something simple and that allows me to write the names of my children at the bottom.
Ancestry.com has been a wonderful resource for finding family & more details about their lives. I do wish there was a beautiful way to display all the generations.
Oh, I love geanology and family trees! I like this one a lot…it’s simple and pretty. I’ve seen a handmade version using smooth birch sticks and leaves.
http://gifts.redenvelope.com/home/familygenealogytree-30003304?viewpos=3&trackingpgroup=productsearch&ref=REDorganicgglbrand_red%2benvelope%2bfamily%2b
I gave my husband the Celtic Rose family tree for Christmas. It is beautiful. His side of the tree is nearly full while mine has many empty branches. I guess you know who needs to step up the family history work.
Thanks for the reply! If you find out a way to do the Martha thing, drop me a comment.
And the birthday party ideas, I AM DYING FROM CUTENESS!
Ahhh, what a way to go.
I just watched a program last week on BYUTV called the Generations Project where they had a descendant of Louisa Kent Booth who was reaching her, her story and her family. I recognized her picture on your blog as soon as I saw it. Did you know about this? Have you seen it? How interesting. You should definitely check it out!
Hi Jen, Yes that program was of my grandmother. I was able to watch it. My mom’s cousin, James’ father, called my mom to let us know about it. The interesting thing is, I started writing a draft of that post months ago and ran it before I knew about the program being on. It was so fun for me and for my family to see her story told on the program. I never knew about my ancestors from Manila and Portugal. I also want to visit the family member shown on the program who has collected all the letters and photographs about our family history.
I have some black and white photos of my grandparents on the walls of my home. Whenever I pass them, I think of them, especially now that they are not with us anymore…
Calli, I found the coolest family tree at the Beehive Bazaar at Christmas time. I need to pull it out this week because I want to make a simplified version for my Activity Day girls. I’ll send you the etsy shop.