Memories Are Precious

How many photos do you have sitting on your laptop?

I have 8,325 (currently) in 135 events. Goodness knows how many are sitting on numerous CD's in the drawer of my desk in my office.

But not ALL of them are found there.

We have 18 Creative Memories albums (12x12) and 14 albums created online using either mypublisher.com or via iPhotos with us. Can't remember the number we have in storage in Sydney. The one's we have with us are 11 years of memories, starting when I was pregnant with MissM. No way they were going into storage!

We love reminiscing. We laugh. Retell stories. Relive the events that make us the family we are.



Where are your photos???????????????????

We all take more photo's than ever before as our mobile phones are more camera than phone these days. We snap and upload to FaceBook or Instagram all the time.

I often wonder what's happened to retail camera sales. You'd be right if you said they are decreasing, rapidly.

We still use our fancy camera. The array of modes available far out preform our Samsung phones, but the Samsung's camera is pretty awesome! Admittedly, the majority of photos that get printed into albums are from the camera. There's still a way to go with the phones camera in terms of this, and I can't remember the last time we had actual prints made.

All these instant pics on Facebook and Instagram are just that - instant 5 seconds of sharing.

But what happens to the REAL memories, the one's you want the kids to have when they leave home for college, or the one's you want your grandkids to see as a means of getting to know their family heritage.

When we're out'n'about, and see people with cameras, I wonder what do people do with all the photos they take?

What's the point of taking photo's if NOT to print them into an album to be ultimately shared?

Many years ago, I was a Creative Memories consultant - the first global company selling photo-safe products, guaranteed not to fade your photos. We preached 'living memories' to the converted; we instructed clients on the importance of 'every picture tells a story and it's your obligation to tell it' (Creative Memories called it journalling). Clients undid old, unsafe albums saving their precious memories from fading (unless they had already started, the proof was obvious), or salvaging boxes of photos from the attic/garage/cupboard/under the bed and sorting the years of accumulated memories.

Aside from the American fanfare that accompanied the monthly consultant meetings, the philosophy of creating photo albums bursting with memories resonated with me, and many others.

I was the worst consultant! I seldom embellished my pages with stickers'n'paper as to me, it was all about the photos and the journalling (and still is); the fancy schmancy pages detracted from the photos. My clients agreed, so I sold lots of pages and albums etc, but not much of anything else.

Sadly, but for obvious reasons, CM no longer exists.

It's all online publishing now.

Personally, I love online publishing, especially with my magazine and newspaper experience. It's like laying out a publication! I'm probably too organised, with my double page spread approach, and the need to have photo's in chronological order, or albums themed.

G throws his eyes to the ceiling when I ask him to proof read yet another album prior to ordering it. I know he secretly loves them!

May I share some helpful hints with you about creating your albums?

• As you download photos from your camera or phone to the laptop, create a file for the album (create title) and choose the pics you want in the album as you go as this saves time when you're ready to start the album and ensures you have ALL the photos for the album you want.
• Once the pics are in the album file, edit them. We take pretty good photos, and I'm lazy, so all I do is crop the pics
• remove unnecessary sky/grass/footpath/road/people
• focus on the main image of the pic as much as possible
• leave curious symbols from the era - cars, signs, buildings etc will one day be 'old fashioned' and be an important part of your history
• ensure the pics are in the order you want the to appear in the album
• Grab a pen'n'paper and count each 'group' of photos and start to work out your layout or how the pics will flow in the album.
• Some themes to consider:
• An annual school album for each child celebrating all that happened that year. This gets harder as they get older as you are not at school as often, but while you can make the most of it
• photos of first day school year,  
• class room, 
• teachers, 
• friends, 
• sports days, 
• concerts,
• art - OMG, photograph all the artwork that comes home!
• projects/assignments
• last day of school
• I also include MissM's ballet, drama etc in her school album as it helps to fill it up as her last few schools weren't so keen on parents being around taking photos.
• Holiday's
• Not every holiday demands a album to itself, but special holidays do.
• Reunions
• Special Events
• an album created as a gift is a truly stunning thoughtful gift
• A '0' birthday
• Anniversary
• Engagement/Wedding
• for the above albums it's nice to invite guests to send you good quality pics to be included in the album,
• depending on the stock used, (in terms of what ink pens you use) you can leave some of the text boxes blank and ask guests to sign the book
• An ongoing annual album
• Our main albums are simply a compilation of all we get up to (other than the event albums)
• As we take photos, we download them and choose the ones we want in the album and file them into the 'Dublin January '14 - ?' file til it's got about 300 pics, then we create the album. 
• We've 3 albums from the time we lived in Winchester and they are called, Winchester Book 1, Winchester Book 2 and, you guessed it Winchester Book 3.
• Filing as you go saves so much time!!!!!!!!!!!
• it allows you to write notes so you remember where you were (sometimes castles, temples, ruins, churches look the same after a while) and what memory you might want to include

I use mypublisher.com these days (but there are many more out there)  It's creative, easy to use, flexible and the company is constantly emailing offers to save money! I create the albums, G proof reads them and they sit on my laptop til a good deal arrives. 

The only downside to this is that we don't print photos anymore. Mum and my in-laws miss out on hard copy prints; we email them photos all the time so they know what we're up to, but they often ask for printed pics. It's something we just don't think about doing. 

SIL is the same. Which is sad, cos we don't have records of the kids growing up and doing stuff other than what we see on FB. When I was doing CM it was easy to leave pages blank and fill them with hard copy prints when SIL sent them .... and I did the same for her, so we could include each other in our albums. Now we both print online, it's harder for some reason to do this. 

Gosh, we don't even download to CD's anymore, it's all on the hard drive.

I'm about to sign off now and find a couple of CD's and pop as many pics on it as I can and post it to Mum, SIL and inlays tomorrow. 

What do you do with your photos?

Where are they?

Are you inspired to create an album online?

With friendship

x

#100dayshappy

Every day, for the past 100 days, I've opened FB and been greeted with MrsN's #100happydays daily instalment. She chose to count up to 100 (and not down).

I was under the impression she was doing it as she and her family were repatriating after many years as expats. That it was a way to find ONE HAPPY THING to keep her going as there are such mixed emotions swirling around one's head when embarking on this kind of move.

Along with all her FB friends looked forward to discovering what made her happy the past 254 hours, and loved her words and the images she posted to accompany them.

On several occasions I commented what an incredible memory book the #100happydays would make.

MrsN has ALWAYS seen the good in everyone and everything around her. I've never heard a sour word come from her mouth, or her fingertips on FB. She's no Goody Two-Shoes, but she is genuinely one of the happiest, sincerest, kindest, selfless people I have ever met. Sure, we've had some very deep'n'meaningful chats, and shared some pretty low points (we've all had them).

We met at a lunch that neither of us really wanted to be at - how funny is that? We started talking, and haven't stopped since. Our talking has been replaced with FB chatter, and emails until we meet up again in person.

Sadly for all of us who followed her on FB, her #100dayshappy has come to an 'end'. How sad am I, and others who wanted it to go on and on. Just ONE MORE instalment. PLEASE.

Each of her #100dayshappy made me happy. We were all living vicariously thru her experiences and observations.

I started to think, could I do this?

Could I genuinely find one thing each day that made me HAPPY? Could I open myself on FB like that, every single day? Heck, the latest fad of 3 days sharing 3 things you are grateful for was hard enough. How deep'n'meaningful and I prepared to get if I use FB as my vehicle, or should I start another blog and hope you join me ... does that defeat the purpose?

Do you think it's odd to be cautious about sharing happiness - surely it shouldn't be. it's much nicer to share happiness than sadness!

Would people take it as being egotistical?
Would people pass judgement?
Would people care?
What if no one commented under each day? (I know at least MrsN would)
Would people think you're making it up - life isn't always 'happy'
Would you make others feel less happy by sharing you're happiness?
Would your happiness encourage others to do the same, like MrsN has done?
Are you happy??????????
Are you that outgoing?
Could you share your most inner secrets?
How good an observer of life are you?

What's made you HAPPY this week? I'll share with you what's made me HAPPY this week.

• Monday: MissM willingly went to try out tennis and has enjoyed it. The happiness for me is she's discovered something that's social and is played around the world. No matter where we are, if she can play tennis she'll be able to join a club and make a friend. It's just one more thing she can add to her hobbies and interests as we roam the world.
• Tuesday: Happy to be using my skills and experience as VP of IWCD as I'm in a position to give back to the Club that's been so kind to me. 
• Wednesday: HAPPY while making Mums chicken soup for MissM and the lovely feeling the aroma gave me. It's a recipe that's not written down, but somehow through watching Mum make it all these years, I've worked out how. 
• Thursday: Feeling very fortunate that a member of the IWCD offered her BBQ 'for free' to anyone who would like it, and I was first to say 'yes please'. Happy that we've finally got a BBQ! 
• Tomorrow I can write 'Happy to have got to the gym every single day this past week. 

Mine are so ordinary compared to MrsN's - have I missed the point? Is there more going on around me I'm missing? Have I fallen into the trap of comparing lives? Will I get better at reaching deeper, being more open as the days go by?

MrsN reads ms-havachat, so I'm curious, as I'm sure you are for her comments below even tho I have an inkling of what encouraging, kind, motivating words she'll write and how humbled she'll be that she inspired todays chat. 

Was MrsN able to do this because she was living in Yokohama and life there is just, well, different? Is it because she and her family were so involved in the local community with volunteer work that there was real happy stuff going on around her to write about? Or, is expat life in a non-English speaking country, and therefore a small tight knitted community the essence of happiness? Knowing her, she'll be well able to find another #100happydays in her repatriation, as hard as it might be. She has an inner strength to look past stuff and find good.

I've a friend whose mum who floats thru life. Nothing is ever a bother, everything is a party (even a memorial service for a family member who passed away after a long illness - she thought it was lovely to have a party and catch up with friends and reminisce), everyone and everything is lovely. She's very sweet, and I wish I could be like her cos let's face it, life isn't always like that.

But if we CHOSE to focus on the good, maybe the not-so-good wouldn't be as bad?

Do we really need to experience the lows to get the highs?

We learn about opposites young in life, and some of us evolved into understanding the ying and yang of life ........... so does just focusing on the happy stuff negate the other?

Apparently, there's a world wide movement of #100dayshappy. Check out their website.

With all the crap going on these last few weeks, it might do us all good to join the revolution.

Will you join me in #100happydays?

What platform will you share it on?

Do you even need to share it? Can you simply write in a diary and look back?

With friendship

x

Inspired

Not sure what's going on but I've got chat topics coming at me from every direction.  Safely filed as 'ms-havachat conversations' they are partially written, being reworked over and over, waiting for the right time to post.

My late Uncle Jack used to keep a pen and notebook at his bed side table to capture those AHA moments just as he fell asleep. Better to be written down than forgotten during the night, or worse still, keep you awake he'd say. When I was working in advertising I did the same - and it works. There are times when life gets busy that I still do it, and it still works.


Inspiration comes from all sorts of places, any time, anywhere and you have to be ready to catch it.

The blogs I follow promote thought.
There's amazing posts on FB that friends share.
There are 'situations' to comment on - both good and not-so-good.
There's LOTS of observations of the different ways people live and behave.
There's the feeling of keeping in touch with you on a regular basis.
There's a desire to be like some of the really great bloggers I follow, to have 'LOTS' of followers, and turn this into a job as well as a pleasurable hobby.
There's the day to day musings of an expat.
There's constant change.

You'd laugh if you knew how many chats get written then deleted.

You'd cringe at some of the words that end up on the screen and then get deleted.

You'd be amazed at the ways in which YOU capture my imagination during a Skype chat, or an email.

A song, a photograph, a memory jumps into my head and I turn the laptop on to record the thoughts just in case there's more to be added later.

My goal is not to bore you with day to day trivia, or shove my opinions towards you.

My goal, maybe even my need is to stay connected, ensuring ensure friends remain part of our life even tho we are thousands of miles apart. For new friends that will never meet in person, and to expats that have found ms-havacht, my goal is to help you in any way I can engage in each and every adventure you have.

A big thank you to every one and every thing that inspires me.

What or who inspires you?

With friendship
x

Who Knew Volunteering Could Be So Difficult?!

The definition is simple enough.

Noun: A person who freely offers to take part in an enterprise or undertake tasks.

Verb: Freely offering to do something.

Where would the world be with out volunteers?

Just stop and think about your local community – hospitals, animal shelters, Meals on Wheels, churches, nursing homes, hospices, canteen duty at the local school, rehab shuttle services, the local library, every single registered charity, soup kitchens, meals on wheels, community nurses and midwives – the list is endless.

Then the global network of volunteers – World Vision, Plan, HOPE, Doctors without Boarders, Green Peace, World Wildlife Fund, Red Cross and hundreds we’ve never heard of.

These organisations wouldn’t exist but for the support and passion of their vast network of 

volunteers.

People volunteer for all sorts of reasons; giving back to their community, or they have a direct involvement with a cause, they might want to add clout to their CV, good work experience, or they have a friend of a friend who needs help, or that they simply want something to do and somewhere to do it.

MrsD is the Chairperson of a nationwide organisation supporting her daughter while in Sydney MrsE hosts an annual fundraising event for her daughters special needs school, and Mr and MrsK host an annual golf day raising funds for their children’s school.

MrsC organised a group of mums to participate in the annual Moonwalk in London because her aunt is suffering with breast cancer. Cousins in Sydney participate in Movember while others shave their heads. We all wear a Red Nose, pin a Daffodil to our clothes and have  A Bandaged Bear in a cupboard.

Mum’s just started volunteering one day a week in the gift shop of the nursing home group where my late grandmother lived. Mum always said she would ‘give back’. Several friends are volunteers, so it gets her out'n'about.  MrsH has been volunteering at her local church for years doing the weekly flowers and spent years involved in her 3 kids schools. 

Gosh, who’s not volunteered at school, or the kids football team, or sewed costumes for the annual ballet concert, worked with kids at Sunday School or on holiday camps – volunteering (and fundraising) comes in all shapes and sizes, for all sorts of reasons.

The biggest, high profile volunteer group in recent times as those at the Olympic Games – where would Sydney and London have been with out them? 

My first full on volunteer role was as VP Events on the parents committee at MissM’s school in Yokohama. Some weeks there were several meetings at school, numerous phone calls and emails - hours of work! The other VP and I would often joke this was a full time job. The friendships made as a result was one of the most wonderful outcomes of the work we did; the support and appreciation from the Head of School and staff was a delightful by-product, and the faces on the kids when we did things that directly affected them was priceless. It’s something I am very proud to have been an intricate part of.

I also volunteered at the YCAC with friends on the Kids Committee and organised a few great events for the kids before we disbanded.

So on reflection I have been a volunteer and really enjoyed it.

With quite a bit of spare time on my hands these days, and a visa stamped in such a way employment is in the too hard basket, the hourly rates of pay in the UK aren’t great and like most mums, what would I do with MissM during the HUGE amount of school holidays getting a job isn’t a viable option.

So, for me, volunteering sounded like a great way to fulfil a few objectives.

• Give my week structure 
• Get me ‘out there’ amongst our local community 
• Expand my social network
• Get my brain working again

As we don’t have any connections here to anything specific, my desire to volunteer is purely selfish. 

Back in November, I met with the Volunteer Co ordinator of a very large, well known and much loved local charity (who shall remain nameless) to see how I might volunteer. Three hours later, we agreed that the marketing/fundraising department would contact me and I'd commit to volunteering there 9am-3pm Mondays; and the occupational therapist would contact me about arts'n'crafts which I'd do every Wednesday 9am - noon. She was particularly interested in my experience with decoupage and scrap booking.

I skipped out of the building! My heart was soaring. The charity was incredible; the work they did unique and so very special. I really looked forward to being part of their team.

CRB (Police Check) and references needed to be done and then I'd start.

It's April, and I've not heard a word from the marketing department, or the occupational therapist. My CRB was approved (naturally) and the references were brilliant. I've emailed the lady I met with several times chasing her up and her response is usually 'sorry, we're really busy' or the last one 'the marketing department is being restructured and the employees are having to reapply for their jobs' SO WHAT?????

A friend of a friend volunteers A LOT and she introduced me to a few charities and one or two were of interest but one needs 3-6 month training on set days a week and they are not run all the time. The next session doesn't start til September! 

Surely volunteering shouldn't be this difficult.

I met a lady about a month ago thru a friend at school who has been in the fundraising industry for several years, and has recently branched out on her own with a rather visionary business model. We had a lovely lunch and got to know each other in terms of skills, experience, motivations etc (really did feel like a job interview), her plans for this fledgling business, and what I could offer.

I agreed to do start helping her with one local event to see how it goes before taking on more. (At least that's one lesson I've learned and remember to put into practice)

A month later, I’ve made the tough decision to tell her I won’t be doing any more events. 

Sadly, volunteering with her didn’t work and the more I thought about her business model, and told G and a few friends here, they all raised issues about it that I hadn't thought about and when I did, I also thought ???????

There's no office (well, now there is but it's about an hours drive from me) so it didn’t get me out of the house, it kept me tied to the kitchen table and my laptop in more ways that FB and emails do. She left her last job ‘quickly’ and so needs to build all the data bases. 

It’s didn’t get me ‘out there’ amongst the local community cos I’ve been at home in my kitchen on the laptop Googling schools, media (radio, newspapers and online) and creating databases. Once done it was a matter of creating a PR campaign to promote the event and sell tickets. I won't go into detail with what transpired as it sounds like I'm having a right ol' whinge, but suffice to say it got complicated and confusing and emails were flying back'n'forth between us. 

All I wanted to do was to go into an office, be told here's the PR, here's the media database - GO!

The only thing it did do was get my brain working again which I loved! It's a relief to know it still works.

We met earlier this week to brainstorm the next event (this was getting a bit too serious and involved for me) and finalise the current one. I had to be honest with her and let her know that  it wasn't working for me. Rather than going to an office and having a chat and working alongside others, I'm at home alone (again) building data bases and feeling responsible for a (min) 100 person event, and then a 600 person event. All I wanted to do was 'help out in an office situation a few hours a week' and hope she understood. She said she did and that she was really sorry it didn't work out as she appreciated everything I had done and my suggestions.

I’m not feeling very proud of myself right now but I had to be true to myself even if it meant letting someone else down. Maybe if it wasn't attached to volunteering in a fundraising capacity I wouldn't feel so lousy.

Have you ever done that? Let someone down by staying true to your self?

With friendship