Genealogy, Scrapbooking, & Card Making
By Ashley Ladd
When I’m not writing or reading, I like to hunt find my ancestors and learn about their lives. Whereas my mother’s family enjoys staying in touch with relatives and telling family stories, my father’s family is very secretive. You’d think they were guarding Fort Knox.
Cowboy Grandpa Walter Lahmann.jpgTo the left is a picture of my “Cowboy Grandpa” standing on his homestead in Montana in 1918. I love this photograph. Below is my other grandpa during WWI during his service in Germany.
I spend a lot of time on Ancestry.com finding photographs like this one, but when I’ve hit brick walls I’ve also been known to haunt graveyards in my family’s hometown of Cincinnati. Not just the offices of the big graveyards like Vine Street Hill and Spring Grove Cemetery but searching the headstones themselves for clues in the smaller cemeteries when I hit blocks.
I’ve found a couple long lost cousins through message boards on genealogy sites who have shared gems of information, who are now my Facebook friends, who continue to share historical photographs and stories.
Walter Charles Braun WWI scrapbook page.jpgBecause I found so many awesome pictures scrapbooking seemed like a natural extension to my genealogy addiction. Once I found so many terrific photographs I wanted to showcase them and make sure my progeny would know everybody’s stories. I became a rabid avid photographer, snapping photos right and left of my kids and grandkids until they begged me to stop. I want our ancestors to know our generation too.
Crystal.jpgTo the left is my granddaughter a few years ago. Saturday nights I often get together with my scrapbooking buddies and we put together pages. I’ve spent countless hours  (and money) on this hobby. It’s not cheap but it’s so much fun. Often I join scrapbook challenges on Scrapbook.com as well that prompts me to take new photographs and try new scrapbooking techniques. I’m by no means an expert but I hope I’ve done a good job being our family’s historian.
An extension of scrapbooking was card making. It’s fun to play with glue, paper, ink, and glittery stuff. Sometimes I make my own birthday and Christmas cards. Here are some samples:
Monster birthday card.jpg                                                TwoReindeerChristmasCard_5.jpg

The monster card was a birthday card I made for my granddaughter’s 7th birthday. The reindeer card is a Christmas card.

I got a lot of practice coming up with spiffy titles for the scrapbook pages which should help me come up with good titles for my books.

5 comments

  1. Scarlet Pumpernickel // September 26, 2014 at 11:11 AM  

    Ashely, welcome to the pink fuzzies! We are so pleased to have you visit to celebrate your new release!

    Ladies and gentlemen, I have to apologize because Ashley had some lovely pictures in her blog, but I couldn't figure out how to get them to post on the blog. Take my word for it, they were lovely.

  2. Barbara Monajem // September 26, 2014 at 7:32 PM  

    I'm so sad the pictures aren't visible! But congrats on the new release anyway. :)

  3. Beth Trissel // September 27, 2014 at 6:29 AM  

    Thanks for being with us and congrats on the new release. I'm sorry about the pics too. blogger can be a bear.

  4. Mary Ricksen // September 27, 2014 at 1:36 PM  

    Good luck with the new release!!

  5. Josie // September 28, 2014 at 8:39 PM  

    Welcome, Ashley, to the Pink Fuzzies and thanks to Scarlet for hosting you. Best wishes on your newest release and sorry we couldn't access the pictures.