Blogtoberfest, day 18 - Time and Money

“Like branches on a tree we grow in different directions, yet our roots remain as one. Each of our lives will always be a special part of the other.”
                                                                                              ~Anonymous

Yesterday I started telling you about me making a family heirloom and telling you a little bit about what I did.  Little did I realize how much this cost in the end and all the days, weeks and months that this took.  No, I didn't keep any of the receipts or add them up.  Personally, I just didn't want to know, I just knew it was going to be a lot.  Between copies of all the photos, scrapbook paper and pads, glue, Velcro, mounting tapes, punches, special scissors, cutting mat, paper cutter, and on and on.  Then there was the time.  I started going through photos and papers in April, 2008.  Just deciding which photos to use from the thousands and thousands I had, was a job in itself.  Then I spent numerous hours at a photo center in one of the stores, scanning and making copies of the photos I wanted.  In the end, I spent lots of hours and days from April to the end of November; 8 months! 

Unlike my father's family, my mother didn't have any childhood photos of herself, other than group photos.  So I did the best I could.  Her baptism certificate was the most beautiful certificate I had ever seen.  I had colored prints made of it, but nothing compares to the original...

Look what else I found, a record of her working at the War Department and her salary...

I also made copies of an envelope and a letter that my mother wrote to my father before they married...

My parents got married shortly after the war ended and I found both their marriage license and their marriage certificate...

My mother gave birth to two babies that never lived.  One was stillborn and the other lived for only a few days.  I can remember them asking me what I would like to name her and at the time, I loved the name Cynthia.  My mother was the rat pack of our family and saved everything, so it was no surprise to find all these papers and certificates...

Mr. Cottage has five other siblings, so I did two pages showing photos of all the brothers and sisters.

Because I had only one sibling, my sister Marilyn, I ended up doing a couple pages on her.  She was 4 years younger than me...

Shortly before she got sick, she started up her own bakery in Phoenix, AZ...

I also included some of our travels.  My father loved to drive; and drive we did, all the way to California.  I was only 7 at the time, but I still remember bits and pieces of this trip...

Wait until tomorrow when you'll see what else I included in every one's albums!