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Ma Cabane Au Canada

3/13/2015

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This is the story of our countryside house in Limousin region – France. A small barn that my parents converted into a vacation home; a home away from home filled with memories of carefree summer days; a happy place, a little piece of paradise, just like Line Renaud’s cabin in Canada, a place where we always return.

“Ma cabane au Canada
C'est le seul bonheur pour moi
La vie libre qui me plait
La forêt
Si le sort m'enchaîne ailleurs
Toujours l'élan de mon cœur
Reviendra vers ma cabane au Canada”


Line Renaud

Picture
1993
 In 1968, my parents bought a barn and decided to convert it into our vacation home. Renovation works lasted 5 years and were being done by local construction workers under the supervision of our neighbor and friend. Every summer, my father contributed to the renovation: he built the surrounding wall, paved the house terrace, planted trees etc. My mother took great pleasure and care in furnishing the house with antique furniture and objects that she’d discover in flea markets.

Picture
1975
I was born in 1973 and we spent our first summer in this house as a family in 1974. I took my first steps there and my first shoes are kept in a cupboard drawer as a souvenir of this great achievement.
Picture
2008
My older brother and sister had nice orange Motobecanes that they rode around the countryside and to the nearby villages.

Picture
1975
We spent 3 months each summer discovering the area. We frequently received friends and family from Beirut who spent their summers with us. My mother worked in the garden beautifying it with flowers, my father continuing his home improvement works and we kids playing, reading and helping out – year after year.

Picture
1979
My love and fascination for tractors was born there. I first drove one at the age of 7.
Picture
1980
Our lives are shaped by what we love and the places we grew up in. And those summers in this house highly contributed to the grownups we later became. Now 40 years later, we still cherish it for all the good memories and times we spent there as children and as a family.

As they say: “Charity begins at home” so when I set up forget-me-not, I started organizing my own photographs and narrating my own stories. I went hunting for all the photos that were taken during those summers. They were all kept in boxes in a cupboard in my parents’ house. I spread them out and started organizing them by dates and themes. I was so pleased to see that some were dated already and for others I put on my investigator hat and looked for hints in the photographs to be able to date and properly caption all of them.
Picture
My goal was to create a photo book that would tell the story of our summers there. I wanted to print several copies to gift to my brother and sister. I scanned the photos, then worked on designing the album. There is nothing more heartening than seeing the glow and emotion in the eyes of my brother and sister when they each received a copy of the book.
Picture
Now our best memories are within reach. They can be easily shared with our children. We only have to take out this photo book, sit together and start telling them the story.

Your photos have the power to strengthen your family’s story, traditions and values. We are a visual society and photos tell stories. We can see in our family photos how our ancestors lived, what values mattered and what life was like long before technological advances became an everyday happening.

The Association of Personal Photo Organizers reports in their Insiders Guide to Photo Organizing:
Studies show that photos have a positive impact on families by connecting generations and reinforcing positive values. In fact, many experts agree that photos have a significant impact on the emotional well being of children. Parenting and youth development expert,
Doctor G (Deborah Gilboa, MD) says that “organizing and displaying photographs connects children to our families, our values and our life goals for them.”

Once your photos are organized, you can create projects with them that you will be able to share with your loved ones: Your wedding album, a photo book you made especially for your great uncle 90th birthday, your mother's birthday video, a collection of fine art prints with your ancestors' antique photo portraits. The possibilities are endless.


Picture
My brother tells me that he looks at the photo book every Sunday and smiles. No other gift could have made an impact like the photo book of the house in Limousin.

In the end, we all become stories and memories that we leave behind. Photographs are our memory retrieval tool because they are evidence of the lives we’ve lived. They shape our experience of reality and allow us to chronicle the world and its diversity. They help us build memories and shape identities. In a study On Photography, Susan Sontag, cultural analyst, novelist and filmmaker, writes:

“Through photographs, each family constructs a portrait-chronicle of itself - a portable kit of images that bears witness to its connectedness.”

Take action today and start organizing your photographs with us.
1 Comment

Will you be remembered?

3/2/2015

0 Comments

 
Picture
One day, while going through your old family photographs, you come across this odd and blurry snapshot of a couple in a rowboat. You try to recognize the faces in the photograph but no name comes to mind. You ask your mother, and she tells you the story of your grandfather who missed the boat that was taking him and your grandmother to their honeymoon in Antwerp and had to take a rowboat to catch up with the ship off the coast of Beirut.
Now the photograph has meaning. It tells a story; the story of your grandfather who was renowned for not being punctual.
And when you show this to your children, you can tell them a story too.
And this odd little photograph can keep your grandfather’s stories and memories alive.

So what will you do with the shoeboxes filled with prints and negatives that you don’t know how to organize?

Do you actually know what images you have on your phones, computers, cameras, memory cards and hard disks?

Most importantly, what stories do your photographs tell if there’s no one to offer a narrative?

forget-me-not is a unique photo organizing service that is dedicated to organizing, preserving and sharing your photographic heritage.

“A photo organizer helps their clients find solutions for organizing, protecting, and enjoying their photos, videos and other important keepsakes and memorabilia,” said professional organizer Cathi Nelson (APPO). “By doing so we bring a sense of relief and reassurance to our client’s lives, as their feelings of guilt and anxiety are replaced by the satisfaction of knowing that their memories can be enjoyed and are safe-guarded.”

As photo organizers, we are committed to highlighting the stories you want to tell through your photographs. We help you:

●             Organize your photo collections.
As we go through the process of organizing your photos (sort, categorize, label, scan and archive), we ask you questions to capture your stories.

●             Share your most cherished memories with friends and family.
Once your photos are properly organized, we get creative with photo books, video slideshows and fine art prints to tell the stories of your best moments.

●             Protect your photo heritage — by creating back-ups of your photos and storing them securely online (in the cloud), digitally (on external hard drives) and in print.

At forget-me-not, we help you manage a lifetime of photos, providing you with a professional level of services and support that will give life back to those photographs, the precious memories they hold and the stories they tell.

Organize your photographs and preserve your memories with forget-me-not. Make sure you are remembered for the generations to come.

Start today by scheduling a free consultation session with us.



 

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