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Stefani Twyford
  • Female
  • Houston, TX
  • United States
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At 1:10pm on December 22, 2009, Stefani Twyford said…
This is the time of year when we gather with our families and close friends and community to celebrate the holidays. It’s a special time of year often accompanied by many traditions, some of them passed down many generations, some of them new as we blend families or add new family members who may have come from other cultures. The cool thing about traditions is that we’re the ones that get to pick how we’re going to celebrate; what foods we’ll eat, what games we’ll play, how gifts will be distributed and what stories we will tell.

Another annual tradition is me writing a blog, a newsletter article or speaking publicly about how important it is to take advantage of the fact that friends and family are together and you have the perfect opportunity to work on your family history now!

Believe me, I understand how easy it is to get swept up in the shopping, and cooking and celebrating. Taking time to actually create opportunities for family members to talk about their past or their futures takes a bit of planning. But honestly, it’s not that much work and there’s so many great things that you can do.

1. My favorite thing is to get kids involved in documenting family history. Buy a bunch of disposable cameras and give each child (obviously not the very young ones) a camera and a pad of paper and pen, and assign them a relative to photograph and interview. Perhaps mention something they may have in common with that relative. If your son is into football and your grandfather was the high school quarterback, let your son ask him questions about his sports career and how that shaped his life. You may need to coach each kid and give them some specific questions to ask their assigned interviewee but I guarantee you that by the time they are done, each will know and understand the other a bit better.

Read the complete story here
At 11:16am on December 18, 2009, Stefani Twyford said…
My blog just got voted one of the top five personal history blogs for 2009 by Dan Curtis. What an honor! Thank you Dan :)

The Top Five Personal History Blogs for 2009. « Dan Curtis ~ Professional Personal Historian
At 11:39am on December 8, 2009, Stefani Twyford said…
Last week the American Chronicle published a beautiful article about what it is we do here at Legacy Multimedia.

While it’s always great to get PR, I particularly like this article because I felt that writer Pam Vetter asked the right questions and framed all the responses into a context that really gets to the essence of what it is that we do.

Because the process of creating a video biography or personal history is so detailed, it’s difficult to communicate in an elevator speech (that is how much information you can communicate to someone while an elevator goes up one or two floors and is a standard of networking and promotional coaching.) Traditional advertising usually fails for us because how do you communicate everything we do and the experience of working on a family history in a 3×5″ space? When I am being glib, I will say that what we do is make people cry. There is some truth to this. The experience of seeing your family or a family member honored and their stories told can be deeply moving. I have even heard from a couple of readers that this American Chronicle article had them in tears. This is great to hear since it shows me and Pam that we really communicated the emotion of how we help people.
Complete blog article continued here...
At 6:53pm on December 2, 2009, Stefani Twyford said…
Legacy Multimedia: Visual Storyteller Stefani Twyford Reaches Far Beyond Celebrity Life Stories. Featured article in the American Chronicle - December 2, 2009
At 10:47am on November 30, 2009, Stefani Twyford said…
Time to Write That Holiday Letter!

The annual tradition of the holiday letter is a great way to keep in touch with our far-flung loved ones; an opportunity to update friends and family on career changes, family news and other achievements of the past year. Often it’s the only communication we have with some of our friends. Traditionally, these letters have earned the reputation as a vehicle for self-aggrandizement. Braging about the clever things our kids have done or a laundry list of vacations and fabulous social occasions we’ve participated in. So much so that there has been a recent backlash to this annual ‘fake autobiography’ with people chronicling the intimate and often sobering details of their lives in much the same way reality TV profiles modern America. I’m not an advocate of these ‘tell all’ letters but I do think that these letters can be a rich opportunity to share who you are and some of your own history with others.

For some new ideas on the age-old letter, look to the internet. There are some great websites that give you advice, templates and artwork to use in your annual letter. Christmas Letter Tips is one such site. Consider allowing your children to write the letter. They provide a different perspective and are often good at getting right at the heart of what they want to recognize and acknowledge about the previous year. Several years ago, I wrote a holiday letter from the perspective of our family dog. He shared what it was like living in our house and what he dreamt about at night. It was a huge hit and I got comments back for years from people who got a kick out of reading it. We even received a few responses from other friends’ dogs.

You might consider using this opportunity to pen a remembrance of something that happened in your own life. A story that allowed you the opportunity to learn or grow, or an experience with a beloved family member. Many of these stories haven’t been shared.

This movie trailer for one of our recent clients. The full movie won a 2009 Videographer Award of Distinction in the Tribute Video Category.

Stefani Twyford's Blog

Stefani Twyford

Memory and Craft

I was recently watching “Craft in America“, PBS’s excellent series covering the major influences that play a part in each artist’s craft. The particularly episode I watched was episode V – Process, that looked at how an artist achieves the skill to become proficient. It profiled several artists about how they have learned their techniques. Artist Tom Joyce, was talking about how he has learned technique from a very old blacksmith. They showed them together, this very old man sitting in a chair w… Continue

Posted on October 13, 2009 at 10:40am —

Stefani Twyford

Legacy Lists – Organizing The Family Information

I recently realized that while my two sons are grown, 25 and 22, my will lists my brother as the executor of my estate. My oldest son lives here in Houston and it has occurred to me that I need to start grooming him to be my executor, showing him where all the important papers are and basically letting him know what needs to be done in the event that something happen to me. Where are keys, deeds, instructions, etc. Then I could release my brother as executor from the estate, which I’m sure would… Continue

Posted on October 11, 2009 at 1:21pm —

Stefani Twyford

Create Your Own Family Bible

We often do large photo archiving projects for families that involve scanning and creating digital records of photos albums, boxes of loose photos, newspaper articles, certificates and other family mementos that a family wants preserved. Families want this service because it provides a backup should anything happen to the original as well as a architected filing storage system that makes it simple to find any photo within minutes. If you have a large family, there is no need to argue over who ge… Continue

Posted on September 26, 2009 at 2:56pm —

Stefani Twyford

Little green Blog - TreeRing Preserving memories of childhood and our future earth

Preserving memories "Green" - a look at Tree Ring, creators of yearbooks for the internet generation.

Little green Blog - TreeRing Preserving memories of childhood and our future earth

Posted on September 23, 2009 at 10:35am —

Stefani Twyford

The Objects and Memory Project

From The Objects and Memory Project web site:

"The documentary film and educational initiative Objects and Memory is about how we respond to history while it is happening and how we tell our stories through the otherwise ordinary things in our homes and museums that are associated with people, places, and events.

The film was the PBS national prime time special in commemoration of the seventh anniversary of 9/11. With narrati
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Posted on September 12, 2009 at 4:29pm —

 
 
 

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