Welcome to Cherish Bound!

1. Cherish Bound is all about helping you find, capture, and share the memories and stories of your lives.
2. Cherish Bound knows the importance of recording your stories for your family to enjoy now, and for future generations.
3. Cherish Bound offers a unique way to preserve your memories and stories - beautifully bound books that are much more than just photo books.
4. Cherish Bound offers a full line of story "helps"; workbooks, calendars, journals, and more!
5. Cherish Bound specializes in easy, fun, fast ways to record your memories.
6. Cherish Bound offers one-on-one service: a personal consultant to help in any way you need. You don't have to be an expert to make beautifully bound memories - if you need help, I'm there.
7. I offer workshops, leading you personally, step-by-step through the writing and creative process. You won't be on your own.
8. Cherish Bound is dedicated to helping bright, fun, energetic women (and men) have successful businesses of their own - it's the best home-based business model I've seen. I'm looking for people interested in being on the Utah team - a team that will grow faster than you can blink an eye! Come on... be part of something incredible!

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Genealogy - Make Your Family Tree

Yesterday, my mom came over and we spent some time searching for some ancestors on one of the genealogy sites. I can't believe some of the stories we found about ancestors from the 1600s and the 1700s. Have you ever done this - researched your family? Try it - you'll be amazed at what you'll find. It won't be easy - the answers don't often just fall into your lap - you'll have to be a Sherlock Holmes and solve some mysteries, but it is worth it.

I can't wait to find more stories, and then put them all into a book for my family!

Here's your challenge: Write down your family tree - 4 generations back. And then, using those names, do some research and try to find out something you didn't already know.

Here are some of the great online tools you can use:
www.Ancestry.com
www.Genealogy.com
www.Familytreesearcher.com
www.Familysearch.org
www.Findyourfamilytree.com
www.Onegreatfamily.com
www.Familytrees.net


Let me know how it goes!

Monday, March 29, 2010

Story Starter Question... Discovering Me (Teen)

The new "Discovering Me" Story Starter is for the teens in your life. It's part of the "School Collection" of Story Starters from Cherish Bound. There are 4 sections in this story starter: Discovering Me, Where I Come From, Who I Am, and Where I Am Going. This story starter has 42 "fill-in-the-blank" statements. Here are two of them...

1. I want the world to see me...

2. I just wish I had more...

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A few suggestions on how to use this story starter:
a. Have a "family night", and use these statements to get to know each other better.
b. Give your teen a journal, and use this story starter to give them ideas to write about.
c. Use a statement from the Story Starter to help your teens become better writers.

If you'd like to purchase a Discovering Me Story Starter, or any of Cherish Bound's 50+ Story Starters, you can contact me at (801)360-4666 OR kara(at)cherishbound(dot)com.

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Digitizing Memories

The following is a post that appeared on my personal blog today. I thought it would help my customers out, so here you go...

I thought I'd post a few guidelines for scanning pictures here. If you are as old as me (*wink*), A LOT of your photographs are not digital. It's really a good idea to get them scanned and digitized.

Most scanners should allow you to set the dpi guidelines. For normal sized pictures (4x6 and bigger), you should set the dpi to 300. For smaller pictures (3x5s, wallet sizes, etc.) set the dpi to 600. This will take MUCH longer than the pictures being scanned at 300 (which explains why it took me ALL DAY to scan pictures), but it's totally worth it, because you'll be able to enlarge these pictures with no problem.

At the VERY LEAST, please please please fix the red eye in your pictures. Nothing annoys me more then seeing pictures where everyone looks possessed! This should be a simple fix using Photoshop, Picassa, or any photo editor you have.

Before scanning your photos, ORGANIZE them. It's doesn't take that long and it's really worth the time and effort. I usually just take a handful of photos and split them up into different piles. (some suggestions: one pile for each person in your family, trip photos, holiday photos, pet photos, etc.). Get some of those cool photo organizer boxes (they look like shoe boxes), and using the dividers and labels, place your "piles" of photos in the boxes. Then, very methodically, take each pile - scan it - put the pile back - and then move to the next pile.

It's tempting to just scan, scan, scan until you're through with all of the scanning, but I think that it's easier to organize your photos on your computer as you go. I just make a different file on my desktop for each "group/pile" of pictures and as I scan them, I throw them immediately into Photoshop, fix them, and then save them to the appropriate file. SUPER EASY. After scanning, say, all of the photos of my family members into their own separate files, I'll make a new file entitled Our Family Photos (or something like that), and drag all of the individual files into that one master file. Then, I drag that file into my Photo directory.

As I take pictures now with my digital camera, I just upload them to my laptop and put them into the appropriate file.

It really isn't that hard to take that HUGE box full of photos and digitize and organize. Think about how pleased your extended family will be when you present them with a CD full of family photos! I've been working on my family photos (ancestors) for awhile now, and in the very near future, I'll have almost ALL of the existing photos digitized and put onto CDs to distribute to all of my Aunt/Uncles/Cousins/etc. Someone has got to do it - and if it's this easy, maybe that someone should be you! In just a few weeks time, you'll have all of your photos in digital form, and ready to make into a book! Good luck.

If you decide that you just don't have the time to do this yourself, this is something that you can hire me to do. I charge 50 cents per scan - that price includes cropping to the desired size, color fixes, red-eye reduction, and minor photo repair. Plus, I'll put all of your photos onto a CD for free! You can order additional CDs for $5.00 each. You can contact me at kara(at)cherishbound(dot)com.

Saturday, March 6, 2010

Other People's Books

I don't know if any of you know this, but if you don't have the time to do your books, I'll do them for you! In fact, I'm actually working on a book right now for a client. His dad is turning 80, and this book is a celebration of his life. I'm having a great time. I'm about 1/2 done, and have about a week until the deadline.

It is entirely possible to do a life story in 2 weeks, or less.

If you'd like to work on yours, or your parents life stories, contact me and I'll help you get going. There is nothing better than giving a gift like this!

kara(at)cherishbound(dot)com. 801-360-4666

Monday, March 1, 2010

My Interview for Startup Princess

I was interviewed over at Startup Princess about my Cherish Bound business. Here's the URL if you are interested in reading the interview...

http://startupprincess.com/introducing-kara-herron-mother-and-blogger/