family stories: nonna's 91st birthday

My nonna celebrating her 91st birthday with her three grandsons. 

My nonna, Lucy de Forcade Cannon, turned 91 on Tuesday.

Although she lives in Naples, Italy, I was able to Skype with her. She took great pride in showing me her birthday flowers from my father, aunt, cousin Elena and friends. She was quite literally surrounded by them!

She enjoyed receiving cake and candied chestnuts, as well as two books and a leg massager. As our conversation ended, she announced that she hadn't had her birthday champagne yet, and she had to have it before the day ended because she had it every year.

What a fun birthday tradition. No wonder she is 91 years young!

Birthday champagne might need to become a tradition. What do you think? 

From our film preservation archives | My nonna with her family in the 1950s and 1960s.

The Beginning of our Family Gallery Wall

Ever since we bought our first house almost six years ago, we wanted to create a family gallery wall. The wall never materialized at our first house, but it was at the top of our to-do list when we moved into our new house at the end of August.

This gallery wall is in our downstairs hallway, right in the center of our house. We're still on the hunt for photos and frames for it, but I wanted to share it as a work in progress. In time, we plan to add two more gallery walls going up our staircase and in our upstairs hallway.

Jonathan's side of the family isn't well represented on the wall, but we'll have some of his family photos (and the stories that go along with them) to hang and share very soon. Once we have those photos, I'll take down most of the photos that are less than 30 years old. While the photos are definitely the stars of the show, the frames are pretty fun as well. Some of them have been in my family for decades, and others came from the local Habitat for Humanity ReStore for a dollar or two each. I think the mix of intricate and plain strikes a nice balance. There are also some empty spaces for additional frames because I like the idea of adding to the wall as we find interesting frames and/or locate photos that are special to us.

Some of the photos shown here will be familiar to you. Several of them were scanned from film slides and printed by me. We love having these precious memories (and people) around us everyday.

Personal Photo Book Design

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Behind the scenes here at Gerald and Joan, we are undergoing a brand review just in time for our one-year anniversary (coming up next month). We are reviewing every aspect of our brand including our logo, services, blog, website and even the website platform. When we launched Gerald and Joan last year, our lives looked drastically different, and as we've grown and changed, we felt our brand needs to reflect those changes. One of the new service offerings for 2014 will be photo books for personal, business and nonprofit clients. To show what we can do, I wanted to share this photo book that I designed as a Christmas gift for my mother. It is 100 pages and includes many of the family stories images that I have scanned over the past few months. It was a perfect gift for her, and it was so much fun to create. I hope that Gerald and Joan will be doing many of these books for clients in 2014. They make excellent gifts for birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, the list goes on and on! :)

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Here's a peek at another photo book I created recently for my nonprofit client Habitat for Humanity of Greater Memphis.

Vintage Palos Verdes, California

For the past year, Palos Verdes, California (and the South Bay area in general) has been recurring theme on this blog (the most recent post was this one). PV was my family's home from 1960 to 1973. When my great-grandmother Elsie passed away in 1973, she asked that the house be sold and that her ashes be spread over the Pacific Ocean near PV. Her three children respected those wishes. Both of her daughters remained in California, but neither one lived in Palos Verdes again. As a child, I don't remember visiting PV very much. I think the first trip we made up the peninsula was in 1994, but I remember that it had a huge impact on me. I wanted to visit PV during every vacation, but I think we only visited one or two other times before Joan's death in 2003. After our first California vacation together in 2005, Jonathan and I began spending more time in the South Bay area, and our day trips to PV became highlights. The combination of the natural beauty of the coastline and the pristine mid-century California homes captured our hearts. After scanning so many film slides over the past few months, it became clear to me that we are drawn there for other reasons as well. It is part of our history and our family's story.

La Venta Inn in Palos Verdes, California around 1960.

Palos Verdes, California circa 1960.

Elsie's home in Palos Verdes, circa 1960.

A view of the South Bay - Redondo, Hermosa and Manhattan Beaches -- from Palos Verdes, circa 1960.

Elsie at the beach, circa 1960.

Looking up the hill from Elsie's backyard, circa 1960.

Beautiful mid-century Palos Verdes homes, circa 1960.

A view of Elsie's backyard in Palos Verdes, taken around 1960.

Another view of the South Bay, taken around 1960.

Malaga Cove Plaza, circa 1960.

And just for fun...a recent shot of the same fountain!

Also in Malaga Cove Plaza was the Palos Verdes General Store, circa 1960.

Here's the same building in recent years.

A view of La Venta Inn, looking down over Elsie's house, circa 1960.

Me and Jonathan in that same spot on our first trip to PV together in 2005. Elsie's house is to our right with the skylight.

All of the above images from 1960 are from our family's film archives and were scanned and converted to digital images by Gerald and Joan. If you are interested in having us scan and preserve your family's film slides or images, contact us here. The recent images of California were taken by my mother.