How to make an unique family tree

Families fit rarely into ready sablons, so when I tried to fill our family tree for Mila's baby book I noticed it would be better to make our own tree. Then you can make it as wide as you like, or just choose those closest relatives. 

You need: 

- blanket or other fabric to be a tree trunk and grass

- 3-4 colored paper napkins for leaves.

- Paper plates, as many as close relatives. Tip: if you like ornaments a lot, use white paper lace! 

+ what ever you like to decorate your tree. Is your family tree full of paper hearts, real fruits, candles, or personal items to symbol your family members. 

The building tree is easier if you make a first draft to paper. Use just names and list them in a form of tree. Start from to top of tree and put there the baby, then parents, grandparents etc. Add siblings.  Just like you would draw a mind map.

When you are building an actual tree, notice that you can use the bigger plates for close relatives and smaller ones for the siblings. If you have a huge family, aunts and cousins don't need a plate, you can use smaller symbols, or cut smaller round circles from light colored paper/ paper napkins. Make tree leaves from napkins. Just twofold them and cut from the fold half of leaf, so you get multiple leaves from one cut when you separate the layers of napkin. 

Photo example with teddy bears

After taking your photo, you may adjust color & lighting and add names or photographs in the picture by photoshop. If you use elliptical marquee-tool, you can get round headshot cut out from pictures. In my version those bigger plates are good for about 85x85pixels photos and smaller ones 60x60pixels. Pictures don't have to be perfectly round. You can also print photo out and add relatives by hand writing.

Example with photoshop names. 

And voilà, personal and unique Family Tree is ready!

PS you can also add ancestors in the "roots" if you like.  Just make a rocks or little signs there to make a space for the info.

In our family tree there would be  many Viking kings from Norway, King Gustav I of Sweden, Jaakko Ilkka, Finnish leader of the Peasant Rebellion and from my side there's just a big bunch of simple farmers from North Karelia. Well, maybe few of my greatgreatgreat uncles and distant cousins have been artist and painters, but that's it. And probably there has been some finnish pagans before northern crusade. So I began to feel that this great offspring of noble savages has stolen this simple Karelian maid, and history still repeats itself...haha.

Maternity moments: The very first meal.

Copyright ©Adele Enersen

We have started the solid foods... Mila enjoys them, at least externally... 

Hush, Little Baby...

First of all, thank you SO much for all your nice comments, support and lovely e-mails. We feel truly loved. Thank you!

I'd like to thank you by giving you something, it's maybe usefull and definitely free. While teething we have faced the sleeping problems with our sleeper champion, but we also found something to help that. 

*drumming* 

Baby To Sleep.mp3

The magical solution for those situations when your baby is over-tired but unable to fall asleep. I believe you parents know what I mean. Baby is first fussing, soon whining, then crying before screaming. Your little darling becomes very glingy. They may want to be held constantly but eventually they cry even while being held. And when you put them down, they cry louder. When you try to put her/him to sleep they might be seeking comfort from feeding or sucking, but that won't do the trick and they cry more, and you feel totally helpless. Sometimes singing lullabies help, but sometimes even that is too much. Regular music and mother's voice may have too much stimulation for over-tired baby.  They need their space in the same time when they need some kind of comforting. What to do?

You can hum. You can hiss, or you may put the radio silently between stations to get that hissing noice to comfort. Or you can download this 10 minutes hissing song my husband "composed". We play it from our iPhone or iPod and leave it near to Mila. (Make sure that volume is not too high and no-one is going to call...) Works like a charm!

Feel free to download it here.

I'm just a Daydreamer...

Daydream-land is still missing Mila, who is more anxious to chew toys with her brand new pearl teeths than sleep, but that's not the reason why this blog is changing.

I love you people,

When I started this blog I didn't expect this to happen. This was my funny little hobby with my constantly sleeping newborn and this blog was for my family and friends, especially for those who lived in long distance.

One night, literally one night, this blog was all over the world web news. Now in few months almost 3 million visitors have seen my little blog and I have received so beautiful, heart warming and touching e-mails and comments from daydream-fans, mothers & fathers all over the world. Thank you. I still can't reply to all of your e-mails and comments, but we try to read all. (And I've long list for my this year special christmas e-card)

...well, there are people who ain't that lovable...

Everything hasn't been a pure bliss, because I have found so many copyright violations and the last drop was that point when I found my own baby animated in banner ads. 

As an advertising professional I have to ask from designers: if you don't have a brain, don't you have at least some heart?

I really really hope that none of the parents have to find their own child pictures used without their permission. Maybe I'm just a daydreamer myself when I've been in a good faith with people in the internet. I love how people can connect through it. I've found help, friends and maybe real future friends too from it. But of course there's also bad guys here, like in the real world too.

Help me to protect my photos

Keep e-mailing me if you suspect that some one is using my photos without my permission.

I will do everything to protect my child pictures as I protecting my child too. I can tell you right away that there is never ever going to be "Mila's Daydreams" -advertising campaigns for any kind of products or baby brands. Advertising agencies all over the world have been asking these pictures and I've said no to all requests. So if you find ads, sponsor calendars, competitions, banners what so ever with my pics, it is copyright infringement. Just let me know and of course boycott that kind of advertisers. If they can cheat a photographing mother, they sure will cheat their customers too.

Here's thumbnails of Mila's Daydream pictures. All pictures Copyright ©Adele Enersen 2010

If private person has blogged about my photos before and used couple (1-4) of pictures (with my watermarks) to illustrate that with copyright marks and link back to my blog, that's ok. Of course it would be nice to remove those too, but at least, don't re-publish and spread them anymore. Please. 

Then there are all those people who have uploaded more than 10 or all content of my blog photos to their own galleries, blogs or webpages. Some have even removed my copyright mark or put their own in there, claiming that they have rights for my photos. That's another serious copyright infringement. They should be removed immediately or otherwise I will take all the necessary legal actions.

Report misusage or contact me trough e-mail from my blogger profile.

There will still be more Daydreams

So, no more Mila's Daydream pictures in the blog. I wanted to keep that first one there, because it means everything to me. The flowers she is picking are from that bouquet I got in hospital after giving birth. Well, I knew this was going to end some day anyway. I will continue taking photos every now and then, while Mila is still a baby, but this time I won't publish them at my blog, just to avoid misusage and violation. But this ain't the end of this blog either. I still want to be in touch with you people and share something from my maternity leave with you. So maybe this blog is going to be more like "While my baby is taking her nap, I try to blog about something." And sure there's going to be some creative things in the future too, let's see what we can come up. Maybe Mila is going to take pictures of me, or maybe I'll write some haiku's about her first words, or maybe there's going to be some other creative outbursts from my not-so-desperate housewife life. Mila is a great muse for sure.

Mila doing her favourite thing

The Good News:  The Book!

So many of you lovely human beings have been asking me to make a book of Daydreams. Thank you, thank you, thank you! I believe you people have made my deepest dreams come true, because I'm happy to tell you that my first daydream-illustrated book is going to be published in all the english speaking countries in 2012 by Balzer+Bray. The working title is: "When My Baby Dreams". There is always a story behind these pictures I've been taking and I'm more a storyteller than a photographer. I would be so happy if people would read these books to their kids as a bedtime or naptime stories and kids could see nice dreams when they sleep. In the future I will definitely tell more book news in the blog. Yay!

Never forget, everything is possible in the dreams. Keep daydreaming!

With Love,

Adele&Mila

xoxoxo