Why the team at Leave A Legacy is passionate about preserving memories

At Leave A Legacy we believe:

That everyone has a story to tell – no matter how seemingly insignificant it may seem.

That not just one person in a family should be the holder of the family memories.

That our lives and our memories are finite and priceless.

At Leave A Legacy we passionately and skillfully help people create and preserve family memories for generations. We use your old media to help you tell your story in a modern way.

Most homes have buried treasure in them. Loads of family memories are stashed away in all sorts of old media and waiting to be modernized and shared. We knew that people needed a place that they could go to that was full of the ideas, know-how and lots of equipment to get the job done and to share those memories.

Leave A Legacy is all about memories. Getting to see Mom when she was a child playing hopscotch… Dad in a race around the track at his high school, your parents’ wedding day, their golden anniversary spent on an Alaskan cruise. Whether it’s helping to publish a family photo book or to transfer your precious home movies onto DVD, we care for your photos and memories as if they were our own—and there’s a history behind that too.

More about Marsha, the owner of Leave A Legacy and how it came to be.

Our owner, Marsha Knackstedt holds a PhD. That’s the first amazing thing to know about this intelligent, creative business woman. Her advanced degrees (both her Masters and her Doctorate) are in agronomy—science, yes, but more stimulating than most would think!  Still, the plant-breeding expertise has little to do with her passion nowadays: helping people tell their stories and preserve them for posterity.

A proud mom, Marsha was herself a legacy-creator. For her own husband and children, she has transferred old audio and video tapes onto DVD, created custom children’s photo books, made slide shows for family gatherings, and put together numerous digital scrapbooks.

And that’s when she considered turning this abiding passion into a business.

She saw the potential for having a local gem of a studio in Fort Collins, but it didn’t happen overnight. Marsha first had a stint working for a scrapbooking company and it’s there that she heard that one in three people in the USA avidly records their stories in some visual fashion.

Bells went off.

Marsha saw where technology was headed in regards to preserving memories with digital creations—so she resolved to be on the cutting edge of this new trend.

Having forged a very personal connection to her new line of work, and with no formal training in photo-editing software, Marsha Knackstedt applied herself to tackling the technology with the same diligence that had once won her a PhD. She was determined to delve into the intricacies of PhotoShop® and other image-manipulation tools so that her creative ideas would take shape easily.

Marsha began the Leave A Legacy business in 2006. Sure enough, she was able to help her clients tell evocative stories by way of digital creations.

A stellar, multi-faceted business was created out of Marsha’s passion: 
Helping people preserve their photos and movies in a convenient, easy way.

With God as her personal compass and her father, Dick Washnok, as her guardian angel, Marsha pursued her dream of making Leave A Legacy a growing, successful business. 
And it is!

Specializing in old photo restoration, film transfers, scrapbooking and DVD slide shows, Marsha’s business has quickly become that local gem she had hoped it would be—Fort Collins clients know what incredible service she offers, how pain-staking she is about every element of a photo-production and how her creativity and technical acumen can make them shine.

Marsha knows what it means to Leave A Legacy; in fact, the only thing she doesn’t like about her work is the time it takes away from her family!  It is this personal passion that makes Leave A Legacy so unique.  If you’re looking for old photo restoration, DVD slide shows for family events, digital scrapbooking, to publish a family photo book, create a custom children’s photo book—and much, much, more—you can feel secure entrusting your memories to Marsha and the Leave A Legacy team. We know that all your photos, videos and memories are priceless – and we treat them as such.

There’s an old Chinese saying: “A man without a smiling face must never open a shop.” Marsha and her team needn’t worry about that advice—the studio is friendly as can be. It’s a big bright room with many creative stations throughout. Marsha enjoys her customers and happily encourages them in their varied projects. It’s a pleasurable place to be and there’s not a somber person on the premises.

The stars in the Leave A Legacy logo:
The largest star in the logo represents the guides that Marsha has in life and business: God; Dick, her deceased father; and Wes, her husband. The three smaller stars represent her children, Clinton, Dillon and Aspen.