Saving Memories

 Over at Kelly's Korner Blog,

there's a link party to share ideas

for saving

photos, kids' artwork, memories, etc.

 I thought I'd join with my hodge-podge

of memory pack-ratting.

Sometimes, I make cards out of my kids' artwork that I especially like.

I've done scrap-booking,

but somehow, time has dashed away from me...

so now I slip loose pictures into albums when I get them

and mark little bits next to them.

 Artwork can be added

with editing by the artist as well.

Can you name this famous crew?

I did take some time to make an album for our anniversary a few years back.

 I wanted to spare all those photos from getting lost,

so I did pages on our first farmette,

our lives,

 our current farm,

our kids,

my husband's photos from Iraq

(which has the added touch of his own editing),

 and family portraits in the back.

My new love is Snapfish.

 At Christmas time,

they have great sales,

so I try to take the time to do a book up of our lives from the year.

It takes some time,

but it's nice because there is a large assortment of 

background papers to choose from,...

photo arrangements,...

 and quantity of photos wanted for each page.

The same backgrounds can be used to make it look like a story...

 

 or different backgrounds so they separate thoughts.

 One can also choose to edit with just a few words...

 or a paragraph.

For this one, I had a picture of a letter,

and blew it up enough to be readable in the book.

There are fun ways to display the pictures as well.

 The pictures are just printed on the pages of the book,

of course,

but I like the way they display,

and I don't have heaps of photos to try to get to

(well, I do order some of my favorites,

but my heaps are smaller and more bearable this way).

I'm a pack rat,

so I also keep a copy of our Christmas letter from each year...

and have 15 years worth stashed in the fire safe.

Also in the fire safe is my journals.

 I have been writing in journals (diary) since I was twelve.

 Most of my journals were given to me.

I love to decorate them with clippings that I can't pass by...

 and it's fun to go back and read the things I wrote

when I happen to come upon them once in a while.

I doodled a lot when I was in college to keep from falling asleep during long, early lectures...

 and some of those doodlings have made it into journals.

 It's fun to see that the things I pasted into my journals decades ago

are still pictures and thoughts that I love.

I really need to try to write in them more...

 since the last few times I have written have had too much time sitting in between.

But even if nothing more gets put into these various forms,

I've probably written much more than my kids will ever want to read

and

I hope the memories we make will be the better thing.

What do you do to keep the days of yesterday alive today?

(I am not being paid for my "advertisement" of Snapfish,

I just appreciate their product

(although if they wanted to pay me,

that would be fine with me!))