Friday, September 9, 2011

Saving Memories


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!))

4 comments:

  1. wow. you've got great sets of memories and keepers here. very creative. :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. So VERY special that you do this. Not only for yourself, but for your family and your families family. So much is just computer these days. It is rare to see the memories actually "written" down in such a precious way.

    ReplyDelete
  3. My DIL loves Snapfish, too. And I love keeping a journal, though I am a little less faithful now that I have a blog.

    I do make my blog into a book with blog2print every three months or so. I have 11 books now.

    I also love having a family photo wall.

    =)

    ReplyDelete
  4. These are all great ways to keep track of all those memories! I used to scrapbook a lot more, but now I haven't in years and I feel way over my head! It scares me, though, because I haven't even printed out pictures of Gabriel and hardly any of Jo!

    ReplyDelete

I love your comments!