Memory Keeping

If you know me, you know I LOVE to take pictures. I also feel it's very important to share all those photos and memories. I share them on social sites but I also make books out of them. For the last few years I've used Shutterfly for this. I love their photo books. I can get them on sale and it is very affordable considering I didn't have to print any photos, buy an album and all of the scrapbooking papers and goodies, glue, etc. Plus I love that the kids or anyone for that matter can't take a photo out of the book and forget to return it. It will always stay in it's original form just the way I made it. And I can still be creative by using digital scrapbooking products that I can reuse over and over. I love Designer Digitals for this and Photoshop for putting it all together. Here is our 2010 book.

One thing I miss being able to do with the digital books is insert memorabilia like ticket stubs, postcards, receipts, etc. I lack creative ideas and time for putting layouts together on paper. One page could take me hours and I still wouldn't like it. However, I recently found Project Life. It is scrapbooking made simple! Photo pocket pages, cute journaling cards, and your photos. So simple yet it still looks cute and you can spend as little or as much time as you want on a page. It can be as simple as placing a few photos on a page and adding some words to the journal cards about the pictures or you can go all out. I love it! I've decided to do this for 2012. I probably will only do it for one year though because another reason why I love the Shutterfly photo books is because they are so easy to store and display. I always get the 8x8 book and it takes so little space. But, I think it will be fun to do something different next year and be able to include a little more.  This is Hunter's first year in school and our 10th year of marriage. It will be a good year to document a little more a little differently.

I can't wait for my grown kids to look back at their lives as children and remember all of the good memories and fun times we had as a family just loving each other and the everyday routine of life with little ones. Take your photos off of your camera and computer and make something for your kids to see when they are grown! :)