These ideas for a holiday scrapbook will help you save your family’s memories.
Scrapbooking is a perfect way to chronicle your family?s precious memories, a way to capture those special moments before they slip away. The holiday season can be a time of scurrying around taking care of one errand or chore after another, but it is also a time when memories are made. Use some of these scrapbooking ideas to create a memento that will last for years to come.
Get everyone involved
Scrapbooking is an easy, paper-based craft that everyone can do. While getting the kids involved may mean sacrificing the element of perfection, the important thing is that you will be making more memories while you create your holiday scrapbook.
If your children are old enough, have each child pick their favorite part of the holiday season to craft into a scrapbook page. One child can take cookie decorating; someone else might do trimming the tree, or Christmas caroling. Separate all the pictures that have to do with each event, and allow the kids to create their own memory page.
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A picture a day
One way that many families commemorate Christmas is by using an Advent calendar. The kids open a window for each day of December, leading up to Christmas Eve. If you have a family tradition that you take part in during December, add one more step ? taking a picture. You?ll have one photo for every day leading up to the big night, and your Christmas scrapbook will become an Advent tradition in itself.
Words and pictures
When putting your holiday scrapbook together, journaling is a good way to cement the thoughts that go with the photos. Add in Christmas poems, verses from holiday cards, Scripture verses, or anything else that adds to your idea of the holiday. If you don?t have perfect handwriting ? and who does? ? you can use your computer to print the words in a festive font.
If you?re including Thanksgiving in your holiday scrapbook, have every member of the family ? and anyone else you celebrate the day with ? write down the things they are most thankful for. Those can work as tags under the photos of your turkey day celebration.
For New Year?s scrapbooking ideas, incorporate the resolutions and goals that you and your family are making for the upcoming year. Take a photo of each member of the family on New Year?s Eve, ringing in the New Year, and then place the photos and resolutions together on your New Year?s pages.
Remember your heritage
I lost both of my grandfathers when I was still too young to realize the heritage of memories that they took with them. If I could go back, I would journal the memories my grandfathers had of Christmases during their growing up years, during the years of the Depression, and during my veteran grandfather?s service in World War II.
Ask grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins for favorite memories, recipes, and other traditions that are precious to them. You can add these words to pages with photos of your relatives, and those pages will become more and more precious as time goes by and age takes its toll. You might want to choose a separate scrapbook for these memories, like a classic leather bound album. After all, these precious memories are destined to become a family heirloom.
The most important thing about your holiday scrapbook is that it should reflect your family?s individual style. As you look through the book during the years that follow, you will have a cherished memento of the holiday season.