Do You Preserve Your Child's Special Memories or Events Through Scrapbooking?

I did journals for their first two years...

my mom chronicles their life until 18...for each of her grandchildren...pictures of their parents, grand parents and great grandparents - family history - then their life - the day they were born, brought home from the hospital, etc. whatever we send her - report cards, etc. she puts in their memory book. She gives it to them when they graduate high school. She takes great care in putting the books together....so far my niece and nephews and daughter have enjoyed it. She puts in their thank you notes for gifts received from my parents...so much is in the books...

She only has three left to do - my brother's son and my two boys.

As for art work? What we love? we put on the wall. Others? We take pictures and save them that way...I'm tired of having papers all over the place.

there is much you can do!!!

Are you kidding? I have a hard enough time just keeping up with regular housework.

I make a calendar for each child. The top is pictures from that month, and then each day I write what we did (if it's notable at all), or new favorite colors or songs, illnesses - basically, anything and everything. What's been really fun is when my second child came along, I hung my first child's first-year calendar up again, so that I could see when they did various things (he walked first, she spoke first). It also reminded me of things I had done with my eldest that I hadn't yet done with my youngest (techniques to try for picky eating, that sort of thing). Those calendars are my treasures.

No.

And I feel extremely pressured by society and scrap booking enthusiasts to get started.

It's totally not my cup of tea. I'd much rather play the piano, read, take a walk, watch a good movie...I will not sit down and cut and paste pictures. Ugh.

Try this. Get photo albums, and make decorative covers for it.

That gets your creative outlet going. Get a creative photo editor like PhotoElements and make creative borders or photo collages you can add to your printed works.

Make the photo albums into the "scrapbook" You can make a colourful background for the "concert" tickets to see Milkshake, or the theatre tickets from toddlers first movie.

This way if you cannot keep up with it, you still have a creative unique piece for your photos and treasures.

Hope this helps.

Not a scrapbook...wish I was that creative. But I did start an email account for my daughter when she was born.

It's "dear.(insert name)@gmail.com

I send her emails- usually with pictures or little videos, and just write to her. About what she did that day, cute thing she said, whatever....Lessons I hope she learns, sharing my love for her....all types of things.

It's fun. I am thinking I will have to start up more than one, since I do send pictures and videos and I'm sure I will fill up her email space quota someday....but my hope is that I will give her the email username and password when she is older snd it will be a fun memory for her to have :)

It's also fun for me to read them back too...

If you have time to scrapbook with 1 and 3 year-year-olds around the house, you're a better mommy than I! LOL

No, I have no interest in scrap booking. I took snapshots of my my daughter when she was little - some of them are in an album, but not with all the fancy deco stuff - just pictures on pages. Some are in frames. Some are in a shoe box.

I don't scrapbook but I do make yearly photo books for both my girls using iPhoto. I also am very good at photographing important/special days in their lives like the first day of school, dances, family gatherings, all holidays and vacations etc. I have also become a pretty good photographer:).

I make scrapbooks through Shutterfly. They are a lot less time consuming and cheaper than traditional scrapbooks (Creative Memories, etc). I love them!! I also make them for the grandparents!

Yes, to your question! I have two kids - for each one I have a journal that I periodically write in to update on what's going on in each of their lives; I keep a scrapbook for each one but not the fancy schmancy type - I don't put in a bunch of stickers and decorate it; I just put in any notes and cards, etc., that I think they'll maybe want to look at when they're older; I have a photo album for each one that I keep (when I was doing regular film developing, I would automatically order three prints: one each for their albums, one for mine!); now with digital I can just order ones that are specific to each of them. Then I also have a "memory box" for each one - it's one of those big plastic boxes. Things that don't fit into a scrapbook are put in here - I always put a note or sticker with the item so they know when and why they received it. They each have their little cap and blanket from the hospital when they were born; first spoon; first rattle, shoes, etc.

I don't know if they'll appreciate what I've done but I know if my Mom had done this for me I would have loved it. (Now as I go thru my Mom's stuff I am finding little things like notes and drawings I had given her when I was little - I had no idea she had saved so much of it - gives me a warm fuzzy!!!)

Good luck!!

I started doing the paper scrapbooking when my daughter was born. It was fun for me and gave me a creative outlet. I didn't mind spending the money because I enjoyed it and I felt like I was making my daughter a priceless keepsake.

Then my son was born 3 years later and, of course, I wanted to do the same for him. Doing duplicate books started becoming a chore and it got VERY expensive and extremely time consuming. I started to feel obligated and stopped enjoying it.

I recall trips to the scrapbook store spending $80+ to do Thanksgiving and Christmas pages for both kids. It stopped feeling creative, it just felt like I needed to get the pictures in the book and be done with it. It was SO time consuming scrapbooking with paper.

That's when I decided to stop. It was no longer fun, way too expensive and I dreaded the chore of it. I decided to do on-line photo books and it worked perfectly for me. I really like Shutterfly. They have tons of ways to make the pages your way with lots (almost too many) background and "stickers" to choose from. I could include more pictures on a page and more journaling too.

I do my books from birthday to birthday and they are birthday presents my kids very much look forward to getting. I have a scanner so most of the paper keepsakes can be scanned in and put in the book that way. If there are things that can't be scanned in, I bought large adhesive pockets for the back of the book to store those things in.

Also, what I really like, is that I work on my daughters book all year - just keep it saved and add to it as things happen and are fresh in my mind. At the end of the year, I make a copy of her book and "tweak" it for my son. Most of their pages are the same, since they live parallel lives, but it's so easy to change the things that are different for them.

When I'm done, I let them sit in my Shutterfly account until they have a 50% off and free shippping discount and buy them at that time.

Clearly that's what I recommend since it's worked so well for me.

Since I love scrapbooking, I have started a memories scrapbook of my daughter's life. She also has one of her own to create, so the two of us can scrapbook together. (She's 5 now.) I have to admit that most of my photos, scraps & memory pieces are still organized (in chronological order) in boxes, but since this project is an ongoing one, we will have fun for a long time working on it. The book is in chronological order, and I design each page as I go along. I begin with the photos and scraps/memory pieces that I want on each page, and then I design from there. I am fortunate to have a great scrapbooking store near me (which is owned by a scrapbooking expert with great ideas) as well as a Michael's craft store for supplies. I also order online from various scrapbooking websites. Making the book is such a fun thing to do! Good luck with yours!

I scrapbook as a creative outlet. It serves the dual purpose of creating a great way for my son to remember or learn about events in his life. I rarely do holiday pages, but I do a birthday page every year. The other events relate to just everyday things like his favorite activities at different ages, trips we've taken, friends, family, pets. It is a fun way to socialize as well since I have a group of moms I scrapbook with and I attend scrapbook retreats once in awhile.

i started a scrapbook with my first, but i only did the first two pages and havent touched it since (almost3 years ago) . . . so instead i fill out those little baby books and put their milestones in that so they have it when they're older. As for all the pictures i take, what i PLAN on doing is organizing all of them by month and year (i did most already) and making picture books online for each year. It will probably cost about 200-300 bucks on shutter fly, but i figure it's once a year and it will be cheaper than getting prints of every picture and then putting them in an album. This way, you can also customize the book and make it look like a scrapbook.. you can add txt and dates for pictures if u want, (i.e. picture of first step? type the date and summary of it on that page).. another site i really like for making picture books other than shutter fly is picaboo. I've ordered books from both, and picaboo has really good quality books, and TONS of customizations compared to shutter fly.. the only reason ill probably use shutter fly tho is cuz i already have most of my pictures uploaded and organized on there.

I did a small paper scrapbook once. It felt like a chore and I was so glad when it was finished. Now I just continue to do online photo books for each year.

I wait until I get a free book offer and do them on Shutterfly, Snapfish, iPhoto, etc. Whichever I get the offer for. I will do small books for special events, like when we go to India, but usually it is just a year of memories. I organize all of my pictures by month/year, so after my son's birthday, I'll pick out a few for each month and put them in a book. I do my books in chronological order. My son's birthday is just before Thanksgiving, so first page is Thanksgiving and then Christmas right after. Last page is always his birthday. I don't do a lot of journaling, but I will caption each photo or group of photos.

The digital books are so easy to do. It takes me less than an hour to put one together. I usually order at least two at a time. One for me and one for my son's father. With them being online, you can order more if one gets damaged. You can also share them with friends and family if you want. My son is 6 and he likes looking through the books. I have a box for all of the physical items I'm keeping.

I love scrapbooking, but who has the time? Once I became a stepmom I no longer have time to sit down and scrapbook.

I do an "end of the year" album on shutterfly. The great thing about digital scrapbooking is you can make multiple books. They also don't take as long to make.

I use Art Kive, an iPhone app to take pics of artwork. I can make quick notes and maybe make a digital scrapbook later.