Simple, Special Memory Keeping: A Day In The Life

Editor’s Note: Today I am grateful for another member of the OBE Mom Posse. We have a special post from Vancouver Island mom Joanne Allair as she shares with us her special ways of preserving family memories. As we all move into holiday mode, this is a great way to share and celebrate.  Just a note, you can jump in and be a part of the Mom Posse too. Just e-mail me at [email protected] and we’ll hook you up. Enjoy!

I have always loved photos. I hoard them. In fact, have custody of the family photos from both of my grandmothers: slides, prints, albums, envelopes. I relish the having of them. However, sharing and displaying them is a whole other challenge. It follows that I love my camera, and I take a zillion photos of my kids and the things we do and the places we go. I take the kind of photos where sometimes they are looking at the camera and smiling, but most often they are not. I like to just capture the happenings. I don’t worry about poses and souvenir photos. I want them as they are.

Something that does worry me though is that most of these awesome photos I love taking so much, these visual documents of our moments, never see the light of day. They’re locked up tight on my external hard drive, and my online photo storage and sharing sites. I am a digital scrapbooker, and while I love that hobby it is not the most efficient way to share those photographic memories with the world since it’s sort of a slow process.

I do get some of those photos out of the vault: I have a big 12×12 scrapbook album for each of my kids, and when I print my layouts they each get theirs added to their books. I occasionally print bound digital scrapbook albums as well, and once a year I print a photobook with my favourite photos from the past year:

I know, I know: the word “scrapbook” can strike fear and loathing in the hearts of some people — all that stuff, those flowers and ribbons, all that cut and paste, all that money. Scrapbooking, even digitally, can be an expensive hobby as well as a time consuming one.

You don’t have to be a dedicated scrapbooker to take advantage of creative ways to document your days. There are lots of simple and creative ways to use your digital photos that allow you to actually share them with your family and friends, in real life. You can unleash the full force of your creativity if you choose, and you can also do it with minimal fuss and still achieve impressive, tangible results.

You may have heard of the scrapbooking/memory keeping phenomenons from guru Ali Edwards called the “December Daily” albums (documenting each day of December in words and pictures in a scrapbook fashion), “Week in the Life” project (a full week documented with lots of daily photos, descriptions and journaling), or the photography/scrapbooking challenge of “Project 365” (taking at least one photo a day for all 365 days of the year). There are lots of variations on these ideas in the scrapbooking community. All require a big commitment and stamina, and still mean that your loved ones may not see the fruits of your labours for some time.

This fall/winter holiday season I suggest combining the above concepts in a condensed and more manageable plan. Try choosing one DAY – a regular everyday day, or a special occasion day, and record it hour by hour. The how-to is really simple, and results in a unique, one of a kind record of that time in the life of your family. I recorded our Thanksgiving in this way, and plan to repeat it with a day during the Christmas season.

There are two simple stages to this memory keeping project. For the first stage, you simply need:

a camera

a paper

a pen

Using your camera, document what’s happening WHERE YOU ARE in your family ON THE HOUR, EVERY HOUR of that day. Using the paper and pen, jot down the time and a few words about what’s happening right then. A point form list is fine, a chart or table is great too. Long descriptive narrative journaling is not necessary (unless that’s just how you roll). Take a couple of shots of the happening on the hour, just to make sure you get one that will turn out just right, but don’t go overboard. Focus on where you are. Don’t feel pressure to race around getting everything that everyone is doing right that moment. If you’re a few minutes late, that’s okay too.

If you want to document a broader scope of the day, get a few cameras going – give one to the kids or your spouse too, and have them do the same thing alongside you. Alternatively, you could take the photos from your perspective, and have each of your family members do their own recording on paper of what they’re doing every hour. How near would that be to look back on?!

For the second stage, you will need:

prints of your photos

your recorded paper of events

an album of some kind to put them in

At the end of the day, download your camera, preview your photos, choose the best ones for each hour and have them printed at your local one hour photo place. Grab those 8-12 photos, put them in chronological order. Include the written record of the day somewhere in the timeline – at the beginning of the stack or at the end, or if you have multiples, intersperse the lists. Maybe you want to jot the time on each photo in some way. For my Thanksgiving album, I used Photoshop Elements and added text to my photos before I had them printed, but next time I will just doodle the time right on the front of my photo with a Sharpie.

After you pick up your photos the next day, set aside some time as soon as possible to assemble your album. Here’s where you could do anything that appeals to you: a small brag book type/traditional photo album from the store where you simply slip the photos in the sleeve, a DIY minibook scrapbook, a homemade album, or browse for one on etsy or at the local craft fairs. It’s all good. Your older kids could work on this part with you too. If you want, you could add a sentence or two to each photo page with just a bit more context or description.

For my Thanksgiving album, I used ledger paper that I found at my local thrift store, as well as discarded cardboard from a mailing box for the covers. I made use of some leftover ribbon from the dollar store, some of my stash of delicious japanese washi tape for decoration, and my Sharpie marker. For the cover and some inside pages I used some ephemera that I already had for crafting purposes. I used binder rings to hold mine together, but you could also tie it with ribbon or twine if that’s what you have.

Call it done! Put the album out where you can share it with family and friends. It can quickly become a conversation piece, a conversation starter, and another family memory in the making.

Tags: crafts, family, Holidays, Joanne Allair, Kids, memories, Moms, Our Big Earth Media Co., photos, scrapbooking

Category: ARTS & LITERACY, Crafts