Memory Keeping

How do you keep track of important family moments? Do you print your photos? Store them in files on the computer? Make scrapbooks? Did you fill out baby books?

I've tried to do a few things over the years...

For about 5 years I've used SMASH books as an informal place to store receipts, cards, ticket stubs, actual printed photos, etc. smattered among some journaling. I like this format because the pages are fun and colorful. I don't feel like it has to look "perfect." Plus it's a great place to store all of the random momentos for a super affordable price (anywhere from $8-18 on Amazon, depending on the style you want).

Charlie's grooming report card... Hahaha. (He was our Goldendoodle that we had for less than a year.)

I'll put invitations, pictures, journal little stories. 

Here I included cards form our anniversary and even the monkey art Scott drew on my card. 

Somewhere I read about keeping an "Anniversary Book" -- to include a picture of you, describe how it was celebrated, important things in your lives at that moment, etc. I use a SMASH book for this and I try to make Scott write something too. I think it's fun to have our handwriting there!

For Luke's baby book, I think someone gave us a Peter Rabbit themed book and I tried to fill it out, but I mostly forgot... and I didn't love that it was already formatted and designed.

So for Norah's baby book, I decided to make a Shutterfly book-- that I just updated each month with pictures + growth updates + anecdotes. (I had a 50% off coupon + free 8x8 photo book coupon code, so her book only cost $30 or so; it also had 35? pages.)

I love how the layouts automatically resize the pictures. 

Since 2014, I've been making a Shutterfly photo book that documents the year's events. Typically, I update this book once a month so the events are fresh in my mind to journal a few details. This also helps cut down on feeling overwhelmed with doing it all at once and it only takes 30min to an hour once a month to update it.

Here are some pictures of our 2017 book that I just received this week!

(To be honest, even with 40-50% coupon codes + free shipping, this still costs me around $100 because I choose hard cover, story-telling style upgrades, and I add a LOT of additional pages-- typically my books have been between 60-75 pages.

This is what is working for me at the moment, but I love hearing about what other people do!