family scrapbook
My wife’s sister is into this scrapbooking hobby. A couple of seasons back she made a scrapbook as a Christmas gift for my wife with photos from their childhood. It’s turned into one of her favorite gifts.
This Fall somebody in our extended family came up the idea of a scrapbook page exchange. The idea was that every household would have a scrapbook and each family member would create a page for each scrapbook as a Christmas gift. We volunteered to buy a book for each household to hold the pages.
We always get a lot of photos enclosed in Christmas cards from relatives. What if we could convert these into an annual tradition of sending pages to add to the family scrapbook? Everyone agreed it was a good idea.
And it did turn out well. Even though there were a few surprises.
About half of us think that a page has two sides and the other half thinks it has just one side. Some family members decided to make an identical page for each household scrapbook and others decided to make a unique page. Some thought they should send all the pages to us to be redistributed and others sent them directly to each household.
That’s the kind of variety that just make things interesting. The only disappointment was that not a single adult male actually contributed other than myself. The moms of each household either did the pages themselves or oversaw the children while they cut and glued pictures onto construction paper. Each household has a unique style, mostly determined by whatever special stickers and other geegaws were purchased from scrapbooking stores.
A big surprise was how low-tech it turned out. Although most of the photos had probably started out as digital they were all used just as if they were prints from film. I just assumed everything would be composed on the computer and just one page would be printed out.
Actually I am not criticizing. Put together it makes a nice family memento. And if it turns into an annual tradition it could be something really special.
December 29th, 2006 @ 4:31 pm
I too think this was a really good idea. The fact that they are all a little different is wonderful to me. I think it makes each of the books more unique.
I agree that the fact that some of us made the pages unique and some did identical is a trivial thing, but I want to see what everyone else got and how it is different from what is in my book…
I would love to see what is done for next year.
December 29th, 2006 @ 9:53 pm
You guys should have a family reunion and pass the scrapbooks around. Every year I make a calendar with photos of the extended family. I am the chosen one because I am the only one (besides my mom) who has been keeping track of everyone’s birthdays, and I am the only one who has mastered the Calendar Creator software sufficiently to get it to say Joe’s xxth birthday or Tom and Mary’s xxnd anniversary on the little calendar squares. Only this year, I used Shutterfly because I had a gift certificate. The quality was excellent and there was a lot less stress. (Getting the picture to print on one side and the previous month’s calendar to print on the other side, correctly lined up, required a lot of concentration.) Almost all the big pictures were taken at the family reunion in July, none of them by me. Digital cameras are wonderful and so is the image editing software. I rescued a lot of great expressions from either under or over exposure.
December 31st, 2006 @ 10:16 pm
A very cool idea!
I may steal…
January 3rd, 2007 @ 6:55 pm
Oh BILL!! You have got to take a tour through a scrapbook shop and SEE what all you can do. You will be amazed!! Be prapared to spend money though as you get more and more ensconced in this hobby! I made heirloom scrapbooks for my Brother and sister 2 years ago, about our past as a family up until we each left home. THey both LOVED them. now I have to do one for each of my children. Although neither my SIster nor any of my children have heirs…
January 6th, 2007 @ 7:27 am
What a great idea. I also liked Kathy’s calendar idea. I would also put the year of birth by the names. Bill, bet your page was the best!