The other day I was sitting in front of the computer with my kids downloading pictures of our recent Disney Cruise when my 8 year-old daughter pointed at a picture of a baby in iPhoto. "Who's that?" she asked to my surprise. "It's YOU!" I exclaimed. We then spent close to an hour looking through old pictures, laughing, talking, and remembering.
This reminded me of when I was a child and some evenings, instead of a book at bedtime, I would choose to look through a photo album or two. I LOVED doing this. The memories and stories. It was like a chronicling of my life and a history lesson all rolled into one. When I chose my parents' wedding album it was like a fairy tale and these old pictures helped me feel connected to people and places and times before I was born. It was powerful.
But now, my photos are all on my computer and we just never seem to snuggle up and look at them. I felt bad that my daughter didn't even recognize her baby self. So, I have decided I am going to do something about it. I don't know what yet but I would love your suggestions. I am not a crafty person but am wondering how you keep the memories alive for your kids? Please share in the comments below.
Here a few of my favourite pics from our little trip down memory lane:
i love pictures of kids sleeping. they're just so out of it and turned off! it's awesome! beautiful pics. we're off to my parents' for the weekend and we're going to go through all the old albums. the girls have been asking!
Jen! This is so timely for me... I was thinking the VERY SAME THING just days ago...
The computer-age translates to seldom making albums to actually hold and thumb through. I felt the same way about our family albums - I was always so happy to break them out as a little girl, whenever we had company over. Unless you're into scrapbooking, I feel like those days are gone.
BUT! I recently saw this idea of putting loose photos in a bowl on a coffee table, so family and visitors can just go through them at will. That's pretty nifty, when you consider how the photos we take these days can be reprinted in seconds off our computers - you needn't worry about the originals - but my smallest is still too small for this practice at our house. I did put a bunch in a box on the bookshelf though - it's less tempting than a bowlfull that will just get wrecked in a matter of days. As my kids get bigger, I'll consider adding in some of old photos (the ones that are originals) and hope for the best!
I love all these pics, lady... what a wonderful family you have there!!
I love all the pics too. My girls love looking at photos of them on the computer, and the little movies I've made.
I started a few scrapbooks but alas, they seem to be stuck at 3 pages indefinitely. I have made a few books on shutterfly and apple which are great.
Tracey - I love the bowl idea!
Love the pictures of you and your family...they really do trip our memories so powerfully.
My youngest loves to flip through our iPhoto albums on the computer, and can occupy herself for hours doing that, but you're right; we're not looking at them together, or attaching the stories that go with the photos.
Though I'm not crafty at all, I used to scrapbook and took real pride in the scrapbooks that really were little time capsules of our family life. Unfortunately, to do a good job takes a lot of time. I've made a couple of PhotoBooks (there are tons of companies that do these, from Costco to Apple), and they are gorgeous mementos. You can include text, or just have the photos. My goal is to try to create a PhotoBook of each year, so that the kids (and I) can pick it up off of our bookshelf, and flip through whenever they want.
Hi Jen,
One of my best friends is a consultant with a company called Heritage Makers. They are wonderful ways to make books for your kids with really easy templates. I have started to make some for my kids too.
I think they are here in Canada but if you wanted to check them out here is my friends site. http://www.heritagemakers.com/425583
I am making a huge canvas right now to go in my living room on the wall. I love to scrapbook but with four kids it will take me forever, this is kind of the same except it's all digital. Very quick with beautiful results.
Now I want to go dig up some old pictures with the kids and have enjoy the memories.
thanks
Patty
We have tons of family pictures in frames - we have several of those large, matted frames that hold between 15 and 30 pictures each. I've also done the photobooks, which everyone loves - it's like getting a scrapbook without having to do the crafty stuff.
For the last 2 years for Christmas I have given the Grandparents photobooks and ordered a copy for ourselves and my 2 year old loves to go through them all the time. When she started day care they also had us bring in photos of her family which they just laminated and put on a ring which we now have at home and she loves to look at. We also have wall of random picture frames that we change the pictures in regularly to update them.
Jen, it was the same at our house. A couple of years ago I made photo books for each child as a birthday gift. It was easy-- I did it on the Costco website where I had downloaded pics. Each album was about only $30 to make and the first ones were about each child from birth to whatever age they were on that bday. It was a lot of fun watching them look through these gifts and the boys still go to those albums and love them. You can add comments to pictures and choose formats quite easily. It was all ready in a couple of days.
But, despite how easy they were to make, I haven't made another one in a while. Time to get on that.
I put our photo albums from the little stage of their life 0-9 in a basket in the living room. They look through them all the time
from a digital perspective - I like the slideshow that just happens in the background on my computer when it is on but still in use
Photobooks. We do them for everything now. There are some great ones that auto format & do all the work for you. Plus, we make extra copies for the grandparents -it's an easy gift and always appreciated.
This is one of the many things perpetually on my to-do list. But in reality? I have never even put our wedding photos in a book, though I did do our honeymoon, so there's that. I keep saying I need about a month or two off to get all this stuff done!
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