One important role of a mother is being the memory keeper for her children and family, particularly when the children are young. There are many different ways to go about this, and I wanted to share a few of my favorites with you.
Photo Books
This is by far my favorite and most elaborate keepsake for my children. Since I became a mom at Christmas in 2014, I have made annual photo books for each of my children. Yes, it is quite a task, but I don’t do them all at once (I’m hoping to finish the last 2019 book this weekend if that gives you an idea). This is my method:
- Save photos automatically to your favorite cloud storage (I use Google Photos).
- Start a new 8×8 inch hardback photo book on Shutterfly.com (you will need to create a free account if you don’t have one). I use the 8×8 because it’s a good size, and it’s also the size that they offer for free several times a year.
- Choose a theme (standard themes are free).
- Select your photos and add them to the project. I do this by opening Google Photos in a separate browser window, then type the month and year I want to start with, and download the pics I want into a folder on my computer. Then from the Shutterfly project I click “Add Photos From Computer”, select the files, and add them to the photo tab (I don’t like the option to have it pre-fill the pages because it doesn’t put very many on a page that way). I work with a month at a time which usually fills one or two pages in the book. The book must be at least 20 pages long, and you can add pages for an additional fee, but I don’t pay for add-ons.
You can create photo books on the Shutterfly app too, but you don’t have as many editing options and it’s more tedious, in my opinion. You can also pay for a Shutterfly designer to do the book for you, but I like to add text on each page where I journal about what we did that month, special memories about the child, etc.
The finished product (without add-ons) is a glossy, thin, personalized hardback book with as many pictures as I want to include and a journal timeline of events in their life for a total of $8 each because I only order them with a promo code. The kids love them, and we enjoy looking at them together. I plan to give them to the kids when they are grown, which means I will not have my own hard copy of all of the books, but they are all stored in Shutterfly and can be reprinted if something should happen to them, or if I want to make additional copies.
If you are a foster parent, you’ve probably been encouraged to keep a life book for any child placed in your home. I think this is a good way to go about it so that they have a sturdy, compact photo book to take with them if/when they leave your home. Ideally, I would create a page or two in each child’s book once a month so that they’re always up to date and I don’t have to spend two days on it when a promo code pops up. Maybe one day!
Christmas Ornaments
Growing up, my grandmother used to give all of her grandchildren a Hallmark ornament each year at Thanksgiving to put on our Christmas tree. When I got married, my mom packed up all of my ornaments and gave them to me for my own tree. Those are special keepsakes to me. My oldest son came to me at age 12 and he did not have many keepsakes, but we started an ornament collection for him. Each year on his adoption day we take a surprise trip and have given him an ornament to remember the trip by. It’s a special tradition just for him, so I’ll have to come up with something different for my younger four kids, but I love the ornament keepsakes. Do you have keepsake ornaments for your kids? Do you pick them out together or surprise them? I’m open to suggestions!
Cookbook
This idea is not as common, but the tradition of passing down family recipes is not new. Several years ago my mom created a family cookbook and gave a copy to each of us kids. She printed each recipe on an 8.5×11″ sheet of paper and slid them back to back into sheet protectors so they are large enough to read, fit even lengthy recipes, and can be wiped clean of splatters. On many of the recipes she included a note about a special memory of that dish. She also printed pictures of us cooking, eating, and celebrating birthdays through the years and interspersed those throughout the book. The finished 2 inch 3-ring binder is a treasure. I reference it often. I hope to make one for my kids one day too with our own special recipes and memories.
What are your favorite keepsakes, either from your childhood or your children’s? The ones I’ve listed are special to me because they are tokens of the experiences that make up our life together as a family. Revisiting them gives us an opportunity to tell those stories over and over with our children, which creates the memory for them, even if they can’t actually remember the initial event.
