Guest Author - Erika Krull

With digital cameras today, families are capturing millions of precious moments with ease. You may have had a junk drawer filled with packets of developed pictures waiting to be put in the album. Now, you also may have a hard drive filling up with 10 times as many pictures. Whew…that’s enough to give anyone a headache just thinking about it all. You’d like to get pictures of your toddler and infant in an album sometime before they graduate from high school, but it just seems like so much work! Don’t fear, the easy scrapbook plan is here.

First, it’s important to know that you can’t tackle this kind of photograph “mountain” all at once or on your own. Get your best most energetic family team together – your kids! They will be excited to see their memories all over again and they will have plenty of ideas.

Second, choose a small recent event that they were all involved with. You will easily get “burned out” if you try to tackle much more than that to start with. Have the kids pick their favorite photos and be sure to cover all the basic activities you did. If you have digital photos, try to do this on the computer first. Keep the number of printed photos manageable. If you have to, divide the project into two parts. Do one chunk of photos now, save another chunk for next day or next week. Also, keep in mind the ages of your kids working on the project. The younger the ages, the fewer photos you should work with.

Third, get any other supplies together. You can use a traditional photo album with sticky pages to cut down on tape. You can also find smaller scrapbooks if each kid is doing their own. These things can often be found on sale or in discount stores. Gather up things you may have at home – stickers, pieces of ribbon, ticket stubs, maps of attractions you’ve been to, stamps, markers, construction paper, scissors, paper punches, etc. The more you use that you already have, the less daunting this project will seem.

How you proceed from this point depends on how “into” scrapbooking you may be. If each of your kids have their own memory books, be sure you have enough duplicate photos for each. If you are making one family scrapbook, then you can divide the project among all of your kids. Perhaps one could be in charge of getting the tape ready for each picture. Another could be in charge of adding a little decoration. Having each sibling do their own pages or have their own task will really make this a fun experience.

For a smaller scrapbook page, one or two pictures is plenty. Add a sticker and a personal drawing, and you have a completed page. It can be very easy to get perfectionistic about this. The main reason people have trouble starting or finishing projects is that they “think” their way out of doing them. They imagine it as being too complicated to be any fun, so why bother?

Actually, when your kids do most of the work together, imperfect is terrific. What better way to capture who they are at that moment than to let them put their memory pages together their own way? For someone who is passionate about scrapbooking, the choices for details and materials are endless. However, if you are just starting out or on a tight budget, there is no need to go to an extreme.

Making family memories is more than just doing things together. Gathering the memories together can also be another family memory in itself! This is a layering experience for everyone. You can solidify the importance of spending family time by “immortalizing” it in a memory book. There is no need to get fancy – just keep some common kid-friendly art and craft supplies on hand and you will have all that you need. The most important thing to keep in mind is this: “Keep it easy and fun.”