A friend of mine shared with me how she had a Christmas memory book where she wrote down a few memories to look back on from each year. I loved the idea and had to come up with my own version.
I found Our Christmas Story: A Modern Memory Book by Korie Herold. She has a few other memory keepsake books that I also have. I loved the timeless design and linen covers. They are beautiful and look great on the shelf.
Brent and I have put out a Christmas card every year since we were married so I thought it would be fun to start the memory book from the very beginning. I got a little ahead of myself and started labeling each year starting from when we got married only to find out that I quickly ran out of room in the book. Thankfully I was able to fix it and decided to give each year only two pages. I used my label maker to cover up the years I wrote down and certain prompts I didn't want to use to customize it. That way I could use only half of the allotted pages for each year to make room for the many years we had and those to come.
And thanks to blogging and taking lots of photos, I am able to look back and fill in the past fourteen years relatively well! It is so fun to look back at all of our family Christmas photos from years passed in one place.
For each year, I include our Christmas photo as well as a polaroid of a favorite memory from the season. I use my instax printer to print digital photos onto a polaroid.
I focus mostly on things we did, favorite memories of our kids, a little about decorations, and a "mama's favorites" section that is random things that I want to remember or loved.
Over the past few years, as my two oldest have gotten older, it has been a goal of mine to have more intentional traditions. I know I still have many years to establish family favorite traditions and meals. But in order to cultivate our family culture, I have learned to take notes and figure out what works and what we love every year. Both so that we can focus in on our favorites but also to simplify my life a little. I only want to pour my energy into the most important things during the holidays so that there is room for me to enjoy them as well.
I like that this Christmas memory book highlights these things. And hopefully will be a special place that my children can come back to as they get older to remember and reflect on their most treasured memories of the season.
I did go through and mark pages for each year of the past. Over time I am working on filling them in. But for now the year and photos are already in place. And that way I can at least keep up with each current year.
This has been a fun little project to work on over the past few years that I know I will continue to love to look back on for years to come. Here are a few more photos from our Christmas memory scrapbook.
