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CREATING MOMENTOES: 100 WAYS TO PRESERVE MEMORIES

Tis the season for memories, right!?  Over these last few weeks I’ve been making a mega list of ways to preserve memories: photos, travel and school and baby mementoes, ways to use technology to save memories, and how to save the little bits and things that come with having kids and the need for saving those precious moments.  Enjoy!

100 Ways to Preserve Family Memories

100 ways to preserve family memories

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  1. Print favorite photos to canvas–instant art!
  2. Print 4×6 photos of vacations or special occasions and create a good ol’ photo album
  3. Use washi tape to hang groupings of IG photos on the wall
  4. Hang photos with a clipboard to the wall
  5. Frame photos
  6. Create snow globes with your kids’ pics to give or keep.
  7. Create a photo pendant
  8. Create a pinboard with photos surrounding a map of your travels
  9. Make clay photo holders
  10. Dress your kids in some of their favorite costumes and do a fun photo shoot
  11. Make a family yearbook with the current year’s best photos
  12. If your kids have a favorite time period, dress them up and photograph them!
  13. Do a generational photo
  14. Hang photos in a mobile-like hanging
  15. Create your own photo coasters
  16. Make a poster of your IG photos through Printstagram
  17. Use ledges to display some of your beautiful photos
  18. Everyday.Me
  19. Saving Memories Forever
  20. Momento
  21. My Wonderful Days
  22. Collect
  23. Just Family
  24. Artkive
  25. Gratitude 365
  26. Keepy
  27. Shutterfly.com (for saving photos)
  28. Flickr.com
  29. Instagram
  30. SmugMug.com
  31. Picturelife.com
  32. Dropbox.com
  33. Timehop
  34. Create a tiny album in a box of all your travel photos
  35. Collect postcards and make a booklet.
  36. Collect postcards and use ModPodge to adhere to a vintage suitcase.
  37. Save fabric patches from camps and family vacations and sew onto a blank canvas bag to use often and remember your fun travels.
  38. Make a ring-bound memory book with maps from your travels.
  39. Make vacation memory jars with items collected on your vacations.
  40. Use blank books to have your kids make travel journals.
  41. Make scrapbooks with maps.
  42. Create a summer collection box with nature finds from nature walks.
  43. Shadowboxes are great to create with travel souvenirs.
  44. Have your kids make a booklet as you travel with postcards and memorabilia.
  45. Buy a Christmas ornament wherever you travel so when you pull out your Christmas decorations you can reminisce about your travels.
  46. Have your kids make a Flat Stanley paper doll and send him to friends and family around the States and read about his travels.  Save everything in a binder to look back on later.
  47. Collect pressed pennies from where you travel and save them all in a booklet.
  48. Participate in the Junior Ranger program when you travel to state parks.  Your kids will love this.  They get a patch and a little booklet for each place you visit.
  49. Use maps of your travels to matte framed photos from the same trip.
  50. If you homeschool, take your kids to JCPenney’s for head and shoulder shots–just like at school
  51. Start a frame for their ping pong pictures with spaces for every year of school
  52. Interview your child on the first day of school
  53. Make a school yearbook of all your field trips and projects through Shutterfly.com.
  54. Take a photo of each child on the first day of school.
  55. Take a photo of each child on the last day of school.
  56. Laminate some great tests or papers and make placemats to use at the family dinner table.
  57. Using a 3-ring binder and clear page protectors, save important school papers for each school year.
  58. Use bins to organize school work year-by-year.
  59. Scan or take photos of everything that they bring home and save it on a disc or a flash drive.
  60. Save some school papers in a recycling bin and use to wrap small packages on birthdays.
  61. Use clean pizza boxes as filing boxes for papers.  They’re large enough for oversized projects and you can mark the sides and stack them up.
  62. Find an efficient way to organize art projects.
  63. Make a manila envelope booklet to store small art projects and memorabilia from the school year.
  64. Create planners for your child at the beginning of the school year.  Have them use the planners for recording assignments and writing little journal entries and doodles too.  I think this idea would be especially fun with your middle school and high schoolers.
  65. Use bins to organize all your school work for each year. 
  66. Scan your child’s art into your hard drive and print on canvas–they will love it!
  67. Again, scanning your child’s art into your hard drive, print cards for notes or thank you’s using their art for the front of the card.
  68. Have your child’s artwork made into a stuffed animal.
  69. Turn your child’s artwork into a tea towel and give to grandparents for gifts.
  70. Create memory artwork with your child’s old clothes.
  71. Make a shadowbox with some of your child’s old toys: cars, action figures, marbles, etc.
  72. Keep a record of cute things your kids say in a journal.
  73. When you make your family photo yearbooks, add captions to the photos with cute little things your kids have said that year.  Type them into a note on your phone as soon as they say them so you don’t forget and then add them in at the end of the year.
  74. Have some of your child’s cute saying made into art.
  75. Make an annual time capsule, maybe on New Year’s Eve.  Use a container like this one.
  76. Have your child’s special drawing made into a keychain.
  77. Make a Smash book
  78. Try Project Life books
  79. Have a quilt made of your child’s old baby clothes.  I love these.
  80. Save ticket stubs and event programs in a special book or folder.
  81. Make a special charm bracelet with parts of your kids’ art. Tutorial in this book.
  82. Have custom silhouettes of your children made every few years.
  83. Make clay ornaments for Christmas with impressions of old house keys as a memento of where you’ve lived.
  84. Make a memory box of index cards to keep track of your daily, everyday memories.  Only 90 seconds per day to record these little memories.

  85. Have your sonogram photo blown up to hang on the wall.
  86. Make a keepsake for your baby’s wall with a painted clipboard and her sonogram photo
  87. Bronze your baby’s shoes.
  88. Create a shadow box of items from your hospital stay
  89. Make baby memory boxes
  90. Make a scrapbook of your baby’s first year with just a photo of your baby and their milestones for that month on each page.
  91. Create a baby time capsule with those tiny baby things you need to keep.
  92. Make recordings of your baby’s sweet laughs and noises, download them onto CD’s and save to listen to later.
  93. Sew a baby memory quilt with her old blankets and clothes.
  94. Press your baby’s hand into clay with the date.
  95. Write letters to your baby and save in a box or a book.
  96. Take lots and lots of photos and videos.  Keep organized in folders on your computer by date.
  97. Take a photo of your baby during their first year in the same spot and watch them grow.
  98. Make print art with your child’s finger prints.
  99. Start a hope chest for your baby to take with her when she leaves home.
  100. Start buying an ornament to represent your child’s likes when they’re a baby.  When they leave home they’ll have a whole box of 18 ornaments to take with them.

Happy Saturday…have so much fun making those memories this December ๐Ÿ™‚

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