However, I look back at the little shoebox full of pictures of my husband's childhood that they brought from Russia and the two photo albums I have of my childhood and I feel like its enough. I mean, who needs 500 pictures from when they were two? And then 500 more pictures from three? And four? And so on and so forth. I probably have as many pictures of Moose making a snorty face as my hubby has of his entire childhood. I don't even upload a fraction of the pictures to Facebook, and even still it seems like I have enough pictures that people are saying "Who cares!?" Oy. Taking pictures is fun. Looking at pictures is fun. But at what point is it overkill?
So I've been reconsidering how I want to "scrapbook" for the boys. I started off manually scrapbooking for Moose. While it is fun, its just not very realistic for me. It takes way too much time, money and space on the shelf, and really when I look back at it I only pay attention to the pictures themselves anyways. I have heard people suggest using an online site like shutterfly and doing an album each year, but who wants to haul 18 albums of their childhood around for the rest of their life? Or maybe 18 albums isn't too bad?
I was thinking of doing two or three albums total for each child. Something like ages 0-4, 5-9, 10-13. I found that by 13 I was taking and storing my own pictures. What do you think? Does that sound like enough? Too much? Or maybe doing a family album each year and then dividing them up amongst the kids.
What do you do for your children's albums? What about your family album? I'd love to hear some more ideas!
5 Lovin's:
You know how I am so what I do is probably quite excessive for most people :)
I have shutterfly photobooks for every holiday, birthday and every season... and some just because (heck, I even have one of my cats for Cade to look through since he loves them so much). I also have big 300pic/photo albums for loose pictures. I've filled up 5 of them for Monkey already. I do a compiled big photobook for the year, too. I have 3 or 4 albums of pics of me growing up and never felt like it was enough. There are missing birthdays, missing recitals, just missing stuff.... (even though my mom swears they are somewhere). I do the photobooks for me. I want to remember the memories. I want to see what they looked like/did/experienced/learned at age 14 months or whatever it is. Of course, I'll give them to the boys later but for now, they are for me to look back and smile. Now that Cade is a tad bit older, he loves looking through them and seeing "baby Cade" do this or that, too.
Paper scrapbooking is way too time intensive for me. I've thought about doing it digitally with photoshop but it still takes quite a bit of time/learning that I don't have right now.
LOL @Monica! I feel the same way that the photos I take are for me. I love looking at them, and since I don't print most of them out, it's like they're there for my girls if they ever want to have them, but not taking up space if they don't. And I want them, so that's good enough anyway. Plus I love putting tons of photos on my blog :)
As for the books, I know that I never felt like there were enough photos of me as a baby, since I'm the second child. I used to love looking through my baby book, which had almost nothing in it. So I definitely will do a complete baby book for each of my children and the yearly Shutterfly photobook. I want them all to have equal amounts of photos and documentation of their littleness. Miss already loves looking at her first year photobook! And again, if they don't want the books when they get older, I do!
" I look back at the little shoebox full of pictures of my husband's childhood that they brought from Russia and the two photo albums I have of my childhood and I feel like its enough."
^
I feel the same way! This topic has been on my mind a lot lately because I have over 800 pictures waiting to be scrapbooked. That's just too many! I've decided the problem is digital cameras. With a digital camera, you get SO many good shots and it's hard to pick just a few favorites.
I've decided that it's time to cut back. I plan to still do a lot of the first year, and then keep pages to special events, firsts, holidays, and birthdays.
Instead of printing all the pictures out, I'm working on making them into 12x12 prints on Photoshop and eventually get them printed out at Costco (for pretty inexpensive). Then I'll slip them into 12x12 scrapbook pages. I haven't done the math yet to figure out if it will be cheaper than making an actual *photobook* online, but right now it seems like the right choice because I'm not into the idea of making one printed book for every year of my children's life. That would be A TON of books to keep! 18x5 is 90! Can you imagine 90 books?!? And that wouldn't even be including family albums.
A friend of mine was suggesting I blog about how I was going to go about this plan, so I may do that at some point.
I hope you had a great Christmas and New Year!
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It's very similar with us. I have 7 or 8 albums filled with tons of pictures, but DH has maybe 50 pictures from his childhood. With our kids, i plan to save all their photos to a memory stick (or 2) that they can each have. I may have to change that to something else as technology gets better, but you know what i mean. That way they will have all their pictures, in folders, in one (or 2) small places instead of a zillion albums.
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