Scrapbooks!

Last night I stayed up too late looking through my own Instagram feed. I assume other people must do this too? I also often will spend time reading my own blog. It’s satisfying to browse through things I’ve created, remember past experiences and it also helps me catch all my typos and grammar mistakes (eventually!).

On my private Instagram this year I’ve been posting monthly carousels of memories from my camera roll. I’m really enjoying doing this, and last night I got caught up going back over the last 6 months of things we’ve done and progress I’ve made with the garden, and then I took a trip back through the all my photos from Canada last year, and then Florida the year before that! I feel so lucky I had those experiences!

I like having this in a digital space I can pull up any time, but for the past couple of years I’ve also started getting all my favourite photos printed out and I’m slowly collecting them into scrapbooks. Part of this is so I have a backup for all my digital copies (and Instagram could be gone any time, as could my cloud storage!), but also there really is something special and solidifying about holding a printed photograph in your hands.

Scrapbooks don’t have to be fancy!

The first scrapbook I made was for our 2022 trip to Orlando, Florida.

When I used to think of “scrapbooking” it’d think of fussy layouts with carefully crafted collages and just lots of “stuff” going on – buttons, ribbons, tape, stamps.. all the stationary gubbins I see in the Scrapbook sections of The Works or Hobbycraft. I just don’t have the time/capacity to get involved in another crafty hobby in that way (I’d never get anything done!), so my approach is too keep it really simple – I just stick stuff in and write memories around it, …and live with all my spelling mistakes, and not worry about it being perfect or pretty! The Orlando book even has a photo I accidentally stuck in upside down and couldn’t move!

I quickly learned are hard fucking work, and I’m just talking about the process of sticking in photos, maps and other odds and ends… I didn’t even have any fancy layouts! Whether I’ve used photo corner stickers, or cut up double-sided tape, all the sticking and peeling and sticking and peeling takes an interminable amount of time!

It took me about 9 months on and off to get it complete!

I saved all kinds of things from the trip to stick in along with the photos themselves. I like to remember food so I saved sweetie wrappers (I do love Swedish Fish!) and a receipt for an amazing Shake Shack milkshake.

This was a theme park holiday so on the park maps I marked off the rides we went on, and wrote a page listing the rides and what we thought!

I have some sticker paper for my printer so I printed out logos for the Disney and Universal parks we visited and other visual reminders like the Volcano Bay taputapu I never took a photo of!

I even printed out a screenshot of this stupid advert that was constantly on the TV when we were in our room (in-between all the “ask your Doctor about this drug” ads, so weird). Why was this woman so concerned about people sniffing her crotch…  just don’t have people sniff your crotch all day long! It’s not a problem!

My second scrapbook was for the East Coast Canada trip I took with my Mum last year. I saved all our tickets stubs and tour maps, and even our fancy Fairmount room keys..  I don’t know if we were meant to keep those but nobody ever asked for them back!

This was a roadtrip so I printed out the maps for our routes on our travel days. It took me a while to recall and find some of our driving rest stops, but it felt worth it to keep that information – especially as some had lovely views of the St Lawrence!

For the big cities we stopped in I printed a map and marked off where we went.

I did start sharing on the blog highlights from this trip but I lost steam! You’ll find Montréal, Québec, and Mont-Tremblant but Ottawa is still in my drafts along with Toronto and Niagara Falls! But, looking back through the photos has reignited a want to share my favourite things from the remaining stops, so maybe I’ll finally do it?! Maybe!

We visited some fantastic art galleries and I like to take photos of the works that catch my attention (if they let you). I got very carried away in Ottawa and had so many photos I had to trim them down to fit them all in! I have a little guillotine which I love and has been a godsend for trimming photos!

Preserve and treasure memories

Scrapbooks do take a lot of time to make but they’re definitely worth the effort! I love having the physical object to hold and spend time with. I sometimes find my parter looking through our Florida one, reminiscing our Best Holiday Ever.  It’s also a nice way to share photos with guests, rather than holding them hostage with your phone on a slideshow!

I’ve now got to work on one for Carcassonne, and I want to fill in the last empty pages of the Orlando book with some of our other short trips away.

I am also working on more general chronological Life scrapbooks of just every day stuff, almost like a photo journal for progress with the house and garden, odd days out, what the cats have been up to (it is 50% cats), and just those little special memories.  If I order these photos once a month I’m finding it easy to keep on top of!

Maybe it’s part of being older, and having been through some low and lonely years, but it’s becoming more and more important to me to treasure the good times. I’m feeling so lucky and content with my life now, I’m having so many special experiences with my partner and our families and friends and I find it important to take time to appreciate that. Doing the slow work of peeling off sticky tabs, sticking photos in and maybe writing something about it really does that.

I don’t have many printed photos from my early adulthood. Most of my university photos were on Facebook – and my friends took most of those – I left that a decade ago with only some backed up myself. I need to get what I have of those printed and ask my friends for copies of what I’m missing!

I only have a few digital photos saved from 20-25, but I wasted those years in bad relationships and I just don’t think there are many, especially not ones where I look happy! I think this is part of my motivation too, I still find it amazing when I see myself with a big genuine smile in a photo! That’s not quite as depressing as it probably sounds, I’m also horribly unphotogenic, so cameras make me very nervous and if I’ve managed a big relaxed grin that means I was having a really great time!

If you don’t already print out our favourite photos, and like me you’d come to rely on your phone and/or social media as your album, I really recommend you order prints and make a scrapbook, or a traditional photo album of all your memories!