The big problem was that one night after dinner, and getting our 3 kids to bed, my wife and I were commenting on how the kids are growing up so fast. We started randomly searching for pictures on the phone and started to pass it back and forth, which was a little annoying as we each tugged on the phone for a turn. Then we tried to display the pictures on the TV, which was slow and had technical challenges.
We felt guilty for not being better organized with these pictures. With limited time, the thought of sorting through thousands of digital pictures was overwhelming. We had created photo-books in the past, but this took a lot of time and the use of tedious online tools.
A few days later, I was struck with an interesting idea. A friend of mine was into bullet journaling, a fun and creative way to record everything you want in a unique and personal way. Instantly, it was clear to me that this would be a great way to create a yearly personal keepsake book to capture our kids memories that would be unique to each of them. Further, it would get our kids to be more creative, outside of too much screen time!
Our plan was to find a memory book we can use to save not just photos, but also messages from friends and family and somehow capture a snapshot of our kids today. We found some baby memory books and generic scrap books, but not what we wanted and nothing that felt timeless and was made to last.
So we decided to create one. We went through numerous iterations, picked the best materials to last years and obsessed over design, so it would be a beautiful & timeless keepsake. We kept it simple and fun, so it can be done in less than an hour and we can involve the kids.
We feel like this has transformed our family in more ways – it gives us as parents a way to feel more organized, less guilty and proud to create something really special for our kids each year. It provides us a family activity with quality time, that gives our kids a physical keepsake and we all can enjoy it whenever we want.
