How do you document your family’s story? Growing up, my parents never had any pictures hanging up around the house. If you wandered through our childhood home, you wouldn’t be sure who lived there. This is always subconsciously in the back of my mind and when we bought our first home, I knew I wanted to document and display our lives. Here are a few ways that we document our family’s journey:
Family Yearbooks
Every month, my husband and I dump all of the pictures from our phone into a Google Photos Album. At some point while we’re watching TV, I cull through – deleting the multiples or the blurry pictures. At the end of the month, I upload my favorite pictures from the month into a Shutterfly album (I use the same format every year) and write the highlights of that month from our calendar. By November, we have a completed family yearbook that we print through Shutterfly and wrap up to open together as a family on New Year’s Eve.
Weekly Pictures to Document Your Family’s Story
When my daughters were born, we took a picture (almost) every week of each of them, sitting in the same chair in our living room with their lovies (a stuffed fox and a stuffed lamb). I would upload the picture, label them with what week it was and toss it into a folder on my desktop. For their first birthdays, I printed all 52 pictures and strung them up as a decoration in our hallway. I loved them so much, I still can’t bring myself to take them down!
Annual Family Portraits
Every year, we book at least one family photo shoot to document our family as it grows. It is such a priority in our family that we set aside an annual budget for pictures to make sure we have no excuses to get it done. I also love printing my favorite pictures on canvases to display on the walls of our home.
What do you do to document your family’s story?
