Is it daunting to think of recording a year’s worth of memories? If you’re like me, you take manypictures of many different things, leaving you with an overwhelming task: what photos to use in your scrapbook. (If you have kids, this is even more overwhelming, since they are always doing something new!) I think I might try to use a new approach this year: documenting the year with one photo per week.
Say “cheese” once a week
A photo per week? That’s right — just 52 photos per year. This approach is manageable, and it can yield amazing results:
Choose a theme
Consider a few different themes you may want to use. A few might be:
- Document your children, starting with one birthday and ending with the next birthday.
- Document a major event such as a pregnancy, an engagement leading up to a wedding, or a journal of weight loss.
- Create a “self portrait” — show a year in the life of… YOU!
- Or, create a “catchall” — document your entire family throughout the year.
Now, take pictures as you normally do. Choose a day of the week (perhaps a weekend) when you will look back at the week’s photos and select a “signature image” to represent that week, in terms of the theme you’ve chosen. Has your five-year-old started gymnastics for the first time? Maybe an image of that captures something new and special about your daughter’s fifth year.
Write about it
Next, be sure to do some journaling during the week about the special photo you’ve chosen. Don’t wait — do it during that week while the memories are still fresh! If the scrapbook is about a child, you may wish to have the child write something in his or her own handwriting about something he or she did that week.
As you generate a layout, include your photo and journaling about that week. Record the date the picture was taken. You may wish to consider an aesthetic theme such as a “page a day calendar” style. Since your album will be one picture per week, the date will be important.
A doable scrapping task
Since you only have to accomplish one page per week, set aside some time to scrapbook. It’s a very manageable goal to accomplish. Just be certain you’ve made time for scrapbooking once a week so you don’t get behind, and the images don’t become a jumble. Just one hour a week — or less — should suffice for a simple album (although of course a little more time is necessary if you are creating more elaborate pages).
The end result? An album to share with friends and family that will be cherished for years to come!
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