Crafting Saved My Memories

I lost my digital photos on a worn out hard drive in November and although at first I was really upset, I reflected that because I used to be such a keen scrap booker I had not lost as much as I first thought. Today I am going to share my Christmas album with you. It is nearly full but it feels particularly special now that the digital photos have gone.

It started life as a plain grey board album with book rings. I have added twice as many pages and bought bigger rings to hold the bulky binding as the years have gone on. This album is nine years old. I started it for Big Sis on her first Christmas.

It is a jumble of materials: some bought, some leftover from cardmaking and some recycled items. Here are some of my favourite pages...

Because it has book rings, the pages could be moved around so after Little M was born two years later we could insert pages which had things in common. I really like this one.

There are pages that are made of old envelopes. These hide cards that tell a different story to the photos. I like this one because Big Sis looks so happy about seeing Father Christmas for the first time but the card inside the envelope shows her running away and crying with a recount of the event on the back.

This page is what made me photograph the album yesterday. I wanted my Christmas cake recipe and I knew exactly where it was. It was in the envelope full of cards or tags of the children decorating Christmas cakes over the years.

This page has a pocket to hold their hand written letters to Father Christmas. The girls love looking at these to compare their writing to now.

Craft and cooking are always a big part of our advent and these are some of our favourite crafty pictures.

It does have an ad hoc scrapbook feel. Between these full size pages are Christmas cards punched as smaller pages both horizontally and vertically.

I like to include the good, the bad and the ugly in my scrapbooking. I love the photo of Big Sis on the left who does not really like dressing up so she didn't want her photo taken.

More recently, I have enjoyed the photos of them doing helpful things at Christmas time to prepare for our family meal.

Finally, last year, the laughter we had watching them use a pair of new swimming goggles to stop dust getting into their eyes while getting a gemstone out of a mock fossil just had to be recorded for prosperity.

I will add to it this year of course but I am so thankful we have it to look back on our Christmas traditions and memories. 

Hope you enjoyed that little peek inside my Christmas scrapbook.
 I only have to work one day this week because I had holiday to take and my learning courses have come to a seasonal end. The children have one more week of school left. Whoooo! 

Thanks for dropping by.Jo xxxxx