Digital Scrapbooking 101 BLOG

Turning Your Holidays into Lasting Memories.

Author: Wes Waddell

Article:

Don’t you find that no matter how many times you experience holiday travel, the excitement never fades?

Unfortunately, the one thing that does fade is your memory of all the wonderful experiences and pleasures you enjoyed on your trips.

There is a way to preserve more of the memores, emotions, sights and senses… you can even pass them on to friends, family and future generations.

Would you like to know how?

Here’s how really easy it can be:

• – Keep a small journal or notebook handy on your trip. If the idea of writing everything down bores you, keep an audio journal with an inexpensive tape or new digital recorder. My best recommendation is to keep both a written and an audio journal. You don’t have to keep it with you at all times… but you should record or write down as mugh as you can each evening at a minimum so you don’t leave out any of the real emotions you had that day. Get comments from the whole family when possible so that you can capture their emotional memories as well. This makes it possible to transcribing your complete emotional experiences into a more coherent form once you return home without forgetting any of the wonderful details.

• – Take lots of pictures. I know, you probably already do that, but here’s a few things that usually get missed in all the excitement. Don’t forget to take background shots of food, table settings, gardens and even the outside of hotels or empty campsites. These make perfect backgrounds and stationery for your final memory books. Besides, with digital photos and inexpensive memory cards, it costs almost nothing to snap a few extra fill photos. I personally also create a seperate directory and subdirectories on my laptop for each day and each location that day. I then sort the photos into those directores at the end of each day while I’m compiling my journaling notes. Going through the photos each day also helps me create a more complete journal for each day as well.

• – Shop for bargains and think FLAT! Every location will offer some unique (maybe even exotic) items you can buy for very reasonable prices that will become real treasures when they later sit on your mantel at home. What gets missed a lot of times are local fabrics, papers and colors that help your minds eye recall the feelings and emotions you felt while you were there. Just keep FLAT in mind as you’ll be placing some of this in your memory book with your photos and journaling.

• – Don’t forget the paperwork. Be sure and keep your taxi reciepts, menus (when possible), postcards, boarding passes, railroad passes, left over foreign paper currency, receipts, and ticket stubs to special events. You might even like to cut out pages from any travel books and brochures you used or picked up on holiday. When you finally transcribe your travel journal into your memory book scrapbook, you’ll be able to add photos or journal in small vignettes and anecdotes amidst these visual items of your trip.

Finally, don’t make the mistake of procrastination in assembling your memory book scrapbook when you return home. I’m not going to say you need to do it as soon as you walk through the door, but I know from experience that you will find that the sooner you get started, the more easily you’ll create the finished memory book scrapbook project. Do it as a family and I just know (again from personal experience… even with teens) that this will be an enormously entertaining family activity. Besides that, we all know that the sooner you begin your memory book, the fresher your memories and emotions will be. Holiday travel is meant to be fun, even if not always relaxing. But why let this fun dim into the dark forgotten past.

If you simply follow these ideas, you will easily enjoy and “relive, again and again” your favorite travels. Do it well, and even your future generations will be living them right there with you in the future.

About the author:
Wes Waddell is retired Air Force and now spends his time indulging his passion for travel and his wifes passion for scrapbooking while living the dream of their own home digital scrapbook business. You can keep up with their current scrapbook activities on their blog, Computer Scrapbooking 101 at: BLOG.PrincessCrafts.com or join the First and largest digital scrapbook membership site on the internet at: www.myprincesscrafts.com/membership_sale.htm. You can even get FREE Downloadable Stationery at: www.Free-Stationery.com

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