Category: 
January 7, 2009
I had the most wonderful holiday gift idea for my mother, a woman who’s lived a long, productive life but is always a challenge to buy for. Why not capture the travel stories from our European family vacation in a beautiful, keepsake photo book?
This past summer, my mother, two sisters, and I traveled to Lithuania to visit the country where my grandparents had emigrated from in the early 1900’s. Although I found planning a trip for four women challenging enough, putting together a photo book turned out to be an even greater task. I alone had more than 1,000 eye-catching digital photos to choose from plus an additional 500 or so from my equally shutter-happy siblings.
The task was more time consuming than I had imagined but the end result even more beautiful than I had dreamed. Of course, being a writer helped put words to the pictures. But in the end we ended up with our treasured memories bound and captured in 12×12 format forever.
I offer practical tips in my article, Sharing Travel Photos.
Horaayy..there are 6 comment(s) for me so far ;)
WOW!!! That is an AWESOME idea – Now I feel like I have something to work towards when I travel – Then the pictures become purposeful! And I have alot of people that I can never figure out what to buy for in my family!
Thanx for the ideas!
That will be a great memory for you too and you’ll have it to share with your kids. I’m going to start one this weekend of our last family trip.
This is an awesome gift idea, and now you’ve got me thinking about the photo albums I can put together for friends, too.
Do you have any tips on how to go about sorting and organizing the hundreds of pictures stored on my computer? Just the thought of it is overwhelming!
A friend of mine just did this with her family trip and I got to see the results of this type of memory book for the first time. As a scrapbooker, I did’t think I would like it. But I was really surprised. It looked great. It was clean, but the pictures still “popped.” And you could actually read the journal entries – something that isn’t always easy with handwritting. I just may give it a try. It’s especially tempting for a gift idea – multiple copies from one effort. The program my friend used was Snapfish. What did you use?
PS. Organizing pics is easiest by date. Create a folder for each year. Then you can create smaller folders by seasons. If you are really starting with a lot of yearly photos, try grouping by event. A scrapbook page or memory book of several years of halloween cosumes or birthday cakes makes for a funny and unique presentation. It’s much more interesting than a single day’s event and allows you to capture more memories with less work. Enjoy!
As an active member of a camera club, I’ve seen several folks put together fabulous digital albums of their trips, and I was surprised that the cost was lower than I had thought. The result is a wonderful family memento, and having a trip or other family event captured in such a permanent way makes it even more special.
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