Personalized Christmas Gifts – Preserve your Memories

Personalized Christmas Gifts – Preserve your Memories

Photo from: http://www.modernparentsmessykids.com/2014/01/my-simple-plan-for-saving-our-memories-this-year.html

 

Make a Memory Ornament

I have been thinking about it off and on all year round. My father came up with a new tradition a few years ago for my family. During our family Christmas get together, we all will share our “memory ornament.” This is an ornament that we make or buy that represents something fun, important, or is about a story of something that happened to us anytime during our life or this past year. There are so many ornaments I could make to represent many things in my life. I am sure you are already thinking of a few for yourself, that you could make too.

10 Ways to Preserve Memories this Christmas

So how do you preserve your memories during the Christmas and New Years holiday season? I love to hear stories about different traditions that families do each year.

One year, my brother was having a hard time remembering his childhood memories. I was crushed on the inside to hear that. Then I realized that is the reason for time capsules. They help us go back in time to remember ‘the good old days.’ My brother wanted my other brother and I to start writing down as many different memories as we could about what life was like for us while growing up. That is a harder task to do, than you think especially when you no longer have the tangible items in your hand, that you always played with when younger.

Ever since this conversation with my brother it has been a lifelong goal and almost obsession to make sure my future children have multiple ways of recalling their own early years or special milestone moments in their lives.

How do You Record Kid’s Childhood Memories?

1. Keep a Calendar or Daily Journal to write down snippet notes of what you kid’s did that day. This is fast and easy, even for the person who says, “I don’t have time.” Share you wishes for your child and words of wisdom. What was your response to your kid the day they received their first certificate for participation in a sport?

2. Take a lot of pictures. With so many phone apps out there now, we have no excuses for not taking photos and preserving them in special storage places to retrieve them years into the future. A picture really can say 1,000 words, so you do not have to take the time to write out all the words to the story in the moment. However, we always suggest you jot down keywords attached to your digital or printed photo, so you know what was going on years later when you review the picture again, reminiscing. Make sure to take pictures of your day to day activities too, not just important milestone events.

3. You can make photo books, memory books, or scrapbooks to pull out and look at anytime throughout your life. You can also make videos of your kids each year, asking similar questions, to see how they have grown or their answers change over time. For example, it would be so cute to track how your kid’s answers change over time about what they want to be when they grow up. What was your first answer about what you wanted to be when you grew up, when you were little? Do you even remember your first answer to that question?

4. Save your membership cards, ticket stubs, or receipts from great experiences you had as a child. You can look at these years later to reminisce about some great memories. These are also great items to preserve in a time capsule.

5. Save your kids favorite toys or clothes (especially that first outfit your baby wore home from the hospital). What a fantastic personalized Christmas gift idea to wrap your baby’s first outfit he or she wore, then give it to them as a grown adult. It is hard to remember anything our first three years of life, because we are such young minds.

6. Make your own memory ornament representing a special moment in your life. Bring out the ornament each year you set up your Christmas tree, to relive the story all over again.

7. Make a Family Cookbook together sharing your favorite recipes. If there is a story that goes with the recipe, put it next to it in the book. Include fun photos of family members making that recipe. Write about who came up with the recipe. Put the names of the people who voted on it to be in your family cookbook and why it is their “favorite.”

8. Create a time capsule to keep your sentimental, historical, and nostalgic mementos and memorabilia in for you child. Then, years later let them open their time capsule to reminisce about what life was like when they were born or during a special moment in their lives. You can get your own decorative Time Capsule from https://www.timecapsule.com.

9. Make a Baby Hand Print to preserve your child’s first Christmas. You can also use the plaster to make an imprint of anything you want to preserve as a memory, but do not want to keep the item. For example, press your house key into the plaster and preserve Christmas memories of your first home this holiday, by making a Christmas ornament out of the imprint. See this website to help you make one, at http://www.pinterest.com/pin/70298444159499363/.

 

10. Preserve Christmas Memories by making a Shadow box, memory box, or memory jar. To see great helpful tips about how to do this, check out http://www.wholeliving.com/133829/preserve-family-history-memorykeeping-crafts.

 

So, how do you preserve your Christmas memories? Comment below to share helpful ideas with others.

Making Milestone Moments Count,

–  Marcie