Life has a way of getting in the way, doesn’t it? No doubt even the best of intentions get side-tracked sometimes, but hey, it’s OK. Release the guilt and pin this article and you’re off to a great start! 

 

Goodbye Mom Guilt!

You haven’t made annual albums for your kids and you can’t remember the last time you actually printed any photos. Each year that passes you feel farther and farther behind…and more and more overwhelmed. “Make an annual album” was on your list for a long time until you finally took it off because you realized it wasn’t getting done. But if you’re honest, you still want to do something with all those photos you’ve taken. You’re not a bad mom. Set aside your guilt. We’ve got you.

We’ve got three ideas, ranging from super-quick to more involved, to get you started. Forget annual albums. Think collections. You can do this! It’s not too late.

Pro Tip:  Ask for help if you’re still feeling overwhelmed.  Check out the resources at the end of this post.

 

Collection Albums instead of Annual Albums

Creating an album is annual practice for many and there are many benefits to this practice, but this is not the only way to curate your family memories and (shhhhh!) may not be the “best” way to enjoy your memories through the years…so when your Inner Critic is giving you a hard time because you don’t have a shelf of books neatly chronically your family’s adventures year-by-year you can reframe and recognize you are choosing to not create an annual album. It’s such a powerful mindset shift!

 

Benefits of Collection Albums

1. Less is more. Fewer books means decreased clutter.  For the minimalists in the room…
2. Collections make it easier to locate your desired photo. Who remembers what year anything happened anyway? After a few years pass they all seem to blend together and with school years not aligning with our calendar years, it just gets confusing.

 

Avoid overwhelm with these strategies

When you’re “catching up” on years of photos, it can be very easy to become overwhelmed. And if you’re like me, you avoid the things on your list that are overwhelming. The whole purpose of these “Collection Albums” is to make it easy and manageable to pull together years of memories.

Set yourself up for success by managing your expectations and boundaries:

• Keep it simple
• Start small
• Know your why
• Don’t try to do it all (or in this case, don’t try to include all the photos)

 
 

 

 

3 Simple Ways to Catch up on Years of Not Printing Photos

Here are three ideas to help you catch up on years of not printing photos or creating annual albums:

1. Abridged Adventures
2. Memorable Family Experience
3. Cookbook

Some are quicker and easier to contain that others and for each ideas we shared suggestions to help you stay focused and finish your book. Let’s explore each option!

 

1. Abridged Adventures

Honestly, this is one of my favorite ways to quickly get caught up.  I love the word abridged and I love what it means:  “to shorten by omissions while retaining the basic contents” (according to dictionary.com). You’ve probably encountered it, as I have, when reading children’s stories such as “The Abridged  Adventures” of Winnie-the-Pooh, Tom Sawyer, Sherlock Holmes, and Alice in Wonderland, among others. So why not create The Abridged Adventures of your family? True, you will have to leave some things out, but you will keep in the most important or memorable bits.  And more importantly you will have at least one book filled with years’ worth of family memories.

 

Benefits of this Approach:

• A lovely overview of your family.
• See how your family has grown and changed in one book.
• Quickly pull together years of photos into a coherent, intentional and meaningful book.

 

Pro Tips to Keeping It Simple and Staying Focused:

1. Choose a specific period of time to capture. Five or ten years is totally doable.  You may want to consider other milestones such as Birth to Grade 8 Graduation.
2. Choose one picture per month. Doing this helps to keep you focused when selecting images and can help avoid overwhelm.
3. Place one picture per page. Label each picture with the month and year and a short caption describing the picture.
4. Create a visual Table of Contents. For each year you capture use one of your favorite photos to see how your family has grown at a glance.  It’s amazing.

 

 

 

2. A Memorable Family Experience

Another great way to start is to focus on a particularly memorable or important family experience. While this may be a relatively short period of time, in reality, some moments have a disproportionate impact and influence on your relationships with each other.

Take inspiration from these families who have chosen to prioritize a memorable family experience:

• Creating New Memories: A recently divorced mom treated her four school-aged daughters to a week-long trip to Belize (luckily they got home just before COVID). Even before she gets photos on the walls she wanted to ensure they all had a book capturing the amazing experience they had creating new memories as a family of five.
• One Year Living in a Different Culture: A family with three young boys lived, worked and went to a school in a small German town for a year. This experience bonded them as they learned a new language, made friends and integrated into a new culture.  A book capturing this exceptional year is their first choice for photo projects.
• Represents Who We Are: A couple walked the Camino de Santiago from France to Spain with their 8-month old son. Their son, now 6 years old, doesn’t have any memories of this trip, but this is the book his mom commissioned because “this is a symbol of what we do as a family.”
• 3 Generations Travel Together:  A family that has lived and worked in many different areas of the world, met for six days of adventures in South Africa.  The time spent on safari, tasting new foods, and learning about apartheid created some profound moments that were captured in a beautiful photo book.

 

Benefits of this Approach:

• Defined scope makes it more manageable.
• Confidence knowing your family’s most important experiences are captured.

 

Pro Tips to Keeping It Simple and Staying Focused:

1. Choose one experience.
2. Create an outline. Use this as your guide for how you will organize your photo selection and book design.
3. Collect all your memories before you get started. Find all your photos, journals and other notes.

 

 

 

3. A Cookbook

Send your kids off to college with a cookbook of all their favorite foods AND photos of your family moments throughout the years. They will happily overlook the fact these are the first printed photos of themselves they’ve seen! Food brings people together and can also bring our memories together.  A cookbook is a lovely way to weave together the stories of a family across years and generations.

When you choose your family’s favorite recipes, whether it’s a regular menu item or a special-occasion dish, they tell the stories of your life. You may be amazed how many of your photos include food: backyard BBQs, birthday parties, camping adventures, Thanksgiving feasts, decorating Christmas cookies.  The stories are all there baked into those photos…even if you’re not a great cook.

If you’re practically minded you will love that this book can be a resource now and in the future.  As the years go on, this will become a treasured book that can help bring memories to life.

 

Benefits of this Approach:

• Yum!
• Focused method to decide what photos to include or not.
• Super-practical. You know this book isn’t just going to sit on a shelf.

 

Pro Tips to Keeping It Simple and Staying Focused:

1. Ask your kids what recipes they want. You may be surprised what they request!
2. Choose recipes to recall specific memories. You may want your kids to remember your Friday night movie tradition of tacos and caramel corn.
3. Recreate these dishes and have your kids join you and take photos. Creating the book can become a fun family project and create new memories.

 

 

 

Need More Help? Don’t Go It Alone!

You may still be feeling overwhelmed and not know how to start your project – that’s OK! We’re here to help! Worried your photos are too messy to think about starting a book project? Our digital photo organizing masterclass DPO PRO may be just what you need! For book design, look no further than the author of this post! Imagine how amazing it would feel to have a book magically created for you!  Well that’s exactly what it’s like to work with Leanne at Liv Mondo Book Design Studio. She loves to help her clients finally create the book that’s been on (and off) their list for years.  Better late than never!

 

 

 

Want more photo book ideas and inspiration from Leanne? Sign up below:

 

 

All Photos Courtesy of Liv Mondo