My albums span various seasons of my life. When I sat on my bedroom floor and created foundation pages for my first album, I was a single woman. I was teaching a class of grade 1/2 students and was living in a unit that I had bought. As the years rolled on I started dating my now husband. We got married and bought a house. My albums cover the years where we had no kids. There were pets, babies celebrating first Christmas's. They've been young kids and now, they are becoming more independent (but still young). There have been busy seasons and quieter ones, but regardless of my life stage, there have always been stories to tell. And looking back on my albums now, I love to see what has changed and what has stayed the same. What did I value in that season and chose to include in my album.
I thought that it may be fun to make a list of some of the stories that have been told in my albums. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but just a snapshot of some topics that have featured repetitively in this project over the years.
Here they are
- Pre-December Christmas events
- The tree
- Traditions- events, gatherings, baking, family recipes
- Card writing
- Memories from Christmas' past
- Work- a view from your desk, task list for the week, lunch or coffee with colleagues
- End of year celebrations and breakups- school break ups, concerts
- Food- the Christmas meal, baking, festive drinks, Making the gingerbread house, cookies
- Christmas decorations- decking the halls, the tree, the yard, ornaments, stockings
- Christmas books and movies
- Advent activities
- Christmas light hunting night drives
- Santa- letters to Santa, visiting Santa, wish lists
- The ordinary- work, shopping, school, typical mornings, A day in the life, snippet/collage of everyday items
- Giving- wrapping presents, donating to charity
- Your pets
- Kid's Art work- a picture, painting, hand or footprints (there are lots of fun Christmas themed ideas)
- Street Party
- Elf antics
- Seasonal toys- Little People nativity set, Christmas Lego/Duplo
- Holiday or day trips- a getway or daytrip to the city
- Carols by Candlelight
- Family time
- Reflections on the year that has been- a letter, tags for each person
- Your family Christmas letter
- Photos of the same thing each year- a tree, kids posting Santa letters by the same postbox, your garden
- Making fun- a candy cane hunt, picnic dinner, games night, scavenger hunt
- Santa beards made from bubbles in the bath!
- Christmas countdown
- Lists- shopping lists, to do lists, things you love, favourites...
- weather and the news
- sentence starters as journal prompts- this is why... the story of... I want to remember... (Ali has great ideas examples of these)
- include your own handwriting
I hope that these give you some ideas for where to start on your stories.