Last year, David and I read a book a week. This year, we plan to continue reading but in a different style (more on this later this month) and I decided I wanted to add another project for some David and Mommy time.
One of the things David loves to do is go through my scrapbooks and look at his past memories. He loves reliving the moments, remembering the good things and feeling the happiness all over again.
So we bought a Moleskine Sketchbook for him and started collecting some of the items that have good memories associated with them.
So his project is similar to The Savor Project I’m doing with a few differences:
- He’s not tied to a calendar timeframe. If he finds something from two years ago that makes him happy, he gets to put it in his book. The pages are not in any time-order. Just a collection of things that make him happy.
- We don’t prep pages ahead of time and mostly use the sketchbook page as a background.
- He can put several unrelated memories per page if he likes.
- The only thing he has to do on every page is write a few words on why that item/photo is special to him.
We plan to use this book to save special items he brings home from school as well as milestones in his life, photos I take that he loves, etc.
We haven’t decorated the cover yet so there’s nothing to see there but here are a few pages we’ve already done just to give you an idea of what we’re doing:
This is the first page. On the left side is his name, a pocket that holds a fortuneteller a friend gave him at school and a few words on why he likes it. On the right side is a ribbon from the local swim school of when he leveled up from one to two. (He is on level 3 now but we couldn’t find that ribbon. More reason to do this project!)
And here’s the next page. On the left is a photo of a card he made for Jake’s birthday two years ago and a photo of Jake, David, and Jake’s mom opening presents on Jake’s birthday. Below that is a pocket that holds a lego card he likes and a few words on why he likes it. On the right side is a photo I took during the Polar Express train ride we took last year. Since the photo was really large, we put it sideways and created a pocket on the right side which is where he put the card that has his words on it.
And there you go.
We use a lot of the scraps I have accumulated and anything that makes him happy. As you can see, the pages are simple and putting two together takes us about an hour or so each week.
Our goal is to do 1-2 spreads a week and fill the book up throughout the year. I will be posting photos from his page every other week. (I have a project with Nathaniel this year, too, and he will get the alternate weeks.)
