Memories are an excellent way to learn about your family history. Who better to tell you the stories of long ago than the senior members of your family. Not only are you able to learn more about your family history, but there are benefits to your loved one, too. Revisiting memories is a great mood booster and can make life feel meaningful.
Scrapbooking
You don’t need to be overly crafty or artsy to scrapbook. You can include as many details as you wish, or keep it simple and easy. Not sure where to start? A Scrapbook gives a great place to start for ideas from simple to more detailed albums.
Greeting Card Book
A unique way of preserving memories is by creating a greeting card keepsake. Keep the memories of these beautiful hand-picked greeting cards and their thoughtful, handwritten messages in a book that you create.
Photo Album
Printed pictures allow us to capture and preserve moments in time for generations to come. Looking back through photographs can invoke happy memories and will enable you to experience those moments again and again. If you have many photos, you can group them by dates and create volumes. Alternatively, if you are a digital photographer, you can create photo books on websites like Snapfish. You can scan pictures to upload or use digital copies to create your book.
Online Memories
Legacy Stories is an online tool that allows you to easily record, preserve and share your collection of stories and images. You can record the voices of family members telling your family history and keeping it for generations to come.
Recordings
Technology being what it is today, you can use the voice recorder on your phone to ask open-ended questions and get your loved one talking. There is no need for a fancy set up or complicated equipment. Once you have recorded the conversation, you can download the recordings on your computer.
Magazines
Magazines like Reminisce celebrate good times with images, fun stories about what we loved in the past, and how these things shape our lives today. It shows pictures of times gone by and has stories written by people sharing their memories.
Create memory boards on Pinterest and pin images of sentimental items that remind you of days gone by and happy times. You can find and “pin” images on Pinterest and share the boards you create with family members. You can ask family members to include their most treasured images to the family boards, too. What a great way to involve the entire family and get everyone involved in keeping the family memories alive.
When you are thinking about planning a scrapbooking session or another way to preserve the family memories, please don’t wait. Some of these projects can take some time, so the sooner you start, the better. By creating these projects, you are letting your loved one know that the family history and their memories will not disappear, but will go on for many years to come with future generations. What a precious gift for them…and you.
