Making Family Memories

With the whirlwind of the 21st Century world, doesn’t it sometimes feel like life is passing you by - blink and you’ll miss it? It can be difficult to juggle so many different things, but family life has to be a priority. These years are the most formative of your child’s life, and the idea of forgetting them is terrifying - well, it is to me and that's why this very blog exists.

Making family memories isn’t just about taking photos of holidays or going to see school plays. It’s about taking a moment to appreciate new experiences, collating important mementos, and creating little family traditions that you can keep while your child grows up. Here's a few ideas of what I enjoy doing that you might like too...

* Collaborative post

Keep scrapbooks

The generation before us kept photo albums. Reels and reels of film every birthday, every holiday, and every time we achieved something new. There’s something really beautiful and pure about the one-off photographs taken from non-digital cameras. Now everything’s done on the iPhone, and it all feels a little more fleeting - the photos are displayed on Facebook and Instagram, and occasionally printed and framed on the wall, but many of us don’t have the same day to day documentation of our child’s development in physical form like our parents did. Printing photos for a scrapbook, adorning the pages with leaves, pressed flowers, cinema ticket stubs, and tickets from days out is great for looking back on, but even better for your kids to look back on as they grow up.

Have new experiences together

Seeing your little one’s eyes light up the first time they experience something new is magical. It’s gifting them an adventurous spirit from a young age, and it’s encouraging them to become inquisitive and interested in the world around them. Fun family activities can range between anything from an afternoon at the trampoline park, to a walk in the woods, a trip down some caves, or picking flowers together. The point is, kids love trying new things, and having you there at their side is ideal. These fun new experiences are the things they’ll remember for the rest of their lives, and you’ll never forget them either.

Make a tradition

Family traditions don’t have to be lavish, six-course meals on birthdays or a trip to Cape Town every summer. The point isn’t that they blow everything else out of the water, the point is that they’re important to you and your family. It can be something as seemingly innocuous as pancakes every Saturday morning, a homemade roast dinner every Sunday, or fish and chips on Friday. Perhaps it’s just a certain walk in a certain park every Mayday, or your Christmas morning routine. But these are the memories you’ll never forget. Every Christmas, for years to come, you’ll always remember your Christmas morning routine when your family was young. Family traditions make some of the best memories - read about ours here.

Making family memories isn’t just a case of posting everything to Instagram (guilty) and setting a photo of your kid as your phone screensaver (guilty again!) - it’s about really living in the moment, keeping fun little mementos and keepsakes, and holding special traditions dear to you.