You love to travel and you have tons of pictures stored in your closet to show for it. Maybe you have them stored neatly in boxes, in chronological order, by destination. But what good are they doing stacked up and put away in the confines of your closet? Why not buy a few scrapbooks, get out your creative juices and create some travel scrapbooks? If you have never created a scrapbook that was devoted entirely to your travels, here are some tips and ideas to get you started.
* If you do not normally keep a journal or diary when you travel, start keeping one. Sure, pictures capture those wondrous scenes, like the view from the top of the Duomo in Florence or the picture of your family with the Grand Canyon behind them, but can you really remember what you were thinking at those precise moments? Most people can remember only snippets of conversations and thoughts from their travels and vacations; wouldn’t it be wonderful to document your actual travels? Instead of having only a picture of the Coliseum in Rome to show friends and family, now you can have a journal entry that corresponds with the picture that details how you were feeling that day, what you thought when you first came upon the Coliseum and any other interesting details and stories from that particular day. If you have many sets of pictures from travels past, sit with your spouse or friend and go through the pictures and write down any memories you have for those pictures. Years from now, you will be glad you did.
* There are two schools of thought when it comes to a travel scrapbook. If you love taking tons of pictures and the vacation is a particularly long one, you can devote an entire scrapbook to that one trip. This doesn’t mean you have to go out and buy the largest scrapbook you can find. There are several different sized scrapbooks, including those with 7 by 7 inch pages that are a perfect size for those week-long trips. The second school of thought is to have one large scrapbook devoted entirely to your travels and to use a couple of pages within for each trip.
* When you decide to create your travel scrapbook, make sure you also include all of those other extras you get when you’re on your trip. For example, keep your plane tickets, itineraries, foreign currency, tokens and ticket stubs. This will enhance your scrapbook and, by including these, it will trigger your memory about other fun things you did on your trip.
* As for the pictures you take when traveling, it is so tempting to take roll upon roll of film (or if you have a digital camera, lots of memory) of the monuments and places that you visit. Of course, you will want these pictures; however, do not forget to get some pictures of you and your family, as well. My husband and I made this mistake on one of our first trips together. When we developed our film, we had over 100 pictures of Spain and only five of those pictures had us in them.
* One fun thing to do that many people are now starting to do is to bring a certain stuffed animal or memento from home on each trip that you take. You may have seen commercials recently with the garden gnome visiting all of the fantastic places and pictures of the gnome in front of famous world monuments. Why not bring along a special toy or small stuffed animal on your trips and pose him in different places throughout your trip? I have one friend whose husband has taken a small Ernie doll that belongs to his daughters on every single business trip he has taken. He would take pictures of Ernie in front of famous monuments like the Eiffel tower and send those pictures home to his daughters who were so excited to see the many places Ernie had visited.
