Holiday Scrapbook Kits for my Boys

This is a project that I am feeling really excited about. In an attempt to better document my children's perspectives of the adventures they are having I decided to have the boys scrapbook those adventures themselves! Hayden is 9 so should be able to manage this fine, Campbell is 5 - he will be dictating any journaling and I will write it for him.

Other than that, I am hoping I will be able to let them do their thing. Hoping. I may find myself jumping in with a suggestion here and there, and obviously the basis of it all was my doing, but still, better than all done by me, right?

So here is the holiday scrapbook box. It includes albums, spare pages, embellishments, and any bits and pieces they gather along the way, that are waiting to be included in their scrapbooks.

I made two mini albums (8 x 8 inches - not so big that it is intimidating, but big enough to fit those treasures I am sure they will accumulate!) The colours came straight from a Kristina Werner Challenge a few weeks back - nice and summery (oh yes, we get to enjoy two summers this year!) and perfect for boys. Apart from a couple of little differences on the front, so we can tell them apart, the albums are the same. I decided to stick with the same colours for both, so that the box of goodies could just be divided between them without, hopefully, any arguments.


To get them started I have made a few pages of various sizes and colours. A few are already in the albums (to give it an actual album feel - it was amazing how excited they were to see those few blank pages waiting for them in THEIR albums!) The rest are waiting in the box. I have also included a few envelopes and memo cards (some decorated with a strip of patterned paper, some not). I wasn't sure how into it they would be when I first was putting it all together, so tried to keep it nice and simple (I figured I could always recycle those pages for something else!) The boys know too, that if they need something else - different size or colour etc, we can make it to suit.
Also in the box, a selection of embellishments - punched shapes, stamped images and journaling squares, strips of patterned paper for borders, and card for titles. Once again, this is just a starting point. We can add any other embellishments as we go along.

So how is it going? Better than I had hoped! Both boys are really excited about this project. I was a little worried that it might feel a bit too much like holiday homework (not the intention, but, just quietly, an added bonus of a project like this!) but so far that hasn't been the case. They are excited to choose photos, and put the pages together. We have had a few fun activities happening over the past couple of weeks, so there is a bit of catch up to do. Letting them choose what they want to document, when, is part of the fun for them. Interesting for me too. I was sure that Campbell would want to start with his T Ball classes - he has really been enjoying them, and so looks forward to Mondays at the moment. But no. The thing he most wanted to document .... when Daddy hid Jaffas (yummy NZ candy for those North American readers!) in the popcorn when we had a movie night last week. Here it is...


Confession time. That isn't the actual popcorn. We didn't take a photo at the time. Campbell suggested we could maybe make some more and take a photo of that. Ulterior motives perhaps? Maybe. Stunt popcorn tastes delicious! As for those jaffas - I might have suggested that we could maybe use this circle punch to make some.... but Campbell picked the red card, did the punching, cut one in half and requested that I please write 'chomp' next to that one. Such a fun thing to do together!

And check out this proud boy showing Daddy his first scrapbook page...

This project just gets better and better! (did I mention Miss Bridie yet? Oh yep - she wants in on the action too - tune in next time for Bridie's Mini Album!)