Picture This

I love keeping a journal and creating interesting photo albums for our family, including each of our children. Combining my two interests into a hobby called photo journaling allows me to record my thoughts and show what I’m writing about at the same time. Following are some of my favorite photo journaling ideas:

Family Albums

Your home’s interior and exterior. I have pictures and journal thoughts for every home my husband and I have lived in. I’ve also recorded a few memories about the rooms in the home where I grew up. It’s also helpful to draw a simple house plan so that years later your posterity will know how the home’s layout was when you lived there.

Special heirlooms. I’ve written a brief history of each item shown in the photos, listing the original owner and any other interesting information.

Vehicles. Any special memories about the vehicles we have owned are written next to the picture, and I have also recorded how much each cost—a bit of information that becomes more interesting over the years.

Children’s Albums

Chores and other jobs. Take unposed pictures showing your children dusting, vacuuming, and doing other household tasks. As our children have earned money through paper routes, mowing lawns, and other jobs, I’ve remembered to take the camera and record those events too.

Lessons. When my daughter took sewing lessons one year, I snapped photos of her and her instructor as they sewed together and later when my daughter modeled the finished products. I’ve also taken pictures of my son during his art and band lessons.

Favorite toys and pets. These photos and recorded memories are some of the most treasured pages in my children’s photo albums. Since it’s impossible to store every favorite toy over the years, this is a great way to preserve the memories. And long after beloved pets have passed away, we still enjoy seeing them in our album pages.

Family home evenings. We once invited a couple who had studied abroad at the BYU Jerusalem Center to tell us about their experience. They wore costumes native to the area, and we have pictures of them sharing family night with us. Regular family home evening activities are also good to record, with nonposed pictures showing the family singing, listening to a lesson, or playing games.

Members of our family, especially the children, love to look through our albums. It not only boosts our children’s self-confidence to see that the events in their lives are important enough to put in a special book, but it also helps us record their personal histories, starting with their early years.

Marlene Cameron Thomas, Pellissippi Ward, Knoxville Tennessee Stake

Illustration by Joe Flores