Revive25 in 2025: 2010 Olympic Memories

I started this post on February 14th. If you would rather watch this post in a vlog, click here to watch it on my YouTube channel.

It was 15 years ago that I took a trip that changed my life. Since I was a child, I dreamed of going to the Olympic Games; first as an athlete and later as a spectator.

I had been on trips before, but this one taught me the magic of synchronicity and the importance of following our dreams. I almost didn't go to the Vancouver Olympics in 2010. I'm so grateful I did. There were challenges to overcome but in the end, the trip could not have been more magical.

For this Revive25 in 2025 mini-project, I will combine the photos and blog posts into a photo album. Leading up to the Vancouver Games, the Canadian Olympic Committee talked about "Owning the Podium". They wanted to win the most medals at the Games. I didn't want thirty silver and bronze medals. I wanted (at least) one gold medal. I didn't want to be known as the country who had not won gold on home soil and we did it twice, in 1976 and 1988.

On February 14th, 2010, I couldn't believe that I was at Cypress Mountain witnessing Alexandre Bilodeau win the first gold medal for Canada at home. So I am using this anniversary as a nudge to revive the photos and blog posts I wrote at that time and preserve them in one place.

Blogger may not always be there, so printing the blog posts is one way that I am preserving them. I am so happy I wrote the stories because there are details I would have forgotten. 

Along with reviving the 2010 memories, I also want to connect them with other Olympic-themed moments I experienced since then. To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Vancouver Games, my husband and I went to Vancouver and Whistler. We were thrilled that they lit the cauldron on the anniversary of the Opening Ceremony. 

We then visited Cypress Mountain and went skiing in Whistler where we took photos of many Olympic rings.

Other moments I wanted to connect were visits to Olympic host cities. In the 1990's, I visited Calgary Olympic venues and in 2014, we were coincidentally in Montreal when they lit the cauldron during the 2014 Olympic Games. 

By connecting these moments together, it gives the stories more meaning. It also gives me hope that I will continue to experience more Olympic-themed moments that I can enjoy, capture and preserve.

The Creative Memories albums I make are 60 pages. My 2010 memories took 32 pages, so there is almost half the album to connect my other memories.

It took me longer than I thought to put the photos and blog posts in the album, but I'm happy it's now preserved and can be enjoyed for decades. 

I hope I inspire you to revive memories from on this day. If you're interested in seeing how I plan my albums using the Creative Memories Power Layout, click here to see the video on my YouTube channel. It's part of a co-working session where you can join me in working on a memories project.

Friday the 13th Memories

Today is Friday the 13th, and although I'm not superstitious about Friday the 13th anymore, there was a time when I was a little bit superstitious. I was reminded of that this morning when December 13th many years ago fell on a Friday and I was expecting my first child. Depending on which method you believe, my due date was either December 9th or December 12th. Although 12/12 would have been a date that I would have loved as a birthday for my son, it came and it went. I really did not want to give birth on Friday the 13th. Today that would have been pretty cool with Taylor Swift, Dick Van Dyke and one of my great friends celebrating their birthdays on December 13th. I found out about Dick Van Dyke's birthday when Coldplay released a new video on his 99th birthday filmed with him at his home.

That Friday the 13th, perhaps imagining that we may not have that many date nights left in the near future, my husband and I went to see The English Patient in the theater. We sat in the back row in case we had to make a hasty exit, but luckily I got to see the end of the movie and enjoy our last weekend before kids.

Another little connection which is kind of funny is that last night, I was telling my husband about the video I posted yesterday about 12/12/24 where I was talking about my mastermind group and how my takeaway this past year was to better accept periods of contraction along with periods of expansion or flow. He asked me if I think of going into labour when we talk about periods of contraction. It had never occurred to me so now I can't get that out of my head.

So now, it's kind of funny that today's date is reminding me of going into labour many years ago so that was a funny coincidence or a nudge of a few different things to inspired me to record the video and write this blog.

I think of that with reviving our memories when we are reminded of something or we get a nudge, to tell the story or revive buried memories. I had a nudge like that last week when I saw my son's birthday coming up in the calendar. I recorded another video I haven't posted yet about using the birthday nudge to work on his childhood album that I hadn't completed yet. In the video, that I'll complete and post now, I talked about how to plan an album like that because it's really difficult in the moment to decide what to include because in the moment, everything seems important. In a way, procrastinating on making this type of album is helpful, because in hindsight we get better perspective and it becomes easier to choose what is most meaningful.

I like to use these nudges to spend time with my memories and to revive things that matter. It's not necessarily about having a project or making photo albums. It can also be about telling the stories, looking at other memories like a pregnancy journal or time capsule to be reminded of other moments. Spending time with our memories when we're given reminders helps us to remember them better.

Preserving Memories in a Digital World

[Note: I'm transcribing the videos from my YouTube Channel and back dating them to when I posted the videos for those who prefer reading. If you prefer watching, visit my YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/@suzannesewell]

I launched my YouTube channel in order to inspire people to preserve their memories and revive their most meaningful ones. The reason I want to do that is because I want to preserve my memories and revive the most meaningful ones myself. By inspiring others, by sharing ideas, I can also be preserving my memories and reviving what matters the most to me.

This has been something that has been close to my heart my whole life. Since I can remember, I have always known that if there was a fire in our house and everyone was safe, I knew where the photo albums were and I would try to grab them if there was time.

I'm not sure where this started. I don't know if there was a firefighter that came to our school and asked what we would grab in a fire, but it's something I always knew. No matter where I lived even after I moved away from home, I would know where my albums were so I could grab them in case of fire, or in case of evacuation. That was really important to me.

When we started a family, I started scrapbooking and my album collection really started to grow. I ended up with dozens of photo albums, especially after I was also teaching classes and hosting workshops where we would work on our albums together. As my collection grew, I realized that my escape plan didn't really work anymore. I couldn't grab all those albums in case of a fire. If I was given 24 hours to evacuate, perhaps, but in a spur of a moment, those albums would not be saved.

As a backup I used to keep negatives somewhere else, so if something happened to the albums, at least we had negatives to reprint the photos. This all changed when digital photography emerged.

I stopped scrapbooking around 2008 because I became overhwlemed. We had a digital camera for 3 years and as time passed, I felt even more overwhelmed and kept procrastinating. It got worse when we got cellular phones carrying a camera with us all the time. The number of photos we take now in one year is approximately what we used to take in 10 years. Globally we take 1.4 trillion photos every year. This is equivalent to100-200 photos a year on average per person in 2000; and 1200-1500 per year per person in 2020. (My average is much higher, how about you?)

What do we do with them all? Ten years after I stopped scrapbooking, I really felt the weight of the clutter on my shoulders, especially because it was so meaningful to me to keep my memories alive. In 2019, I started a big catch-up project called Revive55 Project, spending 55 weeks, ending on my birthday to get all my memories back in order. I wanted to stop feeling overwhelmed and scared that I would lose my memories. Of course, I had the memories in my head, but photos and memorabilia help us to remember. When we see a photo, we often say "oh right, I remember that". You may have felt that when you saw a Facebook memory pop up on your feed that you had forgotten about.

So much was happening with our kids in their teen years, and without scrapbooking, I felt like I would forget all the moments. Scrapbooking helps us to remember because we are going through and reliving those moments as we scrapbook. 

Some of the things I worked on that year, I realized weren't really time well spent; and other times, I wondered how we could do it more efficiently, and revive our memories in a way that it doesn't take so long. Because really, we don't want to be stuck in the past reliving our old memories. We want to relive them but not all the time. We want to also chase dreams, look to the future as we are living in the moment. We want to capture new memories, not just preserve our old ones. That's where Present Harmony comes in that we look back with gratitude of our memories we loved and we look forward with hope of capturing new memories and all of that happens in the present.

In the present, we're looking back. In the present, we're looking forward. Our future will become our present. That's why I wanted to find a better and more efficient way of preserving our memories so it's not as overwhelming a process as it could be if we tried to continue to preserve our memories in the digital world like we did in the film world. That old way didn't work for me anymore, so I wanted to explore new ways of preserving our memories.

Christmas Memories

Part 6 of my 60T🖤60 Project began on November 19th and ended on December 23rd. (For more information about my 60T🖤60 project, go to my other blog My Life Is Like A Song) Seeing that end date, and knowing that sometimes, I sprint to a deadline to complete a mini-project; making Part 6 have a Christmas theme seemed the smartest thing to do. I didn't want to be focusing on a different theme the week before Christmas.

When our kids were young, I often felt rushed when Christmas came around. I procrastinate naturally, but with a family birthday in mid December, I would wait to get a tree or decorate until after we had celebrated the birthday. I had read or heard from parenting experts to ensure that a child gets to celebrate their birthday separately from the Christmas celebrations, and I accepted this advice by not letting our house become too Christmassy until after the birthday. 

I have to admit that in mid-November this year, I was not feeling cheerful or excited about Christmas coming. I was already feeling stressed, overwhelmed and not in a celebratory mood. 

Focusing my project on Christmas would force me to look at the positives and help to make Christmas more festive. Coincidentally, on the day that my project started, I attended a "Spill The Tea" event by Tea With Tracie where Brenda Jasmin was speaking about infusing more joy and less stress during the holidays. One of the activities was for us to determine what made us happy; our "Ho Ho Ho list" and what drained us or things we wanted to let go of; our "Ho Ho Heck No" list. It was perfect timing to start Part 6 of my 60T🖤60 Project. I wanted to focus on what I loved the most and let go of what I didn't.

Photos

My first activity was to gather past Christmas memories and create a Christmas-themed photobook. Looking back at happy times lifted my mood. I didn't complete it in time to order for Blurb's Black Friday sale so I decided to show it digitally to my family at Christmas before completing it, in case they had extra photos or memories they wanted to share to improve it. (That was the plan but it dien't work out the way I hoped).

Looking back at all our Christmas cards gave me the idea to display them on our "living frame". A few years ago, my husband took an old frame, removed the broken glass, and added wire with clips to hold photos. We rotate photos depending on seasons or celebrations. Normally at Christmas, we add photos taken at Christmas time, but I liked focusing on our Christmas cards or photos we sent with Christmas cards when I didn't order actual photo cards.

Last year I ordered snowball garlands. I thought the balls would be bigger than they ended up being when I received them. I was happy that one of them fit perfectly around our living frame to make it more festive.

Christmas Card

I wasn't sure whether to send Christmas cards this year, especially as more and more people are choosing to end the tradition. We didn't have a recent family photo; and we lost our dog this year. 

Working on my Christmas photobook and seeing our past Christmas cards, gave me the idea to have Christmas memories as a theme for the card. We had festive family photos over the years that we had never shared because they were taken at Christmas or New Year's; when our Christmas cards would have already been sent. I included a photo with our dog; a photo with the kids' partners. I included the new card in the living frame (top middle).  I wanted to let people know the news about our dog, so added the sad news in a fun rhyme.

Getting together and telling stories
Looking back at Christmas memories
Excited as we anticipate making more
Before we reach 2024

(couple of more private lines)
This year was sad saying goodbye to our pup
The house is sadly quieter but needs less cleanup

Festive decorating is coming along
We’ll enjoy our favourite Christmas movie or song
A dusting of snow sets the mood
Menus will mix classics with new found food

May your Christmas be spent with friends and family
On New Year’s Eve, pop the Bublé or bubbly
While making a wish upon a star
“Joy for our loved ones near and far”

Music

I love Christmas music and especially love new Christmas songs over traditional ones. I used to have CDs of our favourite Christmas songs, but with technology changes, when we switched from iTunes to Apple Music, I lost those playlists. This project encouraged me to search and add old and new Christmas songs in a playlist (almost 500 songs!) in order to create a top 20 favourite songs playlist.

I really enjoyed listening to my favourite songs during the holiday season. My in-laws arrived at Christmas with a CD we made for them in the late 1990's or early 2000's.

I found it interesting how different this list was to my current one.

Every year, I love playing Christmas songs on the piano. This year was extra fun trying to learn songs on the ukulele. I initially thought I'd learn the Hawaiian Song Mele Kalikimaka; but it ended up being too difficult for me, so I found a couple of easier ones to learn.

Last year I tried to compose a Christmas melody. I wondered what made a melody sound Christmassy if it didn't have Christmas lyrics. I found some chord progressions that are popular in Christmas songs but didn't compose anything I liked. I enjoyed trying again this year, but still no success. One of these years, I'll compose a Christmas melody I will love. I'm adding that to my wishlist like I did in 1996 when I added "to write a song I like" on my list of dreams.

Movies

Last year, our daughter wrote a list of movies and shows to watch and put it on the fridge. I stored it with the Christmas decorations to continue the tradition. With a little research, I created a new list that we kept on the fridge this eyar. This helped in the decision-making process. We didn't need to keep searching streaming apps to figure out what to watch since I already did that to compile the list. When we watched one, we'd colour the bullet. I stored the list with the decorations again this year to be reminded to continue to complete watching it; or to re-print an updated list.

Gifts

Shopping for me is often stressful because I don't like buying something for the sake of buying something, but this year, I found meaningful gifts and had lots of help from my daughter that made me happy with the gifts I was giving.

Sometimes I also feel that if we are feeling happier, we are open to seeing clues for what we are looking for. In contrast, if we are feeling negative, clues pass us by without us noticing. I like to think that my improved mentality helped for me to find great ideas for gifts.

For many years, our kids decorated a gingerbread house during the holidays. 

I serendipitously found a gingerbread house that included the CN Tower, Rogers Centre, and downtown Toronto. I thought it would be a fun Christmas time activity for us to build it.

Food

While making the photobook, seeing photos of treats and foods we love at Christmas time helped me plan better and get the ingredients I needed early. I made favourites like tourtière (French Canadian meatpie) and sweetheart cookies (jam thumbprint cookies sometimes with marshmallows). 

Instead of my traditional shortbread recipe, I tried a new sugar cookie recipe cut in hearts and snowflakes  that turned out great (forgot to take a photo). A newer tradition is to make scones with cream. This year, our daughter found a bakery that sold homemade scones and traditional British clotted cream with homemade butter.

My French-Canadian heritage, mixed with my husband's British heritage, adds up to delicious treats.

When I first spent Christmas with my husband's family, they introduced me to a British tradition called Christmas crackers. Two people hold a cracker until it pops to reveal a paper crown/hat, a toy and a joke. When I popped mine, I felt a little disappointed at first by the yellow crown (instead of my favorite purple), but I was thrilled to find a heart keychain, just like the one I got last year. What a coincidence! (I love hearts in case you haven't been a regular reader of my blog)

Looking back at photos reminded me how much I love seeing Christmas lights around the city. I had hoped to visit the Eaton Centre, Nathan Phillips Square, the Distillery District or Inglewood "Kringlewood" Drive lined with giant inflatable Santas; like we had in the past or the new Illumi light festival in Mississauga, but I ended up not in the mood with the rainy weather. 

Even if I focused on Christmas Memories to help make Christmas more festive and meaningful, plans don't always go as we hope. With COVID visiting our family, and us not being all together, the gingerbread pieces and royal icing ended up in the freezer. My Christmas-themed photobook was saved for next year.

It's a good reminder that life is filled with ups and downs. Everything isn't always perfect, but we can make the best of what is presented to us.

This reminds me of a great quote: "Things turn out best for those who make the best of the way things turn out." 

Time is the Most Unforgiving of Fires

I wrote a blog post in 2008 after reading A Thousand Splendid Suns. You can read that original post by clicking here.

It was inspired by a quote in the book:

(to give some perspective, the passage describes how Laila feels after her first love Tarik tells her that he and his family are moving away)

"In the coming days and weeks, Laila would scramble frantically to commit it all to memory, what happened next. Like an art lover running out of a burning museum, she would grab whatever she could—a look, a whisper, a moan—to salvage from perishing, to preserve. But time is the most unforgiving of fires, and she couldn’t, in the end, save it all. "

I think that the author really describes it perfectly: "like an art lover running out of a burning museum"; "time is the most unforgiving of fires".

It's interesting to reflect on how I felt over a decade ago:

"Memories: something very close to my heart. I have realized that so many of my memories are forgotten. Perhaps that is why I take so many photos, to help me remember. I sometimes think that I’m too busy taking photos rather than really experiencing the moments so I have tried to curtail my photo-taking."

Interestingly, a month after that post, we bought a Digital SLR and our photo-taking increased exponentially. A couple of years later, I would get my first iPhone and then I had a camera with me wherever I went.

In one way, I love that so much of my life was documented with photographs, but like I would reflect then I didn't keep up with the journaling in photo albums.

"I am often told that I have such a good memory about my kids... but I kept a great journal during those times (and journaled in my photo albums). When I look through my photo albums from my childhood and university years (when I didn’t [journal]), I’m amazed how much I forgot."

With the increase in digital photos, I stopped printing photos and putting them in albums for many years. The great thing though is that although I may have been in the minority who was journaling in albums 10-20 years ago, most of us have been "journaling" in the last decade by posting on social media.

We have preserved many memories on Facebook so why not enjoy them? As the quote says, "time is the most unforgiving of fires". I sometimes see old posts and think "I had forgotten that!" By seeing the post, we are reminded of these moments that were important enough to share at the time.

Sometimes you will receive notifications from Facebook of memories from this day, but you can see them yourself every day by going to Facebook.com/memories when you are signed in to your account.

TimeHop is an app that you can connect to Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to see your posts from on this day. You can also link your photos so every day you can go to this app to see your memories from "on this day".

If you want to see memories from a day other than today, you can quickly go to a specific month and year on Facebook. When you're on your profile page, go to your activity log. Click on filter to choose your posts (rather than all activity) then choose the year and date.

While making my photobooks, I take screen captures of my posts or copy/paste the words to add journaling to my pages. You can also make photobooks on your phone from Facebook posts if you prefer to look through your memories in a book.

We remember our memories better when we relive them. 

A photo is not always worth a thousand words. We can ensure our memories don't fade by adding journaling to our photos to remind us of details that aren't obvious from the photo.

One last point, do you have your photos ready to be rescued in case of disaster whether that is a burning house, flood or technical crash of your computer or phone? As great as it is to have memories saved on Facebook, understand that the quality of the photos is diminished and you don't know how long that website will exist.

My Photo Album Collection

Counting down to the end of My Revive55 Project is helping me accomplish more. I think the following quote by Gretchen Rubin is very relevant to memory projects: "something that can be done at any time is often done at no time".

Do you think that you'll organize your photos some day? That you'll document your stories? That you'll organize or declutter your mementos? I wanted to stop procrastinating which is why I started my Revive55 Project. By having a deadline and sharing my progress, I am accomplishing a lot but I still don't think I can do everything I wanted to do without spending every waking moment on the project. 

I think that is also a very valid point to recognize. I will not do everything I wanted to do.

In recognizing that, I have to prioritize. What adds the most value? What do I love the most? What shortcuts can be taken? How will I do this in the future so that I don't fall behind again?

These are some of the questions I am hoping to answer before my project ends.

How will I preserve and enjoy my photos in the future? Here's what my collection looks like at the moment and how I got to this point.

This isn't all my albums. I actually have three of each colour on the bottom shelf completed. The bottom shelf are my Creative Memories albums and average 30 pages per album. The Blurb photobooks are on the right side of the top shelf with the year on the spine. Each of those books average 220 pages. One of my concerns that prompted me to start photobooks was the amount of space the albums would require with the increase amount of digital photos. One photo book is equivalent in shelf space to 6-7 Creative Memories albums.

When I started to scrapbook with Creative Memories, my first child was 10 months old. Starting my albums at his birth was a great starting point. Scrapbooking was my hobby and I made time for it. During the time of film photography, we didn't have as many photos to put in albums. It wasn't too difficult to keep up if it was something that we enjoyed.

Before starting to scrapbook, most of my photos were already in regular photo albums. Learning that those albums were damaging my photos, I started to transfer them to photo-safe Creative Memories albums.

I stopped scrapbooking my chronological family albums in 2008 when my passion and hobby became blogging. I didn't actually mean to stop, I just kept procrastinating and saying I'd catch up some day. As the days passed, the task became more and more overwhelming so I procrastinated more.

When I started my Revive55 Project last year, I had photos in albums from my birth to before my wedding. Because I wanted to make "special" albums for my wedding, showers and honeymoon, I procrastinated doing them. I purchased the albums and they've been sitting there empty.

I wanted them to be perfect and I suffered from perfection paralysis. I skipped those and had my photos from after the honeymoon in albums up to a few years before we had our first child. I never completely got caught up to my son's birth.

When I started to focus on my photos again a couple of years ago, I completed four photobooks for the years 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2014.

So my gaps were for a few weeks around my wedding and honeymoon, 3 years before my son's birth, part of 2008, 2009, 2013 and 2015 to present. I also have to admit that I have a few gaps in my completed albums as well, like my sister's wedding that I had perfection paralysis and was overwhelmed with the number of photos. It wasn't my wedding, but I had enough photos to fill an album. How many pages do I allocate to her wedding? Which photos do I omit?

I also have extra photos over the years that I would love to add. In my first scrapbook, I included two pages for our trip to England. Two pages!! How does a trip only have two pages? The previous two pages were a business reward trip to St. Thomas. The cost of the album was limiting what I put in that first album. 

I can't add pages to that album without it affecting all the albums that come afterwards. If I add pages, I have to remove the last ones and add those to the next album and it creates a cycle of adding and removing.

What I hope to do with the extra photos is to include them in an England album of trips over the years. I could also do a Caribbean album of our various tropical holidays. Those are someday projects. 

I am currently focusing on closing the gaps in the chronological albums.  I'm very happy to have completed 2008 in my photo albums this week.  I also recently finished my 2013 photobook.

When I was making photobooks for my siblings when they turned a special age, they shared their childhood photos with me. Many of them I didn't have because our Mom would share the photos between us and not have four copies printed. Since starting my Revive55 Project,  I added the new-found photos to my childhood album and in so doing, expanded from one album to three. I also added mementos like report cards, ribbons, certificates and newspaper clippings. My first album is from birth until Grade 8 and my second is my high school years. The third is my university days. I am so happy that I managed to get that done during my Revive55 project.

My next focus is to print my 2009 photos and put them in Creative Memories albums. With my anniversary in May, I will focus on my wedding and honeymoon photos during that month. I will then continue chronologically to finish our photos before we had children.

Once this is done, I will consider my photos preserved from my birth until 2014. Creative Memories albums from my birth to 2009 and Blurb photo books from 2010 to 2014.

I then need to decide what to do from 2015 to 2019. Is it realistic to get caught up with those before the end of the project?

I don't want to keep falling behind and with the number of photos I'm adding to my collection, I need to find a new way of preserving and enjoying my photos. 

At the moment, I am thinking of continuing to make chronological photobooks but also having specialty albums (scrapbooks) or photobooks for trips and special themes. My husband has begun to make videos that include video clips, photos and journaling. He also makes digital albums that we watch on our TV either my mirroring our computer screen or through Apple TV.

I just wanted to write an update now as I am getting closer to closing the gaps in my photo projects. By reviewing and writing updates, I sometimes get aha moments when I get new ideas so hopefully something will click to help with my photo collection.

Making a Memorable Childhood Photo Album

I grew up enjoying photo albums. My Mom put photos in family photo albums and put extra photos in photo albums for each of the children. I left home for university with three magnetic-sticky photo albums. I then continued the tradition by storing my photos in photo albums.

When my son was born, I was introduced to Creative Memories who manufacture archival quality photo albums. I started to make Creative Memories albums with my photos from that time forward. I then made albums with the photos we had in other types of albums that cause photos to deteriorate and become discoloured.

I chose the best photos from my childhood albums and made one photo-safe Creative Memories photo album. Over the years, I found that it didn't fully tell the story of my life. It was great to see the photos in an album, but without the journaling that I hadn't finished, memories were fading.

I found other photos in childhood boxes that I wanted to add and also recognized that some photos that didn't make the initial cut were actually important to me.

For my siblings' 50th birthdays, I made them photo books. The first one was made in a few weeks with photos I had and photos that my siblings and mother emailed me. With a few years warning for the next two albums, I started scanning my parents' albums when I would go visit them. This meant that I scanned photos that I loved of my childhood that I didn't previously have.

I have procrastinated on improving my childhood album until now. As part of My Revive55 Memories Project, I started to collect all the photos that I have from my childhood that weren't in albums. I collected paper mementos that I would want to add like newspaper clippings, report cards, tickets and certificates. I took out my baby book and scrapbooks that my mother had put together and put everything out on the table.

The album on the bottom right is my Creative Memories childhood album. The scrapbooks at the top are filled with newspaper articles from our appearances in our local music festival and sporting events. On top of the scrapbooks are my baby books. Top right are some ribbons and report cards. I also have an album full of ribbons, badges and medals. All these things are still in a magnetic album that I wasn't sure how to better preserve.

On the left is a very useful tool that I'll speak about in a later post. It's a Creative Memories Power Layouts Kit that helps organize the pages of the album before sticking photos down.

Some pages in my childhood album had unrelated photos put together because I didn't have enough of one theme for a page so I had combined themes for miscellaneous pages. With extra photos now, I can separate them to tell a more complete story. I started to remove photos from the album to better organize it. I am adding pages and better grouping the photos that I have. Rather than having one childhood album, I will expand to two or three albums to include keepsakes and most importantly journaling my childhood stories.

While expanding, I am trying to remind myself of the quote in my last blog post that it's hard to see what is special if you keep everything. For years I had planned on expanding it to include all the photos and keepsakes but I now recognize that having an album with everything will not be more special.

By including the best and most memorable photos and keepsakes along with writing the stories to explain why they are special will make it into the album(s) I dreamed of.

The next step is to look at the scanned photos I have on my computer. I want to choose my favourite ones to print.

Then, I will look at mementos and keepsakes like trophies, souvenirs and other things I saved from my childhood. I am thinking that taking a photo of some of them to include in the album will make it more complete.

Once all the photos and keepsakes are together, I can get a better sense of what to include and what to leave out. With the album memorable and complete, hopefully I will also be ready to declutter what doesn't get included.

Thank you for reading.