Help organizing and condensing kids' books with family books.

I'm a long time reader, but this is my first post. I need help organizing albums for my family. When I first started scrapbooking 20 years ago, I had this grand idea that I would be able to create and keep up with individual albums for each of my children, as well as a family album. I have four kids, and while that idea worked out well for the first two, I am now so far behind that I feel like giving up. I love scrapbooking, but I've not worked on it regularly in several years mostly due to the fact that I am so overwhelmed with keeping up with it all. To give you a little background, for each child's album, I've historically scrapped every birthday, holiday, school events, friends' birthday parties, and random family events. In the early years, I filled an album every two years for each of my two oldest kids. Then the next two came along, and to keep it "even" and "fair," I tried to keep up the same pace, all the while filling our family albums with pretty much a copy of whatever I put in the kids' books. I didn't want them to take their books with them as adults and not have a record for myself. So essentially, I would sometimes scrap one Halloween page for 5 separate books. That is just ridiculous, don't you think?

Here is my thought, and I'm hoping you all could weigh in and tell me if you think this makes more sense.

I want to continue, but I have to be reasonable. If I don't make a change that I can actually keep up with, then none of my kids' albums are ever going to be complete and I'm going to end up giving up. I don't want that. SO...

What if I were to "end" each of their childhood albums at a stopping point of, say, 5th grade. That seems to be where my family albums seem to lag as well, and where I'm missing a lot of pages since I have less time to make duplicates for the family book. I could then take every page I've made past that date, for each of the kids, and insert those into my family books. That allows me to have a family book that is more complete, and I would have less to catch up with in the family book. Whatever layouts are left, I could re-insert those into the kids' albums if they seem relevant. At that point, I could create pages for only our family book, and let those kid books just be done.

Have any of you been able to keep up with one set of books per child? This really seemed to be how it was done at all the crops when I first started with Creative Memories so many years ago, and a lot of my friends gave it up for that reason. It is SO HARD to keep up that way.

I really want to start Project Life, and I feel like doing that with my family books only would be very doable. Any advice? Thanks for reading.
Michele

I like you new plan. Pick a cut-off point and end each one there.

I have scanned all of my pages - or tried to but with 27 books more or less 100 pages each - I gave up and turned them over to a professional with a scanner big enough for 12 x 12 pages.

I will make a really nice printed Shutterfly book for each of my kids with just their stuff in it. In fact I told my kids that after the scanning is complete they can pick out the pages they want in their book(s). Then they have a nice coffee table book and I've only made each page once.

I thought about making separate books for them and duplicating pages they were in, plus making one for me. I decided I couldn't do it.

I really admire you for getting this far with it. But I agree - it is overwhelming! I would have a cut off and then put them in a family album.

You may want to think about scanning them or having them scanned after that point. Then they can have nicely printed Shutterfly books with all the layouts they choose in them and you don't have to make duplicate pages!

I second the cut off point if for nothing else but to give yourself that sense of accomplishment and completion.

What about doing a variation of the pocket scraping with the younger ones since you are so behind on those. I am thinking it would be faster to complete and you can always do a traditional page if you want.

I have three boys and I too do a book for each. It can be overwhelming. I have been at this for 15 years so it has taken me some time to wrap my head around the pocket pages but I think I have finally gotten to the place where I am going to start to insert them into my albums. It gets my pictures out of boxes and into albums for the kids to enjoy.

• Henri Jean Said:

I love this idea, great suggestion Henri. I am doing this for my parents for Christmas this year instead of making one. I am still thinking about it for my kids as a year in review that hits the highlights.

Kind of the same idea as the printed book, but for Christmas I make two of our granddaughters their own personalized calendars from snapfish, but most any online photo site does the same thing. For each month's big picture, I usually have one main picture, then several others of them from that month the previous year, or any year, plus of them with any family member who has a birthday or special day like Mom's/Dad's Day that month. For the dates, I put little pictures of birthday people, plus pictures for first & last days of school, holiday, vacations...anything that I want to put on the calendar. Each month they have new pictures to look at and at the end of the year, it hardly takes any room to file away. I know this isn't a scrapbook, but it's a great way to journal each year of life. I also make one for their parents that has a few pictures from each of the girls' calendars. Sorry, this doesn't sound very clear to me...hope you all can figure out what I'm saying :>)

Hey Wrongwayfeldman (love that name!), I am in a similar spot, but with fewer kids. I am glad you bring up this topic because I struggle with the concept of cutting off. As it stands now, by the time my kids are 20, they will have 12-15 books! I know they don't want that and I have to scrap fewer pages.

I think a stopping point may be a good idea, or a new set of guidelines for albums after 5th grade. Perhaps only the individual achievements of a child goes into their book (school photos, pictures from a play or a sports event, excellent report card, etc). Family events, holidays, etc,, would all go in your family album. You might be able to limit it to 1-2 books per person for 6-12th grade (and beyond!).

A good friend of mine got very behind on her kids albums after the first couple of years. So, when her daughter was graduating high school, she did a project to get up to date for her daughter. She did just two albums for everything from K-12. Just a few pages per year and only the truly important things included. Time had given her enough perspective to know what pictures held the best memories. And her daughter loved it!

Posts like this bring out so many good ideas from everyone that we need a "like" button on here.

I did a similar book for oldest gd that was much like Frau mentioned. Maybe someday I'll finish it since it was for her high school graduation, which was in 2010 :>) Anyway, I began it with her as a baby and going through "Off to College". I did two-page LOs for each school year, prom, special things she did, a couple of pages with photos of other family members graduations, hand-written notes from family members, etc. I used one of the box albums so it could hold additional items and also added Dr. Seuss' The Places You'll Go book as a surprise at the end. Many of the pages are in my gallery (Album: Christina Graduates).
http://www.scrapbook.com/myplace/index.php?mod=gallerie...

I only have to finish this one...then do one more, plus three more for coming graduates :>) Guess I should work on it sometime!

This album is actually what got me into scrapping. I wanted to make it for her and had NO idea what I was doing nor any equipment except little embroidery scissors and an old X-acto knife. The first purchase after adhesive and a bit of cardstock was a wide-format printer so I could make my own backgrounds and before long I got my Cricut E...and then the mailman just kept bringing me more and more boxes of supplies. I don't know how that happened!

I too, do albums for each of my kids. I plan to stop them at 21. However, what I have found is that as they got older, there were less pages to do.
For example, with regards to my 17 yr old.....
I foresee layouts about, getting drivers licence, first car, year 12 formal, year 12 graduation, off to Uni, 18th and 21st birthdays and Uni graduation.
There will be the odd layout thrown in there when we get another puppy or he becomes an uncle, well you get the idea....
The volume of layouts is winding down, so I might as well keep going to that point.
I use these ring binders with a 3" d ring, so they hold a lot, and will be finished with 4 albums each. I really slowed down on the amount of layouts after the age of 10. I felt it was important to capture those younger years memories as they may not remember much when they are grown up.
My family albums lag far behind the kids' ones, but I figure it'll give me something to do when I retire....

Thank you all for the help, and also for the confirmation that I'm on the right path. I think acknowledging that I can't keep up means that I need to make a change, and it really is sucking all the fun out of scrapbooking for me, which is ultimately keeping me from doing it at all. Thanks again, you all! This is a great board!