If you have yearly albums and separate baby albums...

rach3975

rach3975

New member
do you also include the baby's pages in the yearly family album? Are there certain types of pages that go into the baby album and other types that go into the family album? How do you make sure the baby isn't absent from that year's family album?

I think I'm going to go back and rearrange my albums. I've always done 1 per kid per year, and what stopped me from switching to a family album was the thought that my oldest would have 5 individual albums and my youngest only 1. But lately I'm printing too many pages 2 or 3 times to put a copy in multiple children's albums. So I think I'm going to rearrange so that each child has a separate first year album and everything else is just in a family album. I don't want the baby to seem absent from the albums, so I'm wondering how you handle it. Thanks!
 
I haven't actually done my family album, until this year. I have a pre-wedding paper scrap album, my oldest has 2 digi books, 1 ordered & the *almost* middle child has her 1st book ordered. I just finished a 'family' album that will span from 2006-2009, simple squared layouts with journaling, no embellishments or frills, it needs to be printed & I also have a wedding album that needs printed.

I am planning on doing each kid a book, & a family book, the family book will have more big events & vacations, holidays. I try not to duplicate pages, but will use the same photo in a different layout depending on the book. (the girls' books from this past year have a 'sisters' spread, which is the same in each book) but for the most part try to keep each book individual & unique.

The kid books just individual to each kid, with a growth 2 page spread in the front & each month highlighted in a 2 page spread throughout. I also do 2 pg spreads for portraits/holidays/special moments. Each book that I just ordered is 50 pages, spanning from birthday to birthday.
 
Well in my past, I did books for each kid. They just kept growing as the kids did. Then I had a family/me album that had everything else in it. And I have an album of my husband and I's love letters from when he first went away. And also have an album I've been working on for my father(this one has the least done and is the hardest to do.). I think however you wanna do it is right. You can't help that 1 kid is _# years older. Eventually they will have more than a year :)
 
I don't have any children yet, but I have no clue what I would do. One one hand I would love to have books for each child, but it may be easier to do just family. Hrm....I see your dilemma...
 
I don't have kids, so you can feel free to ignore what I say if you want.

I really don't think, that once the kids are even interested in the scrapbooks, they will care that child 1 has 2 books, and child 2 only has 1. They will enjoy looking through the albums and seeing themselves and the ones they love.

I haven't printed anything yet. I keep meaning to, and I just never get around to it. One of these days when I have time, I'm going to go through and make a favorites album of my favorite albums from the past 3 years I've been digi. I do far less actual scrapbooking since I've become a hybrid babe, but I'm sure that will change back once we decide to start a family. Once that happens, I plan on following Stacy Julian's non-chronological system. 4 album types - People We Love, Places We Go, All About Us, and Things We Do. Everything in life can fall into one of those 4 categories, lol.
 
I don't make family albums ... I make each child their own albums...that way when they get married/move out they can take their "life" with them. Their wife and children will learn all about their dad and I think that will be great!

My 16yo ds told me back in January that he also wants a BOM about myself so that he will have that to take with him too. Thankfully the Portfolio challenges are getting me to do just that!

You might think this is expensive ... however if you have ever paper scrapped this is a drop in the bucket comparing costs! Plus it is easy to print 3 copies versus scrap 3 copies!

Each child has these albums:

  1. Daily (this started at birth) ... all are in there except for following themes
  2. Cub Scout - his involvement in Cub Scouts
  3. Boy Scout (if he chose to go on to Boy Scouts)
  4. Eagle Scout (so far only one has earned Eagle)
  5. Sports - themed by the sport the child participated in (basketball, Hapkido, bowling...different album for each sport...son played basketball for 5 years so has 5 albums!)
  6. Robotics - each boy gets pages for each competition & building of said robot
  7. Disney - our 25th wedding anniversary trip - 2 boys went & get albums
  8. School - elementary layouts
  9. School - middle and high school (and very few college layouts)
  10. Iraq album - layouts from their uncle's deployment to Iraq, pics he took, and pics of the kids' heading up the collection for Support Our Troops

Instead of family albums, I make "themed" albums to keep for myself ... here are the albums that I am making for myself:

  1. Cowboy - pics of my boys in cowboy hats, boots, or overalls
  2. School - their yearly pic (2 page spread with what each looked like in that GRADE)
  3. Halloween - their costumes each week (drats that stopped last year!)
  4. Family Photos - the photos we had taken as a family (just starting this one)
  5. Family Reunions - this may get duplicated for the boys at some point if they want it
  6. Heritage - dh's side
  7. Heritage - my side
  8. ...and I may start a Christmas album with just a few fave pics from each year
 
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I would include most of the pages from the baby's album in the family album as well. My kids understand that when they are younger they have more pages in the family album (not that we count) than when we are older - simply because babies and toddlers are changing quickly and doing "new things" so much more frequently than older kids.

My kids (at least my first 3 - ha) have baby albums that document their first year. Everything else goes in the family album. My family albums though - are not inclusive. I scrap randomly as I feel like it and then sort my printed layouts in albums by year. So the 2008 album has tons of layouts in it but not everything is scrapped from that year. The only problem I run into with this system - is that my randomness doesn't necessarily end up covering the events that are important to my children. (I.E. one kid's bday is scrapped but not another's.....or somebody got a school layout and not the other two....) But I do the best I can - I never promised them to scrap every moment of their lives. :p
 
I don't have baby albums. Baby is part of the family - and I just do a completely family album for everything. Granted, when the day comes and either of the boys wants their own baby album (like when they get married or have their own children), we can always pull some of the layouts and create a baby album for them (or just reprint since I keep the printable copy). But I just keep everything in one huge stash :)
 
Emmy said:
But I do the best I can - I never promised them to scrap every moment of their lives. :p
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And that, is one of the most important things to realize (for me anyway)!! I think that too many people get so wrapped up in scrapping everything, that this hobby becomes a chore, and loses it's fun.

That's why I don't scrap chronologically. I don't need the guilt associated with "being behind". There IS no "caught up", you make memories every single day!

Sorry, I'll get off my soapbox now :p
 
I personally put every single layout in our family album and then each child has their own album (each year so far) with any layouts that have them in it. So there are several layouts that are in ALL the books. I really like it that way. I plan to give the individual scrapbooks to each child when they're old enough to care and then I'll still have the family album for us!
 
all the pages are in the family album and then I only have 1st year books for the kids... the 1st year books are paper scrapped and the family albums are digital.
 
Thanks for the ideas! Sounds like we all have different systems, but we all love our individual systems. I'd love to keep hearing from people.

I want to stick with chronological scrapping. I don't scrap in order, but I rearrange in order when I finish the year. (Eventually I call each year done--I scrap the current year and 1-2 years earlier, but anything I don't get to within a few years must not be all that important to me to have scrapped.) Most of my scrapping is about my kids, and I like to watch them grow and change in a way that I can only do through chronological albums.

All of you have given me some good ideas to think about. I think I'll try keeping a family album for a couple of months and see if I like it or want to go back to individual kids' albums instead. I'll wait until after that to decide how to handle the earlier albums, but I'm leaning toward having duplicates of all the first year pages, one for the family album and one for the child's first year album.
 
Well I'm in the same no-kids boat as Col, so you can take this as you will but here are my thoughts.

Right now I have my layouts organized using StacyJ's LOM system so Us, People, Places, Things. The albums themselves are broken up into categories; some are organized chronologically and some aren't depending on the topic.

I've thought a bit about what I might do once we have children and I'm still not really sure. I think I might take all of the pages from our pre-kid stage and put them into an All About Me and All About Us album that's separate. I think it would be neat to be able to see how our life was different then, especially for our kids to see what Mom & Dad were like before them.

After that, I'm not sure. I may end up setting up a new LOM for us as a family or something completely different. I have no plans on scrapping chronologically but at the same time kids change so much from year to year that I kind of feel there needs to be some kind of chronologicalness :D involved in the stories or pages. Maybe photos books with monthly spreads or something? I don't know.

I do know that I have no intention of creating separate albums with duplicate pages for anyone. I scrapbook for me first and foremost and the idea of having to store all those albums for 18+ years is just not appealing to me, nor would I really want to have to burden them with albums they may or may not want. I mean I'm 27 and I still have an entire shelf of photo albums with photos I took growing up that are still at my parents house because I didn't want to have to move them around me.

Hmm, I don't know if this helps you or not but those are my random musings on the subject. :D
 
Nettio said:
I do know that I have no intention of creating separate albums with duplicate pages for anyone. I scrapbook for me first and foremost and the idea of having to store all those albums for 18+ years is just not appealing to me, nor would I really want to have to burden them with albums they may or may not want. I mean I'm 27 and I still have an entire shelf of photo albums with photos I took growing up that are still at my parents house because I didn't want to have to move them around me.
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That's part of why I'm considering switching. My oldest is only 6, but already the albums for all 3 kids fill an entire shelf. I eventually want to have something to pass onto the kids, but not so much that it's an unwelcome burden. If I switch to a family album, I'd consider those mine and maybe make each child a bound book that has 10-15 LOs per year and covers many years. That way I'd have 2 or 3 books that cover all the highlights to pass on to each of them instead of sticking them with 18+ large books (and not having any for myself).
 
I have "everything" albums, and I keep in ding albums, because I don't scrap chronologically, but do want to keep the albums chronologically. I then create yearly photobooks for my children. I do them from birthday to birthday, and also give these books to grandparents every year for Christmas. This works well for me, because I can get the albums done by the end of August and then wait for the next sale to come up before Christmas time for my printing.
 
DD has a pregnancy/birth book and then the rest of her baby layouts are in the family albums. With DS, I did a pregnancy/baby book with hospital stuff, coming home, then I did a general page for each month of his first year and ended it with his first birthday. Everything else goes in the family albums. I have a few albums for vacations but mostly everything goes into just a general album. I don't scrap chrono, but my albums are put together that way.
 
My oldest will be 7 in April and then I have an almost 5 yo and a 1 yo. The only one that has a "completed" baby book is the almost 5 yo and that was thanks to a challenge at TDC that I was in. It has many of the "firsts" and other milestones as well as monthly pages. it starts with the birth (or maybe a few days before) and ends @ the first birthday. I have folders started for my oldest and youngest but the books are not complete. I have my son's "first year book" made as a Shutterfly book. so it IS done.

Some of the pages or events are also in our family book. I have put my layouts into the D-Ring albums, and I think I was able to fit 2 years into an album. Before, using the post bound albums, I had 2 per year.

I also did a shutterfly book for my son's preschool year - but now that he is in first grade and I don't have as many pictures, I will probably start a new album for him and keep a school book for them (ongoing) I want to do the same with soccer/sports and make those ongoing.
 
I organize baby albums for the kids because I want to see an inclusive book that is all about their baby year without the interruptions of other family member layouts.

As for other printing - it's really just for me. I really think by the time my kids are adults having a shelf of albums won't be as much the norm - I think they will keep their "albums" in digital format and view them on their iphone, tv or whatnot.

As for the scrapping everything dealio....I would feel less guilty about not scrapping everything if I had our photos in a viewable format. I started scrapping with a very creative memories scrap it all viewpoint so *everything* was scrapped and those albums served as my "photo albums". 10 years later I don't scrap near everything but there's no easy way for my family to just "look at pictures" because I still don't have photo albums. Anyhoo - just sayin' kind of wish I had never considered my scrap albums as photo albums.

That being said - I think for a kid it would be overwhelming to have 20+ albums of scrapbook pages made about him.
 
Emmy, have you thought about just doing regular photo albums? Printing out some of your favorites pictures every few months, just to have something the kids can look through?
 
Col - that's exactly what I need to do. I've been thinking on a couple different ways and just haven't settled on anything. My biggest hurdles have been that I don't regularly cull and edit my photos as I download (working on this now through lightroom's organization), choosing TOO many photos to print, and choosing a format. I really need to just commit to an album type and buy some.
 
It doesn't have to be something fancy, just get something done. Do a 3-up 4x6 format. Easy, cheap, not a lot of thinking involved. Even Walmart has Ding type 3-up photo album available. You could probably even set yourself up an action or two to do some standard edits, resize it, and save it in a new folder. Even if you just do 1 album that way (those suckers can hold a LOT of photos) and decide you don't like it, you'll at least have something the kids can look through and enjoy. And I bet when you are done with that set of images, you could send them to the grandparents and they would love them :)
 
I don't have regular photo albums either. There just aren't enough hours in the day to keep up with everything. One of these days I'd like to, and I even have an album here waiting. It takes so long to go through and decide what to print, crop it, and upload it that I never get to it. I don't scrap everything, but the non-scrapped photos are digi only for now.
 
What are these "albums" of which you speak? ;) Are we suppose to print out our pages and actually organize them?!! No one told me! :D
 
Nettio said:
I came across this blog post yesterday which might be useful: Documenting our World in Pictures: what works for me. She does kind of like highlight digital photo books, one 2 page spread per month. Might be an option if you're looking to just get some photos off the computer.
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It's interesting, but that's kind of how I use my scrapbooks. I stay reasonably current on the best photos and most important events. (Except birthdays--I hate scrapping them!) What I really want is a way to have unscrapped photos within my scrapbooks. I'd love to be able to scrap a birthday LO with 2-3 photos, then have 10 more unscrapped on the next page. I'm thinking of trying that, just by making pages that are photos and white space, kind of photo book like. I tried to find photo pages that would fit into my 8.5x11 albums, but no luck. The only ones I found had odd photo sizes, so I'd probably do better with a photos on white approach.
 
I'm new here but I thought I'd give my two cents on this.

I do a album for each child's first year and then a family album for each calendar year. If there are layouts in the babys book that kinda pertain to the family or just general layouts I will include those in the family book as well. If they are milestones then I do not replicate those. And for Christmas the baby's book has a first Christmas layout whereas in my family book its the family Christmas.

I hope that sheds some light on it for you. :)
 
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Oh, forgot to mention that my kids also each have a school book that will span Pre-K through High School. It has pics of school events, school photos, and some art work, report cards and such.
 
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