Early in the summer our friend mentioned that her daughter, about to start second grade, had to make a summer scrapbook for school… it got me thinking and ultimately we created our own!

To create the binder I just went HERE and uploaded my design and they printed the custom binder for me… it’s an awesome website!

Then, it’s as simple and using a three hole punch!

All we’ve been doing is saving every thing we’ve done this summer and putting it in the binder. So if we go to the zoo we include any tickets we had, maybe a zoo map and then when we get home the kids color a picture of their favorite part! It’s making our outings even more fun b/c then we come home, add to the scrapbook, work on our pictures and talk about all that we saw! I’m putting random things in there too like art work the kids do, pages where I just write about what we’ve done or thoughts, etc. I might even include a grocery store receipt or other random things like news highlights and things that in 20 years would be interesting to look back on!

I’m also creating contact sheets of photos that eventually, when I print them all, will go in the correct order (we’re putting ours together chronologically) so by the end of the summer it will hold all the photos too!

The kids LOVE looking through it and are SO proud to show their grandparents especially all that they’ve been doing! I think I might start one for each season… or maybe just school year and summer… I can’t decide. You could also use those plastic photo holders for scrapbooks if you wanted to print 4×6 images but I like that if I design the pages then you can never take a photo out and lose it or something.

Anyway, we’ve been LOVING this activity this summer so I thought I’d share the idea! Here are some pages…

Random artwork from Grandma’s house.

For Gray’s birthday we went to The City Museum and they have an antique photobooth…

More photobooth pics, the Zoo map and my handwriting about Bailey feeding the stingrays.

Parker’s drawing of a stingray (I think that’s pretty great for a 3 year old!)… we looked in our animal encyclopedia for a photo of a stingray so the girls could remember how to draw them… again… just stretching the activity!

When cleaning out the basement for our yard sale I found a poster Chris had written on that hung in my college dorm room and was just something I could never get rid of so rather than just toss it I cut it to fit and wrote about the yard sale! Now I will always remember it!

Favorite drawings and I love when they are on random sized papers… the scraps make the book interesting I think!

We even got my mom in on the action and when she took the kids to see the pirate exhibit at The St. Louis Science Center she saved the tickets and brochure for our book! Thanks mom!

Fan from the Muny (you see the back of it on the left) and the tickets+program… we’re putting things in there that Chris and I do even without the kids b/c it’s not just all about them! 🙂

It’s a work in progress of course but seriously, it has been one of the highlights of our summer! It’s amazing to look at, in one book, all the fun we’ve had and memories we’ve made… and even when I decide to enjoy the moment instead of capturing it there is still always something to do to remember it like color a picture or save a ticket stub… it’s taking a lot of pressure off me this summer!

Hope you all are enjoying your summer too!