How to Make a Meaningful Scrapbook

Preserving your family vacations in a meaningful scrapbook can be effortless with a few simple tricks. If you keep these 9 tips in mind when you plan your vacation and your scrapbook, you should have no problem ending up with a sensational scrapbook to remind your family of its golden years.

1. Do family interviews. A great way to get each family member's memories into the scrapbook is to do interviews. Come up with questions pertaining to an event or place you're going to visit during your family vacation and then ask them just after it takes place. Be sure to take photos during the outing to include with the interview. Video interviews and silly moments loaded on to CD make a great addition to putting family interviews in your scrapbook.

2. Family top 5 lists. To make your family vacation scrapbook chalk full of memories create family top 5 lists. Lists can include the family's top 5 places to eat, top 5 rest areas, top 5 gas stations or top 5 favorite songs heard on the radio. It doesn't matter how serious or silly the list is because the list is about preserving the little moments we sometimes forget to treasure.

3. Plan ahead. When it comes to creating a fantastic family vacation scrapbook leave nothing to chance. Think ahead and plan what types of pictures you want to capture. Plan your photo itinerary around your travel itinerary. Plan special moments during your trip with a specific scrapbook page in mind. Attempt to plan your vacation around a theme such as a theme park or location and have that as your scrapbook theme as well.

4. Decorate with personal home made touches. Gather stones, feathers, flowers, postcards etc. during your trip. Create homemade photo frames and bookmarkers to give your family vacation scrapbook personal flair. Use computer software to create your own scrapbook pages and cover to make your scrapbook scream your family name.

5. Save everything. Anything from movie tickets, a book of matches, napkins, hotel door key cards, pamphlets, coupons and paper doilies make good mementos for scrapbooks. While you are on your family vacation be sure to save everything you get your hands including receipts. This is an extremely cheap way to fill up a scrapbook.

6. Use fancy paper. Craft stores and stationary stores carry run of the mill designer scrapbooking paper but to give it a more personalized touch look for unusual decorative paper. Michael's Arts & Crafts carries hundreds of different designs that you can purchase by the sheet. And when nothing else will do try looking in the gift wrap section.

7. Make duplicates. Why keep the family vacation scrapbook to yourself when everyone can get a copy? When you set out to create your scrapbook buy enough supplies to make an identical one for each member of the family. If you'd rather go for a variety of perspectives on your vacation give your family members a blank scrapbook and let them make their own. This makes for a great way to spend the afternoon together after returning from a long trip.

8. Give everyone in the family their own disposable camera. The family vacation scrapbook is about the whole family so let them participate. You never know what kind of memory will be captured by someone else behind the camera.

9. Use Maps. Maps of locations you've been are a great addition to a family vacation scrapbook. Look for unique local maps by visiting the visitor's center of the town you are visiting. Check out their local history center or museum to collect artifacts about the location.

Have a great family vacation and happy scrapbooking!