scrapbookers- seperate books?

[blessedwithboys]

This question would be more for paper scrappers than digital scrappers I guess. I'm wondering if I could get some opinions on having 1 series of books that are for the whole family and cover all of your children vs. having a seperate book for each child. The friend I scrap w/ most often is strongly for having a seperate book for each child. She keeps a series of books for each of her girls. I'm wondering what to do once we finally have another baby. The pro's I see for having seperate books are 1) each child can take their own books when they have their own families/homes, 2) you can include more pictures- don't have to be as selective in order to fit an event in a 2 page spread, 3) shows each child that they are special. The pro's I see for having just one series of books for the whole family are 1) it's cheaper, 2) I wouldn't have to do the same layout twice (i.e. a zoo trip layout for each child's book), 3) :O I'm a bit selfish about my books and though the books are *for* my children eventually I'm not sure I'll want them to take them right away when they leave home.

What do you guys think? What do you do personally? TIA ! :heart

[Benjaminswife]

This is my plan. Before we had kids I did books based on our marriage. "1st year, 2nd year..." So I had Daniel in Sept and in August I would have started a new book. So I made a 1 year book of Daniel which included all things pregnancy. I also turned the book I would have started in August into a 2005 book with a few months of 2004 (after Daniel was born) Then I have a 2005 book. I just started my 2006 book. Then I will have a 1 year book for this new baby.

So I will have a family book for every year-
2006, 2007, 2008...

And a 1 year book for every child. I figure that by the time my child are old enough to want a book of their growing up, they can take their own copies of all my pictures. I figure a girl might want to scrapbook them and maybe the wives of my sons would want them to scrapbook too.

I just can't see doing a book every year for each kid.

I also have a birthday book that each child will get starting with their 1st birthday. Every year I will just add their birthday pictures in it. I have also heard of moms doing school books with a page for each school year.

I think I have thought too much about this...lol.

[blessedwithboys]

Hmm, interesting plan! I like that their baby pictures would be seperate w/o having their own book for every year! :think I'm going to toss that idea around! Suprisingly, when I asked dh about this he also said seperate books...until I mentioned the $$$! lol!

[Benjaminswife]

I know, they can get pricy. Usually I buy the Westrim ones with a coupon. I have to have my mom do it for me now since we are in Germany. But they add up.

[blessedwithboys]

Anybody else? WWYD?

[craftymom75]

I have just started, but my plan is to start at 1996 when dh and I maried, do about 4-5 pages, then go into 1997 and so on and so forth.
I am hoping that when the kids get older and make their life decisions, I will simply remove the pages where they are the center,
the main character if you will and then I will keep all of the family ones. I'm hoping that over this year to have the last 10 years done, so I will feel a little more complete.
Does that make sense?

[TrinMama]

I am doing something similar to another mama who posted...separate books for the first year (baby books) and the rest in family albums. I'm also keeping Christmas pictures separate. I may consider doing other separate children books for special things that happen. My question is always: do I keep a color theme throughout or not? hehe. So far, the answer has been "no". I coordinate my paper to the pictures. :)

[Aisling]

I do a general family album, and some of the pages are my journaling about my thoughts for dd. I also do a developmental "when you were little" sort of book with just dd, and I intend to give it to her when she's old enough to take good care of it. :grin I scrap a LOT (well, excepting when I'm very pregnant or nursing a newborn), and so it's not a big deal for me. I've given entire books to extended family members as Christmas gifts :P~

This is my plan: 12x12 pages for the family album, and small 8x8 books for each child. Saves money and it's a lot simpler.

I think you just have to figure out what works for you and go with it :tu :heart

[mommyTay]

I am working on seperate books for each of my kids. I am a camera addict, the number of pictures I take wont' fit neatly in just one family album. Now, I just need to find the time to work on the books again. Maybe there will be time when school starts.

[SPKarenO]

heres what i have so far:

Our Dating Years ending with our Engagement
Our wedding Album (From the photographer)
Our wedding Scrapbook
Our reception Scrapbook
My husbands baby scrapbook
My baby scrapbook
Our 1DD 1st year baby book
A scrapbook of All professional photos taken of DD from birth to present and continuing.
Smaller scrapbooks of individual vacations (2 in total).

I haven't decided what to do from this point forward...except that I know I want to have a 1 year baby book for all future children and a seperate on of all professional photos taken (this would include sibling shots taken at the same time as individual shots - so the same photo would be in each childs own book.

I will probally continue doing small event books, like for vacations.

And I like the idea of a school book or birthday book for each kid, but that might overlap with the professional photo book and be negated.

Other than that, I may not even actually "scrap" all of my other pictures...I may just put them into albums/ i'm going digital so it may end up in easy digital scrabbooks.

[Naomi]

I have spent a lot of time debating this in my mind. I think what i am going to do is a baby book for each of the kids, which is very detailed and only for the first year. Besides that, i am going to do scrapbooks of our life as a family. Then, when it gets close to each child's graduation I will go back and do a scrapbook for each of the children to take with them. I figure with digital pictures, they will all be easy to access, so it won't be too difficult to go back and scrapbook their life 2-18. Especially since all the kids will be in school, so I will have time for it.... definitely more time than I have now... :shrug

[Myrtle]

I'd love to have a separate book for each child. My dd is already 2, and I haven't finished her first year yet. #2 is due any day now. Ummm, as lovely as it sounds to have a separate book for each, it just isn't going to happen in this family. Maybe the first year will be in a book for each, and then family albums after that. Maybe not. If you can do it, that's wonderful, but if you can't, then that's your family and I wouldn't stress over it.

[TrinMama]

you'd also have to decide how many pics/stories/etc you include in your scrapbooks. I decided there is no way i am doing more than a year for each child with the way i scrap (let's just say that i have done enough books that i keep most of them at my mom's house still....LOL). my kids would end up with 8 books by the time they were 18. LOL. like i said before, for special things, like a trip overseas or something, I might do that for or WITH them. i have two girls so far, and i hope to pass on this hobby/family tradition to them. :)

hehe, besides that, if i did more kids' books, i wouldn't have time to go back and redo my honeymoon album. I was looking at it the other day, and wow, it could use some work. i guess it's just that my style has changed...sorry, that was a bit off topic. :O

[mommyTay]

Most of my children are foster kids. By state law, I am REQUIRED to make each of them a "Life Book", basically a biography scrapbook of their whole lives. This is incase they don't go home, they will have something to remember their birth families.

Since each of my fosters get their own book, it doesn't seem right, atleast not to me, to make my kids share a book.
I am working on 10 books right now, Bugs is done through age 4, Mouse and Sis have a good start and my 7 fosters have a big stack of pictures next to and digitally in my computer and the books are sitting somewhere nearby.
I just have to decide if I am doing digital scrapbooking like I did my last foster kids or keep doing the manual kind like I started for our bio-kids. :shrug

[blessedw/4]

We have four kids :-), :highfive, :cloth and have decided that it just is not practicle to scrapbook all the photos that I take :O... I'm a big shutterbug! But I also love the creativity of scrapbooking, so I keep them each a book of their professional photos ... starting with an ultrasound and preg. photo of me ... then hospital photo. We goto Sears at 2 weeks, 3months, 6 months, 9 months, 12 months, 18months and then after on their birthdays. In between those we try to do at least one professional family photo a year and my mom pays to have mine and my sisters children's pictures taken at a fancy photo place 2-4 times a year. She litterally changes all her photos of her grandkids to keep up with her seasonal decorating (thats a hold 'nother can 'o worms ... please do not open!)

So, I keep other photos either digitally on my computer, or in regular photo albums. But not seperately by child. At least they are dated and in some kind of order ... in case I get a chance to scrapbook them some day. The two older ones do have one year baby books, and our forth child's god mother has offered to do a baby book for him(I just need to get her photos dates and info) ... now I just need to start one for dc#3 ... but he is 4 years old already :blush . But I do have one year calendars that I kept for each of them ... writing in what they weighed, ate, and did each month of that first year. So I should be able to do a baby book for #3 ... even if I wait till his graduation :eyebrow :lol Which by the way is what my mom did ... we each got a baby book and she kept some special memorabilia from each school year ... then in our senior years we put them together in an album/scrapbook sort of thing for our graduation parties.

I do have a very arts/craftsy 10 year old daughter ... she has already started scrapbooking her own summers ... wants to do her whole years but I just don't find the time while we are homeschooling. Scrapbooking can get to be very time consuming and messy when we spread all out stuff out ... but it sure is fun to do together!

[chelsea]

:popcorn
I'm in the process of doing a 1st year album for ds but it's beginning to look more like a family album, and a tacky one at that. :/ It's way too hard to scrapbook all the photos I take, but I love so many of them and have a hard time narrowing it down. I have this exact question as the OP because I just don't know if I should keep a separate baby book without holidays such as Christmas? Or if "First Christmas" in his baby book should have only pics of him, etc. And our "family" began with his existence, as I am a single mama so I have no "married without children" history, KWIM? I find it all so confusing! :crazy

[lovemy3]

I didn't read the other replies, so I don't know if what I do has already been covered. :)

Anyway, I have an album for each child. For the first few years, everything went into that book. Once they have started school, only things pertaining to that particular child will go in their book. For instance, school activities, birthday parties, friends, ect. The kids will be able to take their books when they move out. I have a family album as well. Holidays, vacations, special outings, ect go into that book. I may also do a page of a child's birthday but nothing like what is in their book. We also have a bunch of professional photographs that I'm thinking about putting into a book, all by themselves. That book I would keep because it would have everyone in it.

[hey mommy]

I want to do a seperate book for each child. My SIL is an avid scrapbooker w/2 kids and she has one for each of them. My MIL started doing books for dh and bil and she is giving them seperate books..

I wouldn't give them the books as soon as they moved out of the house. That's just asking for trouble.. College kids don't usually care too much about them. LOL..

[lovemy3]

I wouldn't give them the books as soon as they moved out of the house. That's just asking for trouble.. College kids don't usually care too much about them. LOL..


LOL. I don't consider going to college moving out. When they have homes of their own, they'll get them.

Also, wanted to add that my kids love looking at their albums. My DD especially will just sit and look at them for hours.

[hollybells]

The pro's I see for having seperate books are 1) each child can take their own books when they have their own families/homes

They'll be prying the albums out of my cold, dead hands. :shifty

I have a baby album (detailed) still in progress for each and for Hope (I so wish I'd seen the idea when Alex was a baby, but :no) I have an 8x8 called "Sundays with Hope." Every Sunday, give or take, I took her picture - some of just her, lots of whatever was happening in our family - up to her first birthday. Sundays worked well for many holidays and, well, if I'm being honest, that first year it was the one day I could count on make up, brushed hair (not just scooped up in a scrunchie :P~) and possibly clothes that went together. :giggle I would write on the calendar when she did something new (sat up, crawled, new words, weight etc) and added it to the (simple) layout for that week. She loves that book and gets it out all the time (she'll be 4 next week :jawdrop). Then, I started a school years album for Alex that has "highlights" of each year. He helps choose what's important to him. I'll start one for Hope soon, too. Otherwise, we have family albums. And, well, umm, then there are my Christmas albums. :shifty And mini albums I've made each of the kids and for family. I just need to stop now. :O

One of the reasons I've gone so hog wild is that we had a Michael's store open here and dh *encourages* me to use the 40% and 50% off coupons that come in the paper. He considers it an investment in our family. :heart :heart :heart And I'm an addict. :shifty

[Benjaminswife]

Those Michael's coupons are awesome :)

[AdrienneQW]

I do primarily chronological family albums with specialty albums thrown in (wedding, honeymoon, vacations). My son will be five in February and I'm working on a "young Dexter" album - not so much his chronological history, but a theme album about the person he is becoming. Lots and LOTS of journaling. Several "comparative" layouts, where I have one photo from a certain age and another from a later age, comparing and contrasting and talking about how his personality has developed. The one I'm working on now has these two photos:

March 5, 2002 (http://photos.imageevent.com/aqwphoto/dexter/websize/DJW-NICU.jpg)

March 5, 2006 (http://photos.imageevent.com/aqwphoto/dexter/websize/BuzzHat.jpg)
Such an amazing difference, from a sick baby in the NICU to a healthy and happy four-year-old. :praise I'll be shedding a few happy tears as I journal this page. :happytears

[chelsea]

The one I'm working on now has these two photos:
March 5, 2002 (http://photos.imageevent.com/aqwphoto/dexter/websize/DJW-NICU.jpg)
March 5, 2006 (http://photos.imageevent.com/aqwphoto/dexter/websize/BuzzHat.jpg)
Such an amazing difference, from a sick baby in the NICU to a healthy and happy four-year-old. :praise I'll be shedding a few happy tears as I journal this page. :happytears

:happytears