Cool pandemic year scrapbook idea

Thanks Jane. I appreciate your kind words.

It was fun to do. A little smaller than my usual scrapbooks. Lol.

I think it would be fun to compare when we actually get to do this tour

Kim

Oh gosh...that sounds like fun!

I've been reliving some of my trips by FB memories popping up. A friend from the Village Italy tour I took years ago has just reposted a number of days of the tour. It was such fun to "see" everyone and everything! There are about a half a dozen of us who are friends on FB and it was a virtual reunion.

Kim, you are so clever!

Kim, what an ingenious idea! A great way to look forward to future travel. I think it’s therapeutic as well! ;J

We would have returned from Sicily about 10 days ago. A gal that we met (2014) on a tour of Southern Italy and Sicily surprised us recently with photos of Taormina. It was a birthday gift for my husband & me. It was a kind reminder of our memorable tour together. I plan to frame them.

I've had a lot of fun just rereading my old trip notes - not quite a journal, but more in-depth than just random notes. You would not believe how much I have forgotten, especially about camping trips Stan and I took back in the day - like 30 or 40 (or more!) years ago. I think our first camping trip was in about 1970. Oh, good Lord, it couldn't possible have been 50 years ago, could it?

I started out just taking very spare notes - where we stayed, did we buy gas... Then the notes get more and more elaborate as time goes on. For camping trips I'd note where we stayed, what campsites looked better, what animals we saw, what side trips we took...

When we started vacationing in Europe, the first year or two the notes were similarly perfunctory; they quickly became more detailed. And I'm loving rereading these notebooks.

I have been enjoying my Facebook "Memories" of prior trips. Right now, I'm reliving our 2017 trip to Spain. I remember how worried I was about the demonstrations in Barcelona - HAH! The good people of Barcelona could not have cared less about the Americans in their midst.

I decided to go through my photos of years of travel, from cruises, to trips to various US states and to Europe that I had in tons of photos albums. I went through tons of photos and threw out tons of photos. Going through them, I had great memories and so enjoyed looking at them again. I rarely look at the old photos over a course of 30 years! I don't need photos of beaches and water and trees, I kept some but not all that I don't need any longer. I kept people pictures, but the sky and water , I kept a few!

I have been making scrapbooks for several years and have four 12 by 12 scrapbooks that I was saving for future trips, places I have never been to. But now I thought who knows when we can travel, so I decided to take all my old photos and make four scrapbooks using all my old photos that were stuck in old albums taking up space in my closet that I never look at. I like looking at my scrapbooks and showing friends and family my scrapbooks but not my photo albums. So now I have a perfect excuse to make new scrapbooks, clean out the closet, throw out old photo albums and relive my memories again as I make my scrapbooks that will look like I just traveled there, except looking younger than I do now! Win, win!

I love travel scrapbooks, too. For years I've used Shutterfly to make memorable scrapbooks.

This year, since I was unable to travel in 2020, I decided to look back at some of my old travel photos stored in a shoebox from pre-digital camera days. I used my iPhone to take pictures of the prints then downloaded them onto my Shutterfly app. Now I am in the process of finally putting those old photos into a well organized travel album.

It is so much fun to relive those trips!

I had already started my journal for my May trip - with clips cut from the RS tour book, route map, itinerary and jotted notes as I was planning. I kept track of the weather for the would-have-been week and tracked all my refund notes.

We had planned to see a ballet in St Petersburg and one in Moscow. Instead, I tracked all the amazing ballet performances that were made available online from the Mariinsky and Bolshoi companies: I never could have seen so many Russian ballet performances as I did during this pandemic; and I got to see Spartacus, perhaps one of the most difficult Bolshoi tickets to get!

I tracked it all in my would-have-been travel journal, which I'll still take with me when I take the trip, eventually. But you've given me a great idea to have some fun by adding memorabilia for the trip that "would have been!"

We were supposed to be on the Best of Barcelona and Madrid tour this month. Also canceled was the Best of Sicily. We enjoyed our Venice, Florence & Rome Tour from last summer so much that, in addition to a ShutterFly scrapbook, I also made a video of pictures with music:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TjfOD1VSo9U

Besides using Snapfish to make books of our trips, I also make books of our lives. I manage to include 2-3 years with of photos into one book. I start in January and start adding pages. New babies, weddings, birthdays, holidays, beach adventures, grandkids trick or treating, super bowl party. Whatever. I am on my fourth volume. I usually throw in one page with a trip picture or two and add a side note that there is a separate book. I want to leave something to my children, grandchildren, etc. So they will know their ancestors. Unlike with photos, these books have dates, names, information. I have already asked my girls that after we are gone, you can get rid of everything, just not my books. They have promised.

Here is my tour scrapbook from our RS tour to Greece last year. Next time I’m going to include more notes.

https://www.shutterfly.com/share-product/?shareid=ee541da9-56d8-4ecd-b91b-8844fbbe02c8&cid=SHARPRDWEBMPRLNK

Tammy, your scrapbook is fabulous, really. I use snapfish but might try shutterfly for my next book.

Every year we make a calendar (Walgreens Photo) with pictures from our trips. No trips in 2020 so we did a 2021 calendar featuring our travels from 2014 to 2020. It was fun digging through the photos and remembering how our adventures unfolded.