Christmas Ornament Scrapbook

Today is the official “put Christmas away” day. I hate today. Ha ha! 

While I’m putting away the Christmas tree, I wanted to share a fun tradition with you.

Each year my husband and I surprise each other with an ornament that represents something from the year. It is so fun to pull out these special ornaments each year and reminisce as we hang them on the tree. I realized a few years ago, however, that if we didn’t start documenting the stories behind each ornament, we would forget them! So I created a mini scrapbook album that I keep in the ornament box so that those precious stories behind each ornament will be remembered forever.

I kept the album simple. I cut 6″x6″ squares from heavy cardstock, punched holes in the sides and bound all the pages together with metal rings (tied with ribbon to up the cuteness factor, of course). With this style of album, when I run out of pages in the future, it will be really easy to add more.

I took photos of each of the ornaments. I edited them in Photoshop so that two pictures would fit on a standard 4×6″ print. After I had them printed, I cut the photos in half!

The smaller size works better for a mini album, plus the cost for printing was also cut in half.

I decided that I wanted the story of each ornament to be behind the photo, so I made fold-over mattes for each photo from cardstock.

 Now each photo folds up with the perfect space for writing!

I also made a bunch of blank pages to use in upcoming years.

This mini album took hardly any time to put together, but I am so glad to know that my memories will be safely preserved for many years to come. Before you take your tree down this year, take some time to make your own scrapbook so you can keep your own holiday memories alive!