I have this fantasy that one day I will create The Most Amazing Family Scrapbook Anyone Has Ever Seen, not to mention elaborate personalized books for each one of my children. However, that day may take a while to get here. Having five children from age seven down to newborn means that I have little extra time. Also, when I imagine myself spreading my scrapbooking supplies all over the kitchen table, I immediately flash to an image of us in the ER an hour later, a surgeon removing a decorative charm that says something like FAMILY FUN from my two-year-old’s ear.
Meanwhile, I didn’t want all the cute moments from daily life to be forgotten while I wait for the day that I can capture them in some artsy way, so I’ve found a system for capturing family memories that even I can handle. It’s simple, easy, and—best of all—cheap! All you need is a free program called Evernote, and you’re ready to get started. (I have no affiliation with the company that makes Evernote, I’m just a huge fan of their product.)
How to capture family moments and memories in no time at all:
- Download Evernote and install it on your computer. (You can also get it for your mobile phone, iPad, or use a web-only version—whatever is most convenient for you.)
- Create a new notebook called Family Memories.
- Start adding notes, creating a new one for each tidbit you’d like to remember. For example, one note might recount a particularly amazing performance at your daughter’s volleyball game. Another might record some data you want to remember, like, “Took Billy to the doctor today. He already weighs 24 pounds!”
That’s it! Evernote captures the date of the note, so you don’t need to worry about that. Also, your data is kept on a “cloud,” which means that (a) you don’t need to worry about backups, since your information is stored away from your computer, and (b) you can access your data from anywhere. So if you’re at your brother’s house and the kids do something cute, you can jump on his computer, log in to Evernote online, and add a note to your folder.
Some cool ways to get even more use out of the system:
- Evernote files can accept pictures, so you can add photos to go with your notes, or even scan in papers like diplomas, awards, or artwork.
- Add Evernote to your iPhone, Andriod, or iPad. That way when the kids do something noteworthy at the park, you can snap a picture, dash out a comment, and instantly add it to your file.
- When you sign up you’ll receive a custom email address so that you can email updates to your file. So next time you email the grandparents to tell them some story about the kids, just CC your Evernote account and your story will automatically be added.
- Add tags to your notes depending on how you may want to use the information in the future. Some examples: Add a tag with each kid’s name who’s mentioned in the note; then, later, you can go back and sort on individual names if you’d like to produce separate collections of stories for each child. You could add a tag like funny, then later create a collection of humorous family stories, or label all your Christmas memories with a tag by that name, one day returning to create a book of all your Christmas memories over the years.
Once you have this system down, the possibilities are endless. You can reference the data you capture to create scrapbooks the old fashioned way, or use services like Shutterfly or Snapfish to create professional-quality photo books in minutes. With the easy search and sorting capabilities, it takes only seconds to access the information you need to create custom collections of memories. With the no-hassle, straightforward interface, you won’t need to worry about letting treasured family moments slip by, even when you’re so busy living those moments that you don’t have much time to record them.
What are your tips for keeping track of family memories when you’re short on time?
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Thanks for this great idea. I used to keep a personal blog for writing the funny stories and posting photos, but when we started writing Of Sound Mind and Spirit, I didn’t have the time or energy to keep up with the personal blog. Also, it was so much more convenient and easier to just throw something onto Facebook. But Facebook doesn’t allow me to chronicle, print, organize (Archive) those stories/photos in any other format.
I’ll give Evernote a try!
I have that same dream!! Awesome! Thank you!!!
I go old-school, with an actual scrapbook with photos from the lab. I’m just too scared to rely on my photos being in just a cloud without a tangible product. However, I have littles and can’t really work on my book with them in the room, not with scissors, etc., in reach. What I do is take a photo of my baby once per month with the same stuffed bear in the same chair. Each month I upload all the photos from the last month onto Walgreens and FB and order them at the same time. I just make the time to do it. When they arrive, I sort them into empty pages in the scrapbook. It doesn’t take long. It isn’t until I have the whole book filled with loose photos that I have work to do. By then, my “baby” is 12 months old and I can get babysitting easier. I spend a long weekend just working on the book, using the cute background papers, attaching the photos, labeling things, etc. As for the older child, I do the same thing with his photos, just sort them as they arrive in the mail, once per month. I think the problem with family photos is you have to keep up with them (like you say in this post) as they come instead of putting it aside to do all at once. It is too intimidating and the job gets bigger and bigger. By forcing myself to take photos once per month and by dealing with them every time I upload photos, it isn’t so bad.
Thanks so much for this article - I and the ladies I went to grad school with teach and work with preschoolers with and without special needs and this program looks like it could be incredibly useful when it come to taking anecdotal notes and putting together portfolios - thanks again!
Thanks for the great tips, Jennifer! I’m an Evernote fan too. I started using it this summer to plan the launch my genealogy blog, ExtremeAncestry.com. Evernote was the best way to organize my thoughts and strategy. From there it only made sense to start setting up folders for the family lines I’m researching. And voila - now I wonder was there life before Evernote. I’ve been doing genealogy for 36 years now and it’s been quite an evolution from index cards and 3-ring binders to a user-friendly tool like Evernote that syncs my research from laptop to iPad and saves everything on a cloud. Who would have thought?
I’m a huge Evernote fan too—but here’s my question—how do you handle converting to hard copy? I am a bit suspicious of the cloud aspect, and I’m not computer cool enough to quite understand the discussions on the forums as to how to back up into another location, other than syncing with the Evernote server. Maybe I could make a notebook for each kid, or for a month maybe, and print the notebook every so often? It wouldn’t be pretty, but at least it’d be saved!
I’m like Wendy—used a Beatrix Potter baby book to record important moments and photos of my son’s life. About twice a month, I’d settle in with the book after he was asleep, and update it. Any time something would occur to me in the meantime, I’d jot down a note and toss that and any photos into a basket that I kept right next to the book.
But Evernote sounds like something I could use for another project. I’ll have to check it out.
Sounds great! Technology is wonderful. Thanks for sharing.
Great creative use of Evernote. But what did you mean about using it with Snapfish? I could not find anything on that. I am a Premium member and even asked support about it: They said there is no way to save an existing note or notebook to PDF or other useful format other than EN and HTML format. Does Snapfish and other book/photo making sites use HTML format?
I use Microsoft OneNote for the same thing. I want to print the notebook with my journal and kids’ photos to a shutterfly or snapfish book but I haven’t figured out how to do this easily. Do you know? Thanks, Karen
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