These trips we take are all about making memories. The more new memories we make, the more we have to look back on and smile, and the more it seemingly stretches out time. When we are on our trips, the days fly by, but when we look back on them, they seem so long with so many memories because of all the novel experiences. Whereas, when we are home and fall into the usual routine, time slows down in the moment with the cold, snowy Vermont winter days dragging on, but we can't recall much of what we did in retrospect, and so that part of our lives seems to be a small memory. I can barely name 3 things we did during the 6 months last winter (ok syrup-making, sledding, snow-blowing the driveway, that's about it), but I can name 3 things we did almost every day on our trips. That is in part due to the following ways we relive the memories...
These are our favorite ideas so far:
The Frame Photo TV by Samsung: We got the 65" version and hung it in the dining room so we can see it every night at dinner. The picture is great for all the photos we took on our trips with a nice matte finish. We picked out the best landscapes and family photos to display, currently at just over 800 photos. We had to trim it down a bit due to maxing out the available storage or it would have been 1000+. It can rotate as fast as every 3 minutes or as slow as day/weeks. I wish it could do every minute, but oh well. It has a setting so that it turns off after 15 min or so, and turns back on when it senses motion in the room. It is a smart TV as well, but we don't want Jordan to discover that function.
Metal Photo Prints: We get our photos printed at bayphoto.com. These prints look amazing comparing with our old canvas prints. You can see 3 different sizes that we tend to get here. We have a few that are even larger. We do landscapes on the largest, family photo landscapes on the mediums, and family fun photos on the smallest, plus more that we can't fit onto the others since we only have so much wall space. The little ones we get in 10 packs, and the others are individual. There is a discount for first time customers, just make sure to enter it on the final screen before submitting your order - it feels strangely late in the process.
Photo Wall: In the basement play room, we put up whiteboard wallpaper and bordered it with colored tape. Starting after our Utah trip, we printed standard 4x6" photos and all put them up together - Jordan loved it. We've quickly had to start taking some down and replacing them with new photos as we've traveled more. So many memories...
Magnet Prints: Photos that didn't make it to metal prints (or even some that did) get displayed on the fridge as magnet prints. We get these at walgreens (wait for the sales, at least 50% off).
Photo Books: Oh yes, the photo books. The most time is spent on these. We started out using Walmart photo way back at the beginning, but didn't love the software. Walgreens works great for us. We put the photos we want on each page and it arranges them in the most sensible way. We will make a separate post about all the details, but for now, the premium lay flat photo books (ship to store or home, NOT same day store pickup) are awesome. We have been maxing out the book sizes with our big trips, 100 pages is the max, standard starts with 20. Wait for the sales. You can almost always get 40%, and usually can get 50% if you wait a few rounds of sales. The best we got was the last order where the base book was 60% off and the extra pages were 50% off (when they do the 60% photo book sales, it does not include extra pages, but the general photo sales cover those so put in both codes). The quality is great though - thick pages with a nice matte finish. They will last forever. We almost thought about going back and remaking the early Walmart ones, but not quite.
State/Province Maps: These maps are fun and a great way to see just how far you've come/gone. We will hit the mid country empty patch in 2025. It's funny that we've been to Alaska, but not next door to Massachusetts. We will try to see them all, except those 2 northern Canadian territories.
National Park Poster: The national park posters are another fun way to remember where you've gone and stay motivated to keep moving. We aren't specifically trying to check them all off (we've skipped by some intentionally if we didn't think they would add value to our lives at this stage in Jordan's life), but maybe we will one day. Those round stickers on the top are the Canadian national parks. We couldn't find a poster of theirs, but did find those stickers on amazon.
In addition to these, we also have a more standard 8x10" or so digital photo frame that has ALL of the pictures since 2017 when we first met. It's not just about taking the photos, but about looking at them regularly. Facebook also helps with that. We will try adding Instagram on the next trip.
The landscape photos we took are also great laptop background photos, rotating constantly.
We make our family trip videos, which we've already watched dozens of times.
Lastly, this blog! Hopefully, recording memories in real time will be a great resource to look back on in the future as we continue our tiny adventures.
Let us know if you have any other ideas!
Comentários