One thing I haven't seen on this board is how people deal with all their travel photos and souvenirs. Several years ago my wife began building scrap books and I think this is a great way to record our trips. <BR> <BR>After each trip, we get our film developed and then organize the prints in the proper sequence. Along with these we sort all of our post cards, ticket stubs, site brochures, hotel brochures, etc. into the proper order, so that we have the whole trip in sequence. We then put all of this in a scrap book (we like the ones that have the clear plastic film over the pages that you pull up, place the item beneath, then put back down) in the order of the trip from day one to the end. We also include our boarding passes for the planes at the front and back. Then we compose some sort of cover sheet on the computer to place at the front of the scrap book with a description of the trip (e.g., Bill and Betty's Germany Getaway, 1999). The completed book is then placed in our bookshelf along with all of our others, so that we may easily revisit all of the wonderful places we have been and relive the trip as often as we wish. This also makes it easier to share the trip with friends and family. <BR> <BR>We have found this to be a very nice way to keep the memories around - otherwise the photos and other items would be stuck in a shoebox somewhere in the closet and we would lose track of them quickly. <BR> <BR>Does anybody else put together scrap books or other kinds of trip records? Would be interesting to hear of how other people deal with this.

Billy, your wife sounds very organized. I love scrap books, but I never seem to find the time to put one together. All our photos and stubs and brochures are stuck in drawers and piled on shelves. One of these days I'm going to get everything organized into albums. Until that day comes, it's nice sometimes to come across a stub or photo of a trip while I'm tearing the place apart looking for something else. It makes me stop and smile and remember, and then forget what I was looking for.

I agree one must be organized to get this all put together. One thing we have learned is not to put it off. We try to have it put together whithin the first two weeks of our return while the memories are still fresh and we can remember what each picture is of. Sort of a "Umm, honey, do you remember where this little ol' castle was located?". I am afraid if we waited too long we would forget the names of those little out of the way places we like to snoop around and find while we travel.

EVERYTHING goes into photo albums, day by day, and captioned (learned this from my folks who had boxes of photos that we organized as best we could "honey, do you remember who this guy was?" "where was this taken?"). I like the plastic pockets rather than the magnetic pages.<BR><BR>The exception was this year's stay in Paris - day by day was not feasible, as I retraced steps many times. I bought beautiful scrapbooks at hand-made- paper shops in the Viaduct and in the Marais, bought those little corners, and did 'theme' scrapbooks.<BR><BR>New souvenir: photo albums/scrapbooks <BR>Welcomed gift: photo albums, calligraphy or gel pens (for captions). Stickers and rubber stamps with travel themes (fun to decorate the album covers).<BR>Gift idea: wall calendars using trip photos (for travel companions, your travel agent, Gramma who gave you the trip for a graduation gift)

Well, the first thing that I do is to make a collage with the best photos and what I call the "bits and bobs" of the trip, Theatre ticket stubs, rail passes, airline tickets... parking validation, brocures... little sugar packets with sugar written in Hungarian... the receipt from a particularly romantic meal or dinner cruise. I lay out the "bits and bob's" and the best photos "til it tells a story (at least to me) of what the trip was about, then I glue them into place, then lay the glass from the frame over the top of it and voila! Instant memories, then I hang it on the wall of our bedroom, I get to keep the most fantastic things this way... whenever I see, for example, a beer mat from the Hofbrau House that an elderly German couple wrote the German word for "friend" upon, I smile from ear to ear remembering, likewise tube tickets or tickets from the "petit trains" at Versailles.... I have one of these collages from each trip and at least once or twice a week I spend time staring at them, remembering. It's also a great way to show people your trip without making them go through 7 rolls of photos with you! The rest of the photos that don't make it into the collage, go into albums, with the date and local written on the back.

We did have a discussion along these lines a while back with many interesting and helpful suggestions, but can I remember the title?? Nooo.... <BR> <BR>We used to put the best pictures [well -- all except the REAL dogs] in albums and fail to label them. Now I find I am using the web to arrange and process my visual memories. The last few trips I'm not sure *any* pictures made it intro albums. If you want to see how I do it [and how my web skills have or haven't evolved over the past few years] you can start here: http://www.ntsource.com/~dhfsbf19/travels.htm

I take a journal and glue stick along on every trip. Each night before bed, I transcribe my note on the things we did that day and glue in the postcards, brochures, ticket stubs, etc. If I waited until each trip was over, I'd probably just have stacks of stuff.

I've started to keep photos in photo boxes. They have dividers and hold 750 photos. I did try to keep up with albums, but I live in a very small house and just ran out of storage space. Boxes just hold so much more and it's easy to organize them right after the trip.

Billy, procrastination is my middle name. Thyra, what a great idea - collages of your "bits and bobs". I'll bet they look terrific framed under glass. Elvira, I love the calendar idea, especially right now as we're about to begin a new year. Is that something that a local photo shop does, or do you have to go to a special printer? <BR> <BR>I usually frame one or two pictures from vacation. This year I took a b&w photography course and got a few nice shots in Paris and Chartres that I enlarged and mounted in class. They came out great - very artsy-fartsy if I do say so myself. I have a growing collection of our travel photos on the bookshelves. I enjoy reliving travel memories as I pass through the hallway, even if I can't recall all the names of the streets and places. <BR> <BR>What I've always wanted to do is make use of the postcards people have sent me from all over the world. I'm always touched when someone remembers me while they're traveling, and I've saved most of those postcards over the years. I'd like to put them into some sort of collage order as a table top or something. Another thing to add to the "to do" list!

Here's what I did with the post cards I received from others. I made one of those French styled bulletin boards with the fabric and the ribbon interwined. Then I just stick the post card in between the ribbon. I tried gluing my foreign coins on tacks and sticking them where the ribbons criss cross, but the superglue I used didn't work. I love looking at all my postcards I've received: Paris, London, Israel, China, Indonesia, Costa Rica, Bermuda...

Ess, Walgreen's does the calendar thing; I would bet that any chain that develops photos (KMart, Osco Drug, etc.) probably has the same ability (along with snowglobes, mugs and tshirts). I've seen the same thing advertised in catalogs, too.<BR>At a craft store I spotted a calendar that had 'frames' each month for a photograph, great for me or as a gift.

I select the best few photos from each trip, have them enlarged to 8x10's, frame them and hang them on the bathroom walls. I enjoy them every day. Fortunately, the bathroom is large. But when I run out of space, I guess I'll start rotating the phots so I can keep adding new things.

Ess: A really neat effect you might want to try is to add some color tinting to those blown-up B&W prints. Just a little here and there, or a lot.

With a view toward a souvenir album, here is one thing I do: Before I go I take the film out of the boxes and mark each plastic canister with a number (scotch tape and a magic marker work fine). I use the film in numerical order, and when I finish a roll I put it back in its numbered canister. When I take my pictures in for developing at home, I mark the roll number somewhere on the film envelope, for my own reference. That way when I get the pictures back, if I'm not sure what I'm seeing, I can remember it from the order in which I saw things by referring to the number of the <BR>roll. Since I also often keep a travel diary of sorts, this also helps me match the pictures to what I did on a particular day. <BR>Elvira, more power to you, but I can't use those stick-on corners, they drive me crazy. I have found in stationery stores thin plastic photo pockets with peel-off self-stick backs. The plastic is also acid free, which I didn't used to think was important until I took out a "magnetic" (peel-back plastic pages) <BR>from only 15 years ago and found that many of my photos had faded or discolored. <BR>I can use the self-stick pockets in a scrap book for horizontal or vertical photos (they also come in panoramic size) and for variety I can separate some of the photos with other souvenirs like ticket stubs, restaurant business cards, brochures, postcards, etc. <BR>It also seems that major cities in Europe have very inexpensive souvenir <BR>photo books that are sold at newstands <BR>tabacs, etc. I always buy two, one to keep intact, one to ruthlessly cut up so that I can have in my album one perfect photo of the entire Doge's Palace or the Eiffel Tower or whatever. <BR>

Holly, I was thinking about trying some photo tinting, but I'll have to make new prints on a different kind of paper (not resin-coated which is what we used in class). I love the color effects, especially on photos of old places. Elvira, I'm definitely going to Walgreen's this weekend to see about the calendar. It'll be a surprise for my boyfriend. Billy, you and everyone else on this thread have inspired me to get the pictures organized. That's going to be my weekend project. We're supposed to get a storm, I think. It'll be a perfect indoor stormy-day project. Have a great New Year's everyone!

Want good memories relived over and over again? <BR> <BR>My wife buys a coffee cup from each city we visit. When we return home, we have coffee out of a mug from a city that we want to remember. Very nice way to remember the good times, when you drink from the coffee cup of that city. <BR> <BR>Been to these cities hunderds of times now, in my memories.

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