Creating a keepsake of Christmas memories with Snapfish

Now that Halloween is over for another year it’s time to turn our attention to Christmas. If you’re a regular reader of my blog you’ll know that I’m pretty big on celebrating the seasons and family traditions. Snapfish recently got in touch and asked me if I would like to create a photo book with them, celebrating all our little Christmas memories and traditions (read to the end for a very generous discount from Snapfish).

I’ve made a few photo books before. There was one for my mum’s recent special birthday, and I also made one for my daughter’s first birthday, which she loves to look through. I jumped at the chance to make a new photo book. But first I needed to sit down and make a list of all our Christmas traditions. I spent a happy hour looking through our family photos (thankfully all digital!) and made a note of the things we like to do in the run up to Christmas:

On the 1st of December our Advent Box is delivered by our Elf on the Shelf. The Advent Box contains new Christmas pyjamas, an Advent candle, Advent calendars and our Book Advent
At the start of December the children love to look through Christmas catalogues and write their Christmas lists
Throughout December we drink hot chocolate, make a gingerbread house, wear our Christmas jumpers, do lots of Christmas crafting and bake mince pies with Nanny
We watch the children in their School Nativity plays, and try to go to Church for some carol singing
We visit Father Christmas, take a ride on our local Santa Special, sometimes we might visit an ice skating rink or go to a festive Pantomime
At some point in December we will decorate the Christmas tree and house
Close to Christmas Day our Elf will deliver a North Pole Breakfast
On Christmas Eve our Elf brings the Christmas Eve Box containing reindeer food, a special hot chocolate, the Santa Key (as we don’t have a chimney) and a Christmas film for us all to watch. We will track look up the official NORAD Santa Tracker, hang up our stockings and leave a mince pie for Father Christmas

December is a busy month but it just wouldn’t be Christmas without doing these things. It helps keep the children busy and builds excitement for Christmas Day.

After I had made a note of our main Christmas traditions I looked for photos to go with them. Thankfully all my photos are sorted by date so this wasn’t too hard. Then I created my 11×8 Landscape Hardcover photo book using one of the ready made templates (the Family Chalkboard theme). It was easy to upload my photos, you can even upload from Facebook and Instagram, and place them where I wanted. I changed some of the layouts to fit my photos (I had chosen loads!), changed the text and added my own notes and clip art embellishments to really personalise the book. I’d say I spent a few hours making it which was a little longer than I had planned, but I wanted to create a real keepsake for us all to treasure.

Then I just had to sit back and wait for the book to arrive. Luckily everyone loves it. I made sure to include photos from when the kids were born so there’s a great selection from the last 8 years and they love looking through it. I love watching them look at the photos and listen to them talk about some of their favourite Christmas memories. It’s definitely helping them get in the mood for Christmas – they’ve even started talking about what our naughty Elf will get up to this year!

Snapfish have very kindly offered my readers a very generous discount in case they would like to create their own photo book. They make a lovely, personalised gift and a great keepsake too. Just use the code JENNYBOOK40 to get 40% off your order on the Snapfish website. A big thanks to Snapfish for asking me to create my special keepsake of Christmas memories.