Each of my sisters and I have a keepsake from our childhood that I have always treasured. My parents had the brilliant idea to get us a postcard from the places we visited growing up and clip them together in a flip book. It’s the smartest way to scrapbook without even having to scrapbook. I am super curious how this idea originated. Mom? Dad? Comment on this post so I can hear how such a good idea bloomed without the help of pinterest. (Dad, I will explain pinterest at a later time) Do you have any other thoughts or memories about it?
I also have a few pages from postcards my dad sent while he was on business trips.
I love having his handwriting.
Anyway, I have started flip books for the girls. When on a vacation we stop at a souvenir shop (or gas station) and let the girls pick out their own card.
We only have 3 postcards in each book so far but I can’t wait to see them grow.
I also decided to add a handful of memories from each place on the back of each card.
Thanks mom and dad for a great idea! And, look how thick my childhood book is!!! I hope we can do as good a job as you did traveling the country with our family.
With my oldest three (now in their 30s) and now my youngest, 17, I had them pick out a postcard and we would write pertinent details (date, weather, things saw and did) and mail them from that destination to home. They had a postcard waiting and it had the postmark from the place.
Just stumbled upon this idea/post on pinterest – love it!
I’ll start a postcard collection for my 1-year-old now. Thanks for sharing!
Greetings from Austria.
It’s quickly becoming one of our favorite traditions! Glad you discovered this and hope you have fun with it!
I’d wondered what happened to those postcard books…I’m pleasantly surprised to see you not only still have yours but that it’s special to you. It’s difficult trying to answer your question about how the idea originated. I don’t think it was something we saw anyone else doing; the idea just came to me as a nice (and cheap) way to keep a record of where you’d traveled (and later, I guess, of postcards you received). I must admit that I’ve reflected once or twice with some regret that we didn’t stay more disciplined in continuing the practice over the years of getting new postcards from every new place we visited. I suspect you’ll be better than we were in that regard.
So while it’s almost impossible for me to remember just how the idea popped into my head, here are a few things that were probably in the far back reaches of my mind that helped incubate it. For one thing, I do remember that when I was very young (circa 1950) it was popular when traveling to put decals on the family car’s windows of the places (like national parks) that you’d visited. Car “trip” decals faded away in popularity, but I always thought the simplicity of decals (car aesthetics aside) was a nice way to collect keepsakes from travels (and remember, back then traveling long distances by car was still VERY new – there wasn’t even the interstate highway system yet). So I think it just occurred to me that collecting postcards as keepsakes might be a fun way for you to keep a record where you’d been – and also, perhaps, to make you a bit more attentive to the places you were visiting. I’m sure there was something I’d seen that gave me the idea of keeping them together with rings, but I don’t remember what it was; it just seemed an easy way to keep them together, especially while on a trip; much better for example than bulky scrapbooks.
It’s quite neat to see what you’re doing with K, H and C. It’s obvious they’re the beneficiaries of your much greater artistic sense!
thanks for replying!!! BTW, I don’t think of you as old – but hearing things about an new thing called the interstate system puts things in perspective and makes me so thankful you are progressive enough to figure out how to comment on our new baby blog! now we need to work on mom….
Where do you get the rings for the flip books?
They sell them at Hobby Lobby! I’m sure Michaels or other craft stores would have them too~