Scrapbook to Capture Holiday Memories

The holidays ... months of preparation for one or two glorious days only to have them come and go in what seems to be at the blink of an eye.

Before one can process the events, family and friends have made their exits and what used to be the comforting hum of chatter and laughter throughout the house has been replaced by the average, everyday drone.

Rather than allowing precious memories to simply slip away, holiday photographs and mementos can be easily assembled into a scrapbook - a perfect keepsake of the best of times.

AP9 Passport to Fun, a discount membership program administered by Adaptive Marketing LLC, provides creative ideas for putting together all those holiday mementos into in a special scrapbook to be shared for years to come.

AP9 PassportToFun offers these creative solutions for putting together a scrapbook that captures all those holiday memories.

Holiday cards, postcards and even gift card stickers are easy pieces to include in an album. Pick out the cards given by people who matter most and design a theme page around each person -- including the card, pictures and a personal note about why that person is special.

Don't forget, if you have little ones, to create a page dedicated to "A Letter to Santa" or "A Letter from Santa."

Items such as holiday napkins or doilies, place cards, celebratory horns, party hats, confetti, children's drawings or coloring book pages or even recycled calendar pages can be mounted in a scrapbook with double-sided tape or acid-free glue.

A collection of these can be applied as a fancy border or a colorful, interesting background for many of your pages.

Local craft stores carry special scissors and cutting tools to trim photos. These tools can turn an ordinary picture into one that has rounded or fancy corners.

Look for fun paper punches that create holiday-themed shapes like snowmen, holly, ornaments and even Christmas trees. Punching along a page makes a border and the punched-out shapes can be glued on other pages as accents.

Pouring through dozens of holiday photos can be overwhelming. Set realistic goals for designing a page or two at a time.

Be selective with photos as only the best ones tell the most memorable stories. Less is more so consider using two to three pictures per page as other items described above will complement and fill each page.

A scrapbook is a great way to spend a night together as a family. Each family member can find their inner artist and contribute their own designs and written memories of holidays past.