OSCAR'S TRAVEL ALBUM

One of the gifts we received when Oscar was born was this memory book. It's essentially a spiral notebook filled with blank pages and a personalized cover, and I think a lot of people use these as a type of baby book. But as you may already know, Oscar already has one of those. So I spent some time thinking about how to use this book. I could have just scrapped the baby book and used this one, but I'd kinda already started the baby book and I enjoy its cheesiness haha. I could have just filled this with photos. I could have let him fill it himself, even just with random drawings. After lots of overthinking, I decided to just go with my first impression of the book and turn it into Oscar's very first travel journal.

Seeing as I kinda feel like I have enough journals and photo album projects and whatnot, I decided to keep this one as simple as possible, with mainly just photos and text. I usually use about a page or two per trip, or a page or two per stop if it's part of a longer road trip. Everything from small weekend trips to the cabin to our big coast-to-coast American road trip earlier this year gets journalled. This is also where I stick down any postcards he gets in the post.

I drew a map on the first page, which I plan on marking every time he visits a new country. I might add more to it later, but for now I'm keeping it pretty minimal. So far, counting the country he lives in, he's already been to six countries! Not a bad start for our young explorer.

The further I get on, I seem to be focusing more on the photos and less on the text, which I'm pretty happy with as I often struggle to figure out what to write and feel it ends up a bit awkward. It's not until the latest trip, our coast-to-coast American roadtrip, where I've started using alpha stickers and the like. Not sure I'll keep doing it, as I want to keep it as simple and minimal as possible with the main emphasis on the photos, but somehow I feel it works for that trip. I also try to use as many random phone photos as I can, as these photos are likely to not end up in any other photo books. It's a work in progress obviously, but I'm happy to report that I'm well over halfway through the pages! And at this rate, the book might end up being so thick I might need to take out some pages.

I really do hope Oscar grows into one of those people who appreciate these sort of things as an adult haha. But, if nothing else, at least I have a really good time making them. :)