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Journal keeping can be a wonderful way to keep treasured memories and family traditions alive. By starting a journal you can trace the development of a garden, find out what your family really enjoys about the holidays and pass things along to future generations. It's an inexpensive way to keep memories alive and right at your fingertips, not packed away in boxes or dusty photo albums.
When most of us think of journals, we think of the little diaries we received when we were ten or so. You remember, the ones with the little locks and keys. You may also remember how at first you filled each daily section but that that task quickly became a chore - nothing but a recitation of the same facts over and over again. Well, journals have changed, the locks are gone as are the little dated sections for each day's entry. Now, anything goes!
First - What are you going to write about?
The possibilities are endless so take a look at your life. Have you just moved into a new house? A chronicle of any improvements or changes you make will not only be fun for your family but a useful record for the timing of repairs and large scale projects. Did you recently plant a garden? A gardening journal can show how your garden changes from season to season and be a handy reference when time comes to choose new plants or to buy seeds. Are you a knitter? Take photos of finished projects along with your patterns. Anything important in your life is a suitable subject for a journal.
Second - Choose the book.
This is my favorite part. If you're like me you have a 'thing' for stationary. New pens and notebooks pull you to them in stationary stores. Now you have a perfect excuse to buy more! If you're going to be recording holiday traditions and recipes you may want a spiral bound book that can lay flat while you're cooking. A gardening notebook should be sturdy with a cover that's easily cleaned. A bound book with a leather cover is costly but if you're keeping a mom's book for a child you will want something that will last through the years. You may want a journal for household projects to have pockets that bills or plans can be kept in.
I keep a variety of journals, each in a different type of notebook. My gardening journal started in a spiral bound book but soon grew into a larger, leather bound one. My knitting notebook is a simple three ring binder with clear plastic sleeves. I can slip yarn samples and photos into the sleeves along with the patterns. For holiday recipes, decorations and menus I use a spiral bound, blank book with a decorative cover.
Third - Start Recording
Although each entry can be dated, these aren't journals that need to be written in daily. You will find that you will write in some more often than others. I write in my garden journal intensively during the summer but only sporadically, if at all, in the dead of winter. The frequency of entries is totally up to you. What starts out as a notebook for home improvement may become a detailed diary of your feelings on becoming a homeowner, trying to fill an enormous new house and then gradually outgrowing it as new children arrive.
Don't limit entries to just writing. Fill these new journals with the stuff of your daily life. Ticket stubs, pressed flowers, wish pictures from magazines, the receipt from a child's first haircut. All these things will really make your memories come alive each time you open the book. Decorate the pages with sketches, rubber stamps and photos. It still amazes me when I compare photos from the first summer after I put in my garden to the most recent ones in my scrapbook - how did I ever do all that work? But I did and it's right there in my journal!
Remember, these are journals that are meant to be shared. Someday I hope to give my son my holiday journal. In it I have my grandmother's recipe for spaghetti with clam sauce that I had every Christmas Eve growing up and that he now looks forward to. All the aunties' cookie recipes (good and not so good) are in there along with pictures of each holiday table. Hopefully someday he will use the book to begin his own traditions.
Life goes by so quickly that we should make an effort to hold onto the good parts, the parts that define us as people, families. Journal keeping is a simple, satisfying way to record the times of our lives.
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