It’s always bittersweet when it’s time to take down our tree and store away our holiday decorations for another year.  So much time goes into preparing for the big day and it seems to be over in the blink of an eye.  There is one after-Christmas tradition that we enjoy as a way to wrap up the season.  My dad has always kept photos that our family received over the holidays in albums.  The cards were organized by family, and it was fun to look back and see how the kids changed every year.  My dad has been doing this for decades.  One of his friends lost all of their photos after Hurricane Katrina and were so touched when my dad was able to return their twenty years worth of family Christmas photos.  Inspired, I decided to continue this tradition with our own cards.

So every year, the kids and I sit down and gather up all the holiday cards that we received that year.  We get out the albums and we go over one card at a time, taking pause to place that family’s photo next to their prior year’s.

We like to organize our cards by family so we can see changes (and additions!) from year to year, but doing so necessitates using the old-school album binders with sticky peel-back pages.  If you remember what these albums look like, you know that they’re very plain.  Our family and friends deserve better!  So I covered them with beautiful paper to create albums that are befitting of the loving families inside.  We enjoy looking back over the years and taking this time to appreciate the people in our lives.  Do you have any ideas to share for your holiday cards?