How To Put Together a Graduation Memory Book

With the school year coming to a close, parents everywhere are searching for ways to celebrate the accomplishments of their graduates. The perfect gift to convey their pride! While your grad’s first choice might be a gorgeous new car to drive away in, that is not a possibility for most of us! At least it wasn’t for us, so I went with a sentimental alternative. One that would become a keepsake they would treasure through the years. This post is meant to show you How to Put Together a Graduation Memory Book in case that trip to Europe is out of the question too!

Preparation

Graduation is such an emotional time both for parents and their graduates. No matter how you slice it…life for all of you is about to change dramatically. I think the change might be even more striking this year than at any other time with the exception of 2020.  The lockdowns and the craziness of school schedules due to the pandemic made a normal year impossible. Because of that, you’ve probably spent much more time with your seniors than I did for sure!

I remember wondering when exactly home became a mere pit stop between time spent at school, with friends, at parties, and on dates! With that being said, I guess it did prepare me for the moment they would leave our house and start their lives on their own. Well… as prepared as one can possibly be to let go of a very big piece of your heart!

I’m not going to lie… this project is more than a little time consuming and although scrapbooking has mostly fallen by the wayside, it is a wonderful gift that will last through the ages. Of course they all have 100’s of photos on their cell phones. Funny selfies, pics with friends, but this gives them the chance to view their lives through your eyes so to speak.

Pulling out this book while away at college will help to ward off homesickness. Down the road, it is also a great refresher before attending their first high school reunion. Much further down the road still, the grandkids will love seeing what school was like for mom or dad. All in all, it is worth the work you’ll put in to it, and the tears that come out of it. You can make the project a little less overwhelming with a bit of organization!

Choosing a Graduation Memory Book

First things first! Choosing a Graduation Memory Book is step number one. Since they come in all shapes and sizes, you will need to have a general idea of the layout you will do. If your child is headed for higher education, you might want to choose a book that is expandable later on. You will also need to decide the amount of pages you’ll be dedicating to each school year. If you decide on just one page for each year the possibilities are endless. But in my experience, once you start, you’ll quickly realize just how hard it is to put the whirlwind that was their school years onto a single page. The picture links below will show you several options that might fit your plans.

The most important thing is to make sure the book is one that fits your child. Katie loved her floral book with her name. I knew Wes would want something a bit more classic.

Organizing Pictures For a Graduation Memory Book

I remember the day I decided to put together a graduation memory book for my kids. Since I was already an emotional mess planning for the graduation party and the day itself, why not take a walk down memory lane too??? As the day grew closer and even before I pulled out the photos, I’d find myself in tears quite often. The kids had decided to go to school in state and that was a huge relief, but for the first time in 18 years, they would no longer be spending their nights under our roof. That’s a tough thing to wrap your head around. But I forged ahead and pulled out box after box of photos. Which of course was more than a little overwhelming in and of itself.

It was always my intention to organize those photos one day but life got in the way and I never did. It’s my hope that you have already accomplished that and finding the photos you want to include will be a breeze! With so many being digital these days, there are many more options for storage. But I’m guessing if you have graduates this year, you still have at least a box or two somewhere even if the bulk are stored in the cloud. Either way, being that a memory book is a physical thing, you will still need a way to organize the prints.

Breaking Down the Years

I decided I would use a picture of each school they attended to start each section. While I had several classroom pictures, I realized I had none of the actual buildings. I spent that morning visiting each one. Although my son’s graduation was still two years away, I started his book at the same time I was working on his sister’s. They attended different middle schools and high schools but they were all nearby. Soon I had some great pictures to get started with!

Next, I created a file for each school. Inside I placed envelopes labeled for each year they attended. Over the next several weeks, I filled them with class pictures, photos of friends, teachers, and activities. I added special birthdays, pets, and fun shots of summer vacations. School projects I had saved for one reason or another were added as well. I knew there would never be enough pages for all the wonderful memories those pictures brought to mind. For me, the weeding out that would be necessary was the hardest part! When it comes getting rid of anything pertaining to the kids… I totally suck at it!

I remember my niece once asked how long she needed to keep pictures that her kids had made on her fridge. Being a minimalist at heart, she wanted to know when it would be acceptable to toss them without being labeled a “bad mom.” I told her that I was the absolute last person in the world that she should be asking that question!  To prove my point, I went downstairs, pulled out a box labeled “grade school” and took a picture of two coke bottles filled with sand and decorated like witches for Halloween. At the time she asked me that question, my kids were in their twenties! I started tossing that very same day. I still kept a small box for each of them with things I thought they might actually want someday but I made a lot of progress! ( The coke bottles did not make the cut! )

Laying Out Your Pages

For the younger years, I did more collages, consolidating all the years spent in elementary school onto one page. Another page would hold pictures of friends, another for birthdays, and still another for activities in and out of school. This worked great for all the years through middle school. ( Cell phone cameras have come a long way since I put together these books. However, the pictures you see here have been blurred intentionally. I am always yelling at the kids about plastering pictures and “checking in” on the internet! I didn’t think it was fair to do it myself.) The pictures are only meant to give you an idea for page layouts.

Between the two of them, there are so many more pages like these. I hope the examples here will give some ideas should you choose to put together a memory book for your graduates too.

The pages for high school were much different.  Each year had several pages of its own. I knew even though the younger years were incredibly important to me, it was the high school years that meant the most to them. That is really the part that brought the most “mom tears.”

The High School Years

So many important milestones happen in the high school years. First dance, first dates, first cars to name a few. Awards for their accomplishments, spring breaks and summer vacations with friends. I wanted to capture them all!

Everyday when they left for school, I would pull out boxes of photos, warm up the printer and go to work.  Even back then I had a lot of photos on my cell phone that I wanted to use.  It was incredibly time consuming switching from photo paper for pictures and printer paper for everything else. Printers are so much better today and the small photo printers are a dream come true! The time involved would’ve been cut in half with one of those! I’ve linked to my favorites below.

I spent hours shrinking down articles from Katie’s time on the school newspaper. Countless others resizing their papers and awards for this and that. It was a labor of love and even though it brought me tears, I loved that trip down memory lane so much!

Shopping for just the right embellishments for each page also took a great deal of time. Of course I needed ones for graduation. Those were easy enough to find. But so much of the fun of scrapbooking is finding the perfect saying or sticker for a specific page. Back then I was not the Amazon guru I am today. It’s amazing how quickly I could have done all that today!

Seniors

Of course the biggest section of their books was dedicated to their senior years. Although they were excited to move on, I knew they were also sad to say goodbye to teachers, friends that were headed in different directions, just the familiarity of it all.

I took my time and went through hundreds of pictures. I too was finding it hard to say goodbye. Teachers that had such impacts on their lives, friends that became surrogate sons and daughters in our home. As I said before… lives were about to change dramatically and while my focus was on preparing them, I needed to face the change as well.

I would miss all the activities too! Plays, concerts, tennis matches. Just nights where our house was full of their friends! I remember one football game where their high schools played each other. Both schools were here in town so they had friends in both places. However, Weston’s school had dominated for years. Finally, Katie’s team had a decent chance. Secretly, we were all pulling for them since it had been so long. It was exhausting running from one set of bleachers to the other but so much fun!

So many great pictures to sift through!

We lucked out with weather for both graduations. Beautiful bittersweet days!

Both kids had joint grad parties with close friends. Although they were both done at our house, I had the amazing moms of their friends to help with everything. Great way to go! I highly recommend it! I gave them each their books at their respective parties and it was a lot of fun for all their friends to page through them. They had a lot of laughs, a few tears, and I recall quite a bit of teasing over one picture or another.

I finished each book with a message for them.  For Katie, I wrote a sappy poem.  I cried the entire time.  She loved it but Wes would have found it too much.  So for him, I simply wrote a note from my heart.   With their permission, I shared them here

If you have decided on a Graduation memory book today, I am excited for you! There will be tears as you scan through the pictures for just the right ones. Laughter at the silly ones, and a lot of pride remembering your child’s accomplishments so far. Bask in it! You have every reason in the world to feel that pride. As a mom, you had a lot to do with who that beautiful young adult standing there in that cap and gown has become!

In Conclusion

Yes, Graduation is such an emotional time both for parents and their graduates. No matter how you slice it…life for all of you is about to change dramatically. I realize now that as much as I feared that change, it has brought us all to a new and wonderful place. I still wear my “mom hat.” That will always be a big part of my wardrobe. But I also love spending time with the incredibly kind, extremely intelligent, and always passionate people I now call my besties. I am learning so much from them!

Enjoy this time and know that so many amazing days are still ahead! Congratulations to both you and your Graduate! Way to go, Mom!

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