2020 was a difficult year for many families. The pandemic caused financial hardship and growing concerns for the health of ourselves and others throughout the country and world. While it was a year full of hardships, there were surely momentous events and happy moments, such as the birth of a new family member, the purchase of a new home, a child’s A+ report card, and the completion of family DIY crafts and projects.
To remember 2020 and the happy memories associated with it, document the positive experiences your family enjoyed together. Here are four DIY projects your family can tackle together to remember 2020 in a positive light.
Make a Family Scrapbook
Scrapbooks have always been a popular form of documenting pictures and captured moments between family members and friends. Gather your family together and create a 2020 Family Scrapbook. Find pictures, glue, tape, stickers, construction paper, scissors, markers, and other DIY craft materials you and your family members can use. Put the pictures in chronological order and decide how they will be arranged throughout the scrapbook. Then, work together to cut the pictures, perhaps with some unique scissors, and find construction paper with different patterns and colors to decorate the pages. Be sure to document the month and day the photo was taken, and add a caption to remember details, too!
For example, a family day spent at one of the 1800 escape rooms in the United States should definitely be documented. After decorating the page with pictures, stickers, and paper, write “Escape Room!” in marker, and have your kids help you think of a caption. It may be something like, “It took us 2 hours to get out!” or “A fun family day spent in an escape room together!”
Scrapbooks are not just built by hand anymore. While utilizing craft supplies is a great way to decorate a book full of pictures, there are also online resources to make scrapbooks, too. If you don’t create them already, start a yearly tradition of creating an online scrapbook for your family. Order copies for each family member, and in twenty years, your children will be able to look back at these books and remember the wonderful memories you shared together.
Arrange a Memory Box
Another way to document positive memories in 2020 is by arranging a memory box. Purchase a box at a craft store or online. Some stores may offer ones that have “2020” printed on them, which would be great when you go to pull it out in a few years to look through it!
Memory boxes are typically filled with objects that spark a memory. For example, if your family went to the playground one afternoon, a cool rock your child found could be added to the memory box. Pictures from events throughout the year, movie stubs, birthday and congratulatory cards, notes, newspaper articles, school awards, certificates, and report cards, and school pictures are also great additions to a memory box. When your family goes through these items in a few years, everyone should be able to recall why a particular object was put in the box, whether it be associated with a positive experience or a funny memory.
Order Custom T-Shirts
To commemorate 2020, consider ordering custom t-shirts for everyone in your family. By 2027, this particular printing industry is estimated to be valued at $6.9 billion. T-shirts are often collected through various experiences, such as a volunteering event, a school event, a high school sports team, and more. Some people even turn their dozens of old t-shirts from high school and/or college into a quilt or blanket so that the memories are always with them.
A custom t-shirt order for your family may consist of yellow t-shirts with “Smith Family 2020” and a fun picture of your family printed on them, or it may include purple t-shirts with a collage of photos from the year. Either way, your kids will have these t-shirts for a long time, and they may even be turned into an additional memory keepsake down the road, too.
Create a Video Compilation
With over 2 billion YouTube visitors every month, videos have become one of the most popular ways to consume content. It’s easy to save videos to cell phones, laptops, and other electronic devices and be able to view them anytime you want. With this in mind, consider creating a 2020 family video compilation. Fill it with videos and pictures taken throughout the year of smiling faces and funny memories everyone in the family should remember years from now. Utilize an app, website, or software on your computer to add transitions between videos and pictures. Add music and text, too. Including titles and captions to each slide would make it helpful to remember a particular event or moment down the road.
While creating a video will definitely be a family effort and require some tech-savvy skills, you’ll be happy you took the time to create one years from now. Pictures and videos tend to be a great way to engage the mind and make people laugh from the memories they’ve documented. Everyone in your family will always have the video and be able to look back at the positive family experiences anytime they’d like.
While 2020 was a hard year, try to focus on the positives. Find a way to document the happy memories your family experienced throughout the year so you can enjoy them for years to come.
[…] was quite a year for everybody. What’s more, if you ended up encountering a disease like cancer, life can […]