Approaches for Capturing Milestone Birthdays in Your Scrapbook Pages

In this guest post team member Amy Kingsford explores how memory keepers can scrapbook their own birthdays.

I‘ve never been much of an event scrapbooker. As a result I haven’t been very diligent with scrapbooking my own birthdays over the past few years. The older we get the less birthdays become about parties and presents and everything that makes scrapbooking them so fun – and the more they become about reflecting on our lives.

I find this idea a little intimidating. But this year being the “Big 3-0” I knew that it was time for me to get over my fear of personal reflection and make sure that this milestone was captured.

As I started thinking about how I wanted to commemorate my 30th birthday in my scrapbook pages I began studying some of the approaches that I had seen others take.  Below I’ve shared a handful of approaches that you can take to scrapbooking your milestone birthdays – including the approach that I took in scrapbooking my own 30th birthday.

Create a highlight reel of  your special day. Even if you didn’t have a big birthday bash you can still have fun showcasing how you celebrated this milestone by snapping shots throughout the day.  Later on it might be fun to compare how you spent your birthdays at 20, 30, 40 and 50.

Thirty-F4abulous by Anna Aspnes | Supplies

Make a birthday wishlist.  Have some fun recording your birthday wishes for future reflection.  Whether you capture that single wish you made as you closed your eyes tightly and blew out your candles or you compile a list of all of the presents that you were secretly hoping for on your special day–this can be a creative and fun approach that will have you focusing on  the upside of birthdays.

Ask yourself: “Are we there yet?”  We’ve probably all thought about where we would be at 20, 30, 40 and so on–some of us may have even have 10-year plans in place. Use your milestone birthday as an excuse to explore where you are at now in comparison with where you thought you’d be. This approach might yield some good laughs or it could generate some motivation to get you going on some of those things you’d still like to achieve.

So This Is 30 by Amy Kingsford | Supplies

Capture YOUR Year-In-Review.  Take the opportunity to capture an accurate picture of you and your life at a certain age with a list of faves, highlights or random details paired with the customary mugshot.  This is an approach that can easily be completed annually as well as for your milestone birthdays.

 30 Faves at 30 by Mandy Ross | Supplies

Glance back through the looking glass.  Sooner or later we come to the realization that we all have a little bit of our mothers in us!  Go back through those old photos of yours and see if you can’t dig up a photo of your mother when she was the same age.  Celebrate your milestone birthday while giving thanks to the person who brought you into this world at the same time in a compare-and-contrast-style page.

Reflect on being a year older.  Get those feelings associated with getting older out in the open and onto your your scrapbook pages.  Sometimes acknowledging that you’re a year older is just what you need to clear the air and get into a happy birthday mood–plus these pages will be great for looking back at down the road.

30 by Jess Forrester | Supplies

Do you have a fun approach to scrapbooking milestone birthdays? Please feel free to share them in the comments below.