Everyone loves a vacation from the grind. Most leisure travelers are those who work hard every day, whether it’s at home or on the job, and they live for their vacation. But what is a vacation without a way to hold onto the travel memories made?
At any given time on any given day, there are almost 61,000 people in the air in the U.S alone. That means 61,000 different memories of work, reunions, and vacation.
When you travel, you make and capture a lot of memories. In the digital age, it’s easy to capture photos with your phone making travel memories easy to document. Long gone are the days when people used to bring a heavy camera to capture the perfect shot. These days, photos get uploaded to Facebook and Instagram seconds after they are captured.
But then what?
Is that it? Do the travel memories fade into the abyss of servers and storage on our phones? What can you do to honor the incredible memories made from an epic adventure? This list of creative ideas will help you make your travel memories last forever.
Give Your Travel Memories the Home They Deserve with These Creative Ideas
Make A Scrapbook
The best way to store and see the photos that you like the most is by making a scrapbook. The fountain that you saw or the name of the dish you ate, it fades away in a few months. So when you take a picture, you can paste it in your scrapbook and add embellishments around it to bring it back to life.
Perhaps the napkin from the restaurant, or a dried flower from the walk there. Think of little tokens you can bring home to bring your photo to life.
Memory List
Have you tried making any list of items that you want to buy from the place you are going? This time, try making a list of the things you want to do and the activities you want to do while you are there. A memory list is something a bit different from a bucket list. It’s more about the actual destination, its culture and highlights.
Bonus tip! Write the list on the back of a postcard from the place you are visiting!
Making a memory list is added fun when you do it with friends. You can add turn by turn. When you return from a vacation, and you read the list back again, it gives a rollercoaster ride to your memories. Just one condition, the piece of paper has to be intact and not torn up.
Get Your Favorite Photo Painted or Get a Collage Made
If you have a favorite photo from your trip, a great way to save the travel memories is by having a canvas painting done or a poster. Each time you see the photo(s), they give a breeze of the place you visited. It also doubles as a piece of art for your home.
CanvasPop is a great place for ordering things like canvas paintings and posters. They have some of the best quality in photo collages and portraits which can make great use of your wall space and your travel memories.
Showing love to your walls and connecting your feelings with them is something that CanvasPop does well. Just take the photo, upload it, and start your travel memory wall decor.
You can even give your orders a personalized touch from a variety of templates available. There are many background styles from woodcut plates to synthetic cloth outlets to choose from.
Create A Video
In this era of digitalization, everyone knows some tips and tricks to help you to make good video footage. The photos that you captured can be made into a short video in a couple of minutes. There are many ways to do it with no requirements for professional knowledge.
If you want to share your travel memories with friends and family when you return, putting together a video slideshow is a great plan.
Collect Souvenirs
Gone is the day when the collection of stamp tickets and money was done. Today people collect artistic ornaments, shoes, and even spices (visit India, and you can collect them too). Collecting souvenirs helps you bring the whole journey home in a nutshell.
The pungent smell of the things you buy driven from your nostrils to your heart and brain brings the whole picture back into one place. And when you collected some of them and put them in the living room, it makes a huge topic of never-ending conversation.
If you are worried about size, some of my favorite and very useful souvenir choices are coffee mugs, socks, gloves, scarves, fragrances, magnets, postcards, small maps and always snowglobes.
Make Memory Box
Much like making a scrapbook page, you can make a memory box. The difference is that you can make it a secret box or one you have on display (like a shadow box). If you’re going to do this, there are some things you want to bring back from your trip for your box:
- Tiny rocks
- Seashells
- Dried flowers
- Napkins with restaurant names on them (or matches)
- Boarding passes
- Show tickets
A good rule of thumb is this. When you know you’ve captured a special moment with your camera, look around you and see if there is anything you can physically bring home with you from that moment. Make sure it’s small and of course that it’s not someone’s property.
Bonus Tip – Blog About It
Obviously this is no easy task. But if you find that you are traveling a lot, take good photos and upload a lot of things to social media, then you may want to consider starting a blog where you can journalize your travel memories.
And who knows, maybe you’ll quit your job and do it for a living like I do!
Travel memories are important to care for. Don’t rely on your mind to remember the feelings, sights, smells, sounds and tastes of a destination. Use your camera, bring home bits of memories you can keep and consider doing something special with your best images.
