Vacation Memory Jar
I take a lot of pictures when we are away – in fact every day I take a lot of pictures part of that is because I love capturing my children in moments that make me smile and the other is because I want those memories that I can look back on and remember the events around them just from a glimpse of a photo. But that only captures my view and my memories as a family we are starting to travel more and as the kids get older I wanted to create something where we could store a special family memory from each trip that we take so last year we started our vacation memory jar.
I’d seen memory jars for a single trip things like collect sand from the beach you visit and place in a jar but one of the things I wanted was something that we could collect together memories as a family for many trips and wouldn’t look out of place in our home. Whilst in Mallorca with the kids and my parents and out visiting Ca Calobra and the Torrent de Pareis and watching the kids pick up the pebbles from the dried stream bed and try and skim them along the pools I was inspired and took inspiration that when we returned we would use a pebble like those on the beach and start our memory jar.
There is a huge temptation when on vacation to buy souvenirs from every destination and then you end up coming home with items that you don’t really need and when you look back at them you sometimes do wonder why you brought them in the first place. By creating our simple memory jar, we don’t have to buy stuff to remember our vacation and we’re teaching the children that memories are all we need to take away with us not suitcases full of stuff.
Materials needed for Vacation Memory Jar
A glass decorative vase
Pebble
A sharpie marker
Making your Vacation Memory Jar
After we returned from vacation we sat down as a family and talked about what we loved about the holiday, asked the kids questions like what were their best bits and we also looked at what we didn’t like and how we could make changes for next time. Whilst we sat there and chatted I got out our pebbles and explained that to remember our best bits we were going to write what we most enjoyed about the holiday on one side of the stone with our name and the destination and dates on the other side and then add it to our vacation memory jar to go on the window sill so we could get them out and remember the best bits whenever we wanted.
As my kids are quite young J wrote his name on one side and the destination and I added the dates and asked him for his best bit.
I then wrote on the pebble with the sharpie his best bit and added it to the jar.
With T at the time who was only 3 I wrote all of the details onto her pebble and then added it to the jar.
Both myself and my husband added our memories as well and we then put the jar on the windowsill. I sometimes find the kids picking up the pebbles and T will ask J to read what Mummy put as her memory or J will read his own memory again and start talking about the vacation and other bits that he enjoyed whilst we were there.