The team is sharing winter pastime stories here on the blog. April shares how living in a warm climate doesn’t lead to typical winter activities. If you resonate with her situation, go check out her post. Nikki shares a stroll down memory lane. If you want some encouragement to slow down and remember times past, check out her post.
As for me, today I will be sharing snowy photos as I also stroll down memory lane. Along the way I’ll give you some suggestions of ways to capture memories-past, wether they have snow in them or not.
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First up here is a layout about roasting chestnuts. Have you ever done that?? This was our first, and perhaps, last time! While we had fun bringing a song lyric to life, we were very unsuccessful at creating an edible product—yep they burned. However, this layout can bring you inspiration, even if my cooking prowess does not!
Story telling tip: let a song lyric inspire a layout! (Maybe you have to bring the story to life first like we did!)
This is a great winter specific activity as there are so many carols around for Christmas time. But you don’t have to stick to this season. You can use this prompt all year long.
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The next layout below shows snapshots of one of our wintery tradition over the course of time. At some point in our lives it snowed near my middle kid’s birthday and she felt inspired to “write” her upcoming age in the snow. Thus a tradition was born. Now most people might not write their ages in snow, nor roast chestnuts in the winter. Those are more unusual activities, so…
Story telling tip: Tell about something unusual you do—either an ongoing tradition or even a one-off story. No snow required!
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For the third layout here I shared a process video over on my YouTube channel. I wanted to create a compilation layout of many snowy seasons over time. I formatted it in the style of an awards ceremony. I have a little penguin “MC” giving out the awards for specific winter moments. Some of them are heartfelt and some are silly. But they were all fun moments to remember.
Story telling tip: there are several ideas for this one…
- Pull photos from across the years on one specific topic.
- Use an award style layout to show off favorite moments from an event or series of events.
- If journaling is hard for you, use photo captions instead. A quick caption or a simple sentence may be all you need in the larger layout context.
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Okay, with all those snowy photos you may think that we live in a winter wonderland. Not true! We get snow accumulation maybe once or twice a year if we are lucky. Some years we get nothing. That is actually why I have so many snow photos, because it is out of the ordinary for us. With that I will mention one winter specific prompt.
Story telling tip: Tell about your relationship with snow
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Even if you don’t get any of the white stuff where you live, you still have a story to tell. In fact I grew up in a non-snowy climate and that lends to my love of snow as an adult. Well, now I’m off to see if I can find some kind of photo of my childhood that can document the fact that I grew up on the California coast where it never snowed. Which makes me think of a bonus prompt…
Story telling tip: compare something from childhood to adulthood
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That is it from me this time around. I hope you have lots of fun ideas inspired by, but not necessarily about, winter. I wish you a cozy winter season… And if you are in the southern hemisphere I hope you have some new ideas on documenting your now-past winter season!