Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Back-to-School=Back-to-Routine...Wednesday



Today is the first day of school for our son. OH.MY! Where has the summer gone?

First day of school TRADITIONS:

*The only day of the year {unless we exercise GRACE} they don't have to pick up their rooms before school! {we will talk about bartering,bribing and coupons another day!} I have it nice for them when they come home from school. Kinda a nice fresh start from me to them! Nothing like having a maid show up while you're out for the day, right?!

*Autumn decorating: Simple, but fun!

*Their favorite back-to-school dinner. They always had to agree on their favorite. With one child left, he got to pick his very own favorite...I think his daddy may have had something to do with the dinner of choice: Martinelli's Sparkling Cider, sweet corn, steak and baby red mashed potatoes and dessert!

*THE OFFICIAL CHANGING OF THE FILE FOLDERS!!!! SEE BELOW!






As I was looking through Laurissa's memory box, now that she is getting ready for college...it was a bit sad. Hard to believe everything from her baby shower to her graduation is in one box. It will be complete at the end of this summer. WOW! I am glad I took the time to save the things I did and even the things she wanted to keep that at the time I thought were really NOT necessary. Those little scribbles and "important" papers have become just as precious to me.
It is no secret that I have no patience for scrapbooking. I wish I had beautiful books gracing my shelves of well-documented pages and labeled photographs of my children growing up, but I don't.

Baby shower cards were wrapped in recycled gift ribbon, and put into an envelope.

My children each have a memory box that is basically a rubbermaid portable file box. Pretty sure it is not of archival quality either. :)


AT THE BEGINNING OF EVERY SCHOOL YEAR, I put a new marked manila folder with their name and grade and keep it with my everyday files. During the year I file everything that is special to them: pictures, sports awards, birthday cards tied together, movie stubs, tickets to special events, notes, drawings, report cards, notes from teachers, yearbooks and summer memorabilia. At the end of the summer it gets filed into their memory box. It keeps their rooms cleared from clutter, doesn't get lost, and is a fun activity to pull out once in awhile.

I know it isn't fancy schmazy, but it is a fast, easy way to stay organized and "scrapbook" your child's memories without being too time consuming.

When we were putting Laurissa's senior memory board together, it was easy to go to the box and get what was needed for a detailed project. I would suggest always marking the year and grade on the back of filed papers etc, so it is eay to put back if it is used for something...

So glad I have one box filled with memories for each of the children. It is nice and compact, so that when they leave home, it will not take up too much space.

I have given two of these away as baby shower gifts and they were so appreciated. I know. Not very fun, but for a mom who hates organizing things, it is a welcomed gift. :) I pre-labeled all of the manilla folders and made a label for the front. They turned out adorable! For you crafty people out there, I am sure you could really have fun embellishing this idea!

How do you celebrate Back-toSchool?

How do you organize your children's papers?

Happy Wednesday!

Linked to Katie's Nesting Spot

2 comments:

  1. What a great post! I like the idea of the file folders. I'll have to try that. My girls are homeschooled but this year on their first day of "school" I made them jam filled muffins. our day was busy with school, soccer practice, soccer game that dinner was thrown together at the end.

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  2. Thanks for sharing with us at A Crafty Soiree! This is a great idea, I scrapbook but still have little bits and pieces I want to save for my daughter but they are lying all over the place. Great idea to keep them together and handy to have them in a box that they can take with them too. Please join us next time too!

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