Earlier this year I was thinking about how we could preserve our visual legacies in ways more likely to spark the interest of those who follow us. One of the ideas I wrote about was digital scrapbooking. It was back in August and September that I was tidying up and reorganising my digital photo archives, and making a start on digitising old family photos. I can report that progress has been good but there’s still a long way to go.

Alongside digitising the old photos I realised I could use my existing photo editing software for digital scrapbooking, and I’ve had lots of fun making digital scrapbook pages using some of the old photos. My brother’s birthday card this year was made this way and I’m so happy with how it turned out.

Today I’m combining this new-found digital scrapbooking interest with one of my personal Christmas traditions, which is that every year I’m compelled to try to photograph our four-legged family members wearing Christmas hats. I have to say that I enjoy this far more than the said four-legged family members, but George here does love posing for a photo and is prepared, up to a point, to accept the ignominy of wearing a hat if it means he can be the centre of attention.

Zoë Ball was asking about family Christmas traditions recently on BBC Radio 2. One listener shared that her mother buys a new toilet brush every year at Christmas time and on Christmas Day, before she puts it to use in the bathroom, the family holds a competition to see who can toss the new toilet brush into its holder… Makes my tradition of photographing the animals seem very tame! What about you? Do you have any special traditions that will be passed on? Are there any older family members with stories to tell about how they used to celebrate Christmas?

Whatever you’ll be doing over the remainder of 2021, whether you celebrate or not, and whether by the time Christmas arrives the latest COVID variant will yet again make family gatherings inadvisable, I wish you comfort, joy, peace and good health, now and in the year to come.

I’ll be back with my next post on 15th January 2022.

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Digital scrapbooking supplies used are from Life Chronicled: Christmas by Connie Prince; and Joyful by Ginny Whitcomb. Both sets were purchased from ScrapGirls. I have no connection to this store but terms of use require that I acknowledge the designers when posting online.