Uniquely Yours Craft Journal

Dear Fellow Journalers,

Marybeth continues the writing journey:

“When I first started writing The Time Capsule Journal”, I kept an ongoing list of important things to remember in the front cover. I wanted the journal to be more than a step-by-step diary of our lives. “So boring,” Tim said of my early attempts. So I started thinking and I decided to change things up a bit.

I knew that to be successful, this journal had to be written by all of us. I know what you are thinking – unusual undertaking. But the time capsule was about all of us, so why not have all of us write about it. Our first step was to make lists of all that had happened during the week. We used my template from Tim’s journal as an example. One week’s events were: Maureen’s attempt at baking biscuits (Girl Scout Badge), T.J’s letters from college, making a new friend. Sometimes we just wrote the event and a word or phrase to describe it. I sometimes couldn’t resist writing a short poem or a snippet of a song that the event’s memory triggered. John drew a picture or two and my husband captured as many events as he could on his trusty camera.

One thing we did without telling the kids was to write a letter to each of them. We wrote about what they were like right now, how much we loved them and our wish for them to be happy in their future. We then folded the letters, slipped them into envelopes with their names on them and sealed the flaps.  ( I sincerely hope that if you ever decide to make a family time capsule, you will do this! We know it will be a rewarding experience for you, as it will be for us in 10 years’ time!)

Then we decided to expand our journal and our Time Capsule by including some of the following:

title of favorite songs, Game Nights, Top 10 Memories, Each child’s age, height and weight, dreams of the future, current nickname, best friends, piece of wisdom to their future self, what a perfect day looked like.

In addition to the writing material, we included pictures of the house and their rooms, price list of things they liked to eat (fast food also), the front page of the local newspaper.

By now, the small box we had chosen was over-flowing so we searched around the house for a new one. We debated about getting 5 boxes for each of the children, but in the end decided on one. But the Maroney Time Capsule still had to be found and decorated. More on that project next week.”  M.B.

This is getting exciting!

‘Til next week,

~Sallie