Heritage albums, once unique to genealogists, have become increasingly popular with all scrapbookers. With additions of creative backgrounds, scrap art and all sorts of memorabilia, the family heritage album is no longer the collection of drab black and white photos held to faded pages with crisping, yellowed tapes. They have become as unique as the families they represent. We create albums filled with our family's past, with weddings and holidays and summer picnics of long ago, while we continue to celebrate and enjoy those same moments in our lives today. So while it's wonderful and nostalgic to create albums exclusively of your family's past or even a single ancestor, you may want to consider creating a family heritage scrapbook of a blend of the past, present, and even those little darlings who will grow up to be the family's future elders.

For example, why not group together activities or holidays or celebrations rather than time periods of the family? Photos of your grandparents' wedding might share a page with those of your daughter. You may want to create an entire album of generational weddings. Or group present day photos with memorabilia from the past. For example you might have your grand-grandmother's lacy wedding day handkerchief share a page with your daughter's wedding photos.

Instead of a traditional Christmas album with your own immediate family, you could make a heritage Christmas album of Christmas time photos of your family and their Christmas treats and splendors throughout the decades or even centuries. You could follow a time line or have even more fun by grouping pictures of children together from all time periods, your grandchild sharing a page with you when you were his or her age might be fun and enlightening for your grandchild.

What about summer fun? Do you have old photos of ancestors in their long, stripped bathing suites and you in more contemporary attire? The heading of the page might ask, Who was the more daring? And what about picnics and parties or even those timeless studio photos from the past and present? The contrast is pleasantly striking.

Don't forget that it needn't be an album just of photos. You could include post cards, letters, newspaper clippings, invitations to weddings or parties. Don't forget Christmas cards or graduation notes. Use memorabilia pockets for those special treasures that you don't want exposed to the page or which might not otherwise adhere to the page. Journaling can be a fabulous addition to these albums as well because there's so much to say about and to be said from the different generations! Use quotes or your own memories, comments or impressions of particular photos and special moments.

Blending generations into a single family heritage album or even a series of albums is not only a great way to preserve your family heritage, it's fun and enlightening for the younger generations and the older ones too.

As you and your family, young and old, look through these albums together it will spark conversation, memories and remind grandparents and grandchildren of how much they share with each other and with their ancestors who enjoyed and celebrated life in much the same way as they do today.

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