As a child I always enjoyed playing with my mom’s 35mm Nikon camera. Yes, an old school film camera. I used my mom’s old camera to capture so much of my youth and to experiment with photography. My parents were also really good at taking pictures of sporting events, my friends, family events, and other milestones growing-up. I am very thankful to have these pictures and scrapbooks from my childhood, hopefully one day my son will enjoy looking at them too. I am sure that he will probably tease me about all the uncool things I did back in the day, but it will be worth seeing his reaction about how I grew up.  He will also probably think of film as being ancient and never understand that we had to wait for film to be processed in order to see what our pictures looked like. Oh, how photography has changed over the years. Who knows what our children will be taking pictures with? 🙂

As a new parent, I promised myself that I would capture every moment of my son’s youth that I could and document it in his baby book and scrapbooks.  These are few of my favorite things that I have done so far and must-haves when capturing your son or daughter’s childhood.

1. & 2. Photo Garland Banner via BigDotOfHappiness.com & Monthly Pictures with Onesie Stickers // From the age of 1 month to 12 months I took a picture of my son every month to document how much he grew the first year. For each of these pictures I used a onesie sticker that stated how old he was. At his first birthday party I showcased these photos on a garland banner. These garland banners are beautiful and you can use them to scrapbook in your child’s baby book after the birthday party.

3. Origrami & Instragam Photos // We take so many pictures with our phones and never do anything with the photos. If you post your pictures on instagram, Origrami is the perfect solution for printing your pictures from your phone. Origrami creates gorgeous prints and they arrive in a stunning box.

4. Canon Rebel // Phone pictures are great, but they don’t always turn out the best. A lot of my mom-to-be friends ask me what kind of camera they should get to take pictures of their babies, I always tell them a DSLR. You will get way better results from a DSLR than a point and shot or camera phone. The Canon Rebel is affordable and is the perfect size camera to fit in a diaper bag.

5. Photo Birth Announcements via BigDotOfHappiness.com // Our first big outing after my son was born was to get his newborn pictures taken. It felt like a lot of work to get the three of us out the door at the time, but I am glad we have newborn pictures. I will cherish the pictures forever because I barely remember what he looked like as a newborn (they grow so fast). Another bonus of having his newborn pictures taken was that we used them to send out birth announcements to our family and friends. Not only were the birth announcements special to my husband and I they were also a keepsake for our family (especially grandparents).

6. Shutterfly Photo Books // I’m a little behind on my scrap-booking projects, but at least I’m working on them and have a couple done. 🙂 I love using Shutterfly to make my son’s scrapbooks. They have unique designs and their web site is really easy to use. All of the books that I have received have been beautiful and something that our family will cherish forever.

I would love to hear what you do to savor your son or daughter’s childhood. I am always looking for fun new ideas.