Documenting Family Traditions over Multiple Years with Make Merry Collection!
Hi friends, it’s Theresa here today with a cool layout idea for you documenting your family traditions throughout the holiday season. Traditions help us mark the passage of time and also keep us connected to the past, to past memories, people we know and loved, and places and things and activities that we look forward to every year.
One such important tradition in our family is the annual kids’ photo underneath or around the Christmas tree! We began this tradition in 2013, not too long after we blended our two families together. I am so very thankful that we have continued this tradition and I felt like this was a great year to document that, given that our youngest has graduated from high school and we are almost empty-nesters! I am creating a 6x8 two page spread for my 2025 December Daily, so follow along for the inspiration!
This layout made me think about other traditions that you could document, and here is a fun list you might find inspiration from:
Favorite family recipe
The slippers and/or pajamas you purchase for everyone
Annual family photo, as I’ve done here
A silly gift – I have friends who pass around a scary doll every year, and other friends who pass around an empty Tupperware dish. The point is to fill it and pass it along.
Yearly game that you all play. Our family growing up used to play Monopoly for hours on Christmas Day!
Yearly trip to see loved ones. Document the drive, where you stay, who you saw, any number of things.
A gift you ask for and receive every year. I have a favorite lotion – Ahava – that I request and love receiving each year.
A gift you give to someone, or to everyone each year.
Your Christmas card.
Your Christmas tree, ornaments, wrapping papers, ribbons.
Your Christmas meals, such as Christmas dinner or Christmas breakfast.
Do you still do Elf on the Shelf? This is a fantastic way to document his shenanigans!
A yearly tradition in your community, such as a food drive or parades or Christmas pageant.
A yearly tradition of volunteering.
There are so many more I could list!
For my layout, I decided to use circles as the major element on the page. There are many fun circle bits in the collection itself, and I also printed and cut my photos into circles with a white border so they pop off the page. I have also printed and cut the snowflake elements from the collection. They are circles with fun edges and catch your eye with their fun colors!
My photo choices are a selection of my favorites from the 13 years we have been doing this photo tradition. (See the process video below for the full story!) My favorite thing about a layout like this is the timeline of growth, bonding, and so much love! It is wonderful to see it laid out here in such a fun way.
To decorate the page and include title and journaling, I’ve used the Our Traditions circle bit at the bottom to serve as the title. The journaling spots are perfect for the story here, and to expand the words across both pages I used two of those tucked in behind the photos. For the date stamps I’ve used just the corners of the labels in the collection, and used a date stamp to stamp the year of each photo.
I hope you are inspired to document some of your great Family Traditions this year! Thank you for joining me today!
You can also see more details with a full process video on my YouTube channel here:
