Remembering Christmas Ornaments

[Jenni Lathrop 17]

Tonight we were decorating our Christmas tree. One of my favorite parts of this is the, "Oh, I remember when..." for the ornaments. This is only the second Christmas since my mom died and this was her favorite holiday. Because of this, my kids (15, 11 and 11) are acutely aware of how special these things are. My mom had so many things that were so important for her but she never shared the stories with my brother and me. Now that she's gone, those stories are gone too. This is especially hard for items that I might have made when I was younger. I have those ornaments, but I don't know when they were made or any kind of detail.

So as we were putting things away, it dawned on me how easy it would be to use Evernote to track those stories, especially on the homemade ornaments from my kids (even just a date and creator). During Christmas and as we put Christmas ornaments away, I think I will start taking pictures and making notes of ornaments. Especially which ornament belongs to which child. This is something I already do with my knitting (picture of the object, date I knit it, who it was for).

Okay, maybe this isn't totally crafty, but what important non-business, non-paperwork, family things do you like to keep (or have plans to keep) in Evernote?

[rtoledo 16]

This is a really great idea. I have a lot of passed down ornaments, some handmade that I know have a story behind them but I either have no clue what it was or can't remember.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

As I'm decorating our tree this year, I'm pruning the ornaments. (And decorations.) I have some pretty ugly ones that I've saved b/c we used them when I was a young girl. But I don't really like them, so I never put them on the tree. This year, I'm taking a photo of them & putting it into Evernote & then getting rid of them. I'm finding that Evernote, combined with digital cams & pocket camcorders, allows me this "freedom" to let go of things that I don't use/like but that have sentimental value for me. I still get to enjoy looking at something but don't have to have to keep the physical item. Ironically, I tend to find I look at the digital representation of something a LOT more often than I did the physical item b/c it's just sooooo much easier. Since I normally have EN open 24/7, if I think of something, I can look it up in a matter of a minute or two. OTOH, if I had to try to remember where the physical item was & dig it out from under a bunch of other boxes...well...I'm not going to do that very often!

[Wordsgood 526]

Hmm, I'm married to a pack rat.  (Okay, I'm one too, but he takes it to a whole new level. )  To my utter shock, I was able to talk him into signing up for his own Evernote account.  I wonder if I can also convince him to try your method...'scuse me while I toodle off to plot what would amount to the biggest coup of my life...