The Memory Shelf

Back to school

2011-02-01T13:33:00.000+11:00

It's a big week for our household with my daughter starting a new preschool and my son starting BIG school this week. School bags, lunch boxes, new school clothes and shoes... I think we're ready. It's exciting but we're a little nervous too.

Tomorrow is my last day at home with my son so we'll be spending the day finishing his preschool memory box and starting a new one for BIG school. We have artwork, photos and holiday mementos to sort through but he loves doing this with me and having his own boxes full of his special things.

If you need help sorting through preschool or school keepsakes take a look at our Organising School Keepsakes resource.

Happy back to school!

The Memory Shelf is on holidays

2011-01-12T15:48:00.000+11:00

Our little shop of memories will be closed for a short break from Thursday, 13 January to Tuesday, 25 January. All orders received during this period will be shipped as soon as we're back on Thursday, 27 January. Apologies for any inconvenience!

See you soon....

Pop up shop this Sunday

2010-12-02T19:36:00.001+11:00

The Memory Shelf has a pop up shop (I love saying that!) at Mathilda's Market this Sunday. So if you're in the area please pop by our stall and say hello.

This is the Christmas Mathilda's Market so it'll be a great shopping destination for your littlies, offering over 70 stalls of boutique kids wares (and great stocking fillers). For a sneak peak of what's available head to http://mathildasmarket.com.au/sydney/.

Christmas Mathilda's Market

St Ignatius College Riverview

Tambourine Bay Road

Lane Cove

Sunday, 5th December

9am to 1pm

Entry & parking is free (bring your cash as there is no EFTPOS facilities)

Hope to see you there....

Babyology exclusive

2010-11-25T22:16:00.004+11:00

Babyology has just featured our FREE Memory Box Download Kits as an exclusive, and I'm so excited! We've recently launched these download kits free for all members of The Memory Shelf.

The download kit includes a beautifully designed coversheet to label who the memory box belongs to. A ‘My Keepsake Notes’ sheet to record your keepsake items and their value to you. And 10 useful memory box ideas and tips to help you get started. Available in 4 designs to match our range of archival quality Memory Boxes.

We'll be emailing these download kits to all our existing members very soon, so keep an eye out. If you want to get your free Memory Box Download Kit all you need to do is sign up to our newsletter.

Enjoy!

Sticky Bellies milestone photos

2010-11-23T10:16:00.000+11:00

The best thing about taking photos of your baby is watching them grow. One idea is to take a photo at the beginning of each month or the birthdate of each month so you can record your baby's growth over the first year of their life. To make this job easier is Sticky Bellies, milestone stickers that you simply stick to your baby's clothes to help you visually record their monthly growth.

Each pack comes with 12 removable stickers for each month of their first year. All you need to do is dress your baby, stick on the sticker for that month and take a photo. Great for adding to baby record books or for the photo book you may be planning. What a great idea!

It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas

2010-11-09T14:16:00.003+11:00

Our gorgeous World of Thanks North American Card Kit has been included in the Women in Business Christmas Gift Guide. I love these card kits so much that I've already stocked up a pile for my own gift giving this Christmas. And what a perfect time to receive a Thank You card making kit, with all those Christmas gifts to be thankful for.

In fact we love them so much at The Memory Shelf that we've added another one to our shop. Take a look at World Of Thanks African Habitat.

Looking for other gift ideas? The Women in Business Christmas Gift Guide has plenty of fab products for Him, Her and Kids. My favourite pick is the iphone App Magnets. Love them! And I know the perfect person to give them to.

Memolio your photos

2010-11-03T15:16:00.001+11:00

I love taking photos of the kids, but sorting through all the digital photos can be a real pain. My general rule about managing digital photos is delete, delete, delete. And the sooner the better!

Creating a photo book is a great way to look back at your favourite photos, as well as being a great gift idea. When my son turned one I had great fun pretending to be a designer and putting together a gorgeous photo book that was printed professionally into hardcover book. My parents received one as a gift and I always wished I had made a second copy for myself. So I think this will be my next project. One for each child representing their first five years of their lives.

If you're looking for something different though, you could try creating a Memolio of your photos. I came across this online business a little while ago and it really intrigued me.

Memolio turns your photos into a mini album that you can easily carry with you for all those showing off moments. Memolios are designed to be handled and are made of water proof and tear resistant material.

A great way to create a mini album of special events or people in your lives. You can start by creating one online that you can share or keep private. If you like how it looks get one printed (or two or three!). Memolio currently has free shipping worldwide. How great is that!

I'd love to hear how you store your photos so leave a comment or send me an email.

Images courtesy of Memolio.

To keep or not to keep?

2010-10-06T22:08:00.003+11:00

Spring is here, and now is a great time to think about sorting though your keepsake collection. We’ve added a new RESOURCE article to The Memory Shelf website with lots of great ideas and tips to help you get started. Happy keepsake cleaning!

I heart stickers

2010-09-30T16:49:00.002+10:00

A little while ago I bought a Princess Castle Hello Book as a gift for my daughter from the gorgeous online shop Upon A Fold. It's an activity book where you can create your own princess adventure story with lots of stickers and ideas. I was planning to give it to my daughter for her birthday but the kids were restless one afternoon so I pulled it out for an activity for us all to do together.

And let me tell you how much we ALL LOVED working on it. We all know kids love stickers (as do I!) but this sticker project was so much more creative and fun. At first we took turns creating trees, birds, castles, thrones, cupcakes with the stickers (a great sharing exercise!) and then the kids started getting creative by adding their own drawings as well.

The kids must have spent almost two hours happily working together and now we have a gorgeous keepsake to remind us of our fun afternoon. I'll leave you with a photo of our work taken halfway through the project. What fun!

World Card Making Day

2010-09-29T14:56:00.004+10:00

I love handmade cards. I love to give them to friends and I love to receive them. There is something so special about receiving a card from somone when you know they've spent precious time making it for you.

I even love the idea of making cards myself. Everytime I visit a cardmaking site or blog I get so inspired. I even bought some stamps from a friend who is a STAMPIN' UP! demonstrator. But the stamps were never used and have since been sold on ebay (for a good price too!). I now admit I am a lover of cards but not a maker of cards.

Which is why I love the idea of card making kits. Compendium has just released a range of kids card making kits called World of Thanks which we have just added to The Memory Shelf shop. The kit comes with 10 cards and envelopes and lots of stickers to decorate and personalise the cards. Packaged in a gorgeous box they are a fantastic gift idea. They're also made eco-friendly with FSC-Certified materials and printed with soy ink. A great creative project for kids and also great for teaching them the value of saying thanks.

By the way it's World Card Making Day on 2 October so I thought I'd share a few card creations from my friend's blog KM Designs. And if you are a card maker KM Designs runs card making workshops and sells gorgeous STAMPIN' UP! products...

Thanks Hallmark!

2010-09-15T11:04:00.000+10:00

Well Father's Day was a few weekends ago now and I've finally got around to taking a photo of our Hallmark card. We chose one where you could add a photo to the front and personalise the message. My husband was very impressed with it and has now taken it to work.

I also had a Grandfather's card made too, which was thoroughly enjoyed as well!

The kids also got very creative (or should I say the teachers!) and made some gorgeous Father's Day gifts at daycare. My son made the tie and photo frame, and my daughter made the card with a lovely poem inside. I've taken a photo of the gifts so I can add them to my digital album. The gifts have gone inside a memory box for the moment. Eventually I'll have to sort through the gifts and decide which ones to keep. But by taking a photo of all the Father's Day and Mother's Day gifts received I now have an online record of these keepsakes, so I won't have to actually keep all of them. That's the idea anyway!

If anyone else had a personlised Hallmark card made please send us a photo. We'd love to share it.

New product for Father's Day

2010-08-27T20:06:00.002+10:00

My personlised Father's Day and Grandfather's Day cards have now arrived safely from Hallmark, and I've hidden them away. I haven't even shown the kids in case my youngest spills the beans. Photos will come later...

But I'm still pondering over the gifts, so I was excited to receive a new product today. My Dad: His Story. His Words. A gorgeous gift book filled with questions to ask your Dad (or husband) and space to write the answers. Some of the questions I like are:

DAD, what rules did your parents have, and which ones drove you crazy?
DAD, who are the people that you most admire, and why?
DAD, what advice would you pass along about being a dad?

My Dad lives interstate at the moment but when he next comes to visit I'll be spending an afternoon with him and writing down some of these memories.

I'll leave you with a quote from the book:

Memories are our greatest inheritance - Peter Hamill

Create your own personalised Father's Day card

2010-08-19T08:48:00.003+10:00

Father's Day is coming soon - Sunday, 5 September to be exact - so I've been thinking about what the kids and I could do. The kids love to create their own cards (they usually make about three each!), but I also came across a great idea from Hallmark online cards.

Create your own personalised card online and they will print it and post it to you for FREE. How great is that! All you need to do is go Hallmark cards, choose the design you want, personalise it with a Father's Day message and photo. Too easy!

So this is my project for today... just need to take a great photo of the kids to include in the Father's Day card.

Oh, and if you create one before midnight Sunday, 22 August you can get one FREE! Just enter the voucher code BOGOF10 on the checkout page to get your free card. I found this voucher code here so I hope it works.

If you're looking for a present idea for Dad or Grandad how about a brag book filled with photos of your little ones.

I'll post up the card we create after Father's Day (you never know who might be looking!!!).

A beautiful Sunday

2010-07-25T22:01:00.002+10:00

We were excited to see our gorgeous range of Memory Boxes featured in the Sunday Sun Herald today. They were included in the Baby Steps column with a photo of our PRETTY TREE Memory Box. So if you have a copy lying around go ahead and take a look....

New PepperPot products

2010-07-22T15:34:00.005+10:00

We have some lovely new products in store from the new PepperPot Bonnie Bunny and Brambles Bear range. PeppertPot is known for its gorgeous and quality products, and these are no exception. The gorgeous products include baby record books, large photo albums, brag books and hangable print kits.

The baby record book (shown above) has up to 70 themed pages to help you write down all those baby memories and milestones. This can sometimes seem overwhelming but as any parent knows these memories, which seem so important at time, are easily forgotten as your baby grows. The pages include My Family, My Arrival, Watch Me Grow, My First Outing, My First Birthday and My Special Memories.

The matching photo albums and brag books are are acid-free and safe for all those baby photos.

Visit www.thememoryshelf.com.au for more details.

Shout out to Skout

2010-07-13T13:07:00.001+10:00

A quick hello and thanks to Skout for including The Memory Shelf on their "Skout Loves" feature. We love you too.....

Look out for the new-look Kids Product Directory (KPD) arriving on 30 August.

DIY Wall Art

2010-07-11T11:34:00.003+10:00

A gorgeous idea for displaying family photos found at Paislee Press today. Create your own wall of art with a mosaic display of photos. What a great idea for that blank space of wall in your hallway or even in your home office.

Go here for the full story and tutorial for creating your own wall of art. Another project for me to start!

A birthday celebration

2010-07-04T13:11:00.001+10:00

A small but special birthday celebration today. A lovely lunch followed by some very yummy cupcakes (thanks sis!).

And some more special keepsakes to add to my memory box... the kids picked their own birthday cards and decorated them with drawings, and a lovely card from my hubby. My son also made me some paper figures of our family. Definitely a keeper!

Wallpaper art

2010-06-27T16:58:00.001+10:00

My home is having wallpaper envy with Mini Moderns Colour Me wallpapers. The above photo shows the Tick Tock print which is designed to be coloured in. I can just imagine my kids faces if I told them they could colour in on the walls! What a gorgeous keepsake it would make, though.....

The above photo is courtesy of Famille Summerbelle's blog.

My baby keepsake list

2010-06-18T20:20:00.003+10:00

I've been sorting through the baby memory boxes for my kids and thought it would be interesting to make a list of all the things I've kept from their baby days. So here it is....

Pregnancy scans
Hospital ID tags
Hospital crib labels
Congratulation cards & emails
Birth and hospital photos (including one of my daughter dressed up in a Christmas outfit - she had to stay in special care on Christmas Day - oh the memories that photo brings!!)
Birth announcement emails & letters
Favourite baby outfits
First shoes
Birth certificates
Memory books (still writing in them!)
2005 coin set (gift for my son)
First christmas outfits

My kids and I love looking through these special things. In fact they love it so much I have to fight hard to get them all back in the box and put away safely! I'm sure there are heaps of other things I could also have kept...

What have you kept?

Mini Gaga giveaway

2010-06-08T15:17:00.001+10:00

For your chance to win a Memory Gift Pack valued at $70.95 from The Memory Shelf head on over to Mini Gaga NOW!

The gift pack includes our gorgeous BABY ARK Memory Box - Pink, alphabet & number stickers to label your memory box, and a Pearheads Baby Memory Book to record your baby's special milestones and events.

To enter you need to subscribe to Mini Gaga*. All current Australian subscribers are automatically in the draw. Entries close June 12 2010 at 8PM EST.

Goodluck!

* Open to Australian residents only.

What is a memory box?

2010-06-04T08:54:00.002+10:00

At The Memory Shelf we love to create memory boxes. Not only to keep our memories safe for the future but also to keep our memories organised. But what is a memory box?

A memory box (or keepsake box) can mean different things to different people, but essentially it's a place to store your special keepsakes. Baby, birthday, school, art & craft, holidays, photos... the list is endless and all are fantastic to keep and treasure. But often we get so caught up in our day-to-day lives that our keepsakes get lost in the clutter.

But the good news is that organising our memories and keepsakes doesn't have to be hard work. Sort through the keepsakes you've kept for your baby or child, and decided which items you want to keep. Put them in your memory box and label the box with their name. Keep the box accessible so you can keep adding to it. If you run out of room you can start to organise them by categories... baby, art & craft, birthday and so on.

We will be sharing all our memory box projects here so keep an eye out for more ideas.

When the tooth fairy comes to visit

2010-05-26T15:49:00.001+10:00

Another gorgeous keepsake find... Office of the Tooth Fairy produces The Official Tooth Fairy Kit. The kit contains a letterpress Tooth Certificate where you can record your child's name the ages they lost their teeth, how the teeth came out and how much the tooth fairy paid for them. It also comes with silkscreen printed cloth bag to store all those teeth. What a fantastic idea!

Hand and Footprint Keepsake

2010-05-20T12:19:00.000+10:00

Today I came across a gorgeous new keepsake product that has just launched in Japan. Otete & Anyo (meaning hand and foot) have created the unique idea of turning a baby hand and footprint into a stamp.

All you have to do is send Otete & Anyo a scan of your baby's hand, and they will turn it into a gorgeous stamp for you to keep as a momento. So what do you do with the stamp? What about stamping the prints on special paper and framing them for display. Or creating unique first birthday party invites. They could also be used for scrapbooking or for special letters.

Otete & Anyo engrave the baby's name and birthday on the stamp and package in a stylish paulownia wood box. Makes for a perfect gift! I love it....

Mother's Day memory box ideas

2010-05-13T21:56:00.008+10:00

This year I celebrated my fourth Mother’s Day, so I decided it was time to create a Mother’s Day memory box to store all the keepsakes I’ve collected and hope to collect in the years to come.

I’ve chosen to use the PRETTY TREE memory box because it's gorgeous (and not just for kids in my opinion) and is big enough to hold everything. I now have a home for all the cards and drawings the kids have made me for Mother's Day.

Another idea is to start a photo album dedicated to Mother's Day photos. Start by collecting all the photos you have of you and your children (and your Mum or Grandma where applicable) from each Mother's Day. Put them in the photo album making a note of the year and the age of your children.

If your children make or buy you a gift take a photo of it and add it to the photo album. This is such a simple idea and an easy way to create record of all the special handmade gifts you've been given. Here's my photo...

Label your memory box with the Alphabet and number stickers so you can find it easily each year. I’ve called mine Mother’s Day.

Creating a Mother’s Day memory box is great because it’s easy to do, doesn’t take too much time or creative talent. Just a few simple ideas and you have safely stored your memories in a box you’ll never lose.

Do you have any other ideas for keeping your Mother’s Day memories safe? Email hello@thememoryshelf.com.au as we’d love to hear them.

The Memory Shelf is LIVE

2010-05-13T21:17:00.000+10:00

We are so excited to announce that The Memory Shelf website is now live.

We are a new boutique online store specialising in a unique range of memory boxes for babies and kids. We believe that keeping children's memories and keepsakes safe should be easy and fun.

The Memory Shelf also offers a gorgeous range of products to help you store and record your family's memories, including photo albums, memory books and family trees. If you are looking for a unique baby gift idea come visit us at www.thememoryshelf.com.au.