Take Your Baby Memory Book to the Next Level

Save Your Favorite Messages

When the well wishes pour in after your pregnancy announcement and baby's birth, save screenshots of heartfelt Facebook posts and loving text messages. Visit the Mish Mash blog to see how to create a cool pocket in your scrapbook for holding printouts of your favorite messages.

Create a Year in Review

Before you know it, your baby has turned one and time keeps zooming onward. Remember this miraculous year by creating an infographic for your keepsake book with a year in review like this one from Life, Love and Lucy. Include important milestones like number of teeth, favorite books, what makes baby laugh, and which long-distance relatives got baby snuggles.

Design a Month in the Life

Whether you want to document the month before your baby’s arrival (when you scrambled to finish the nursery, fold the teeny-tiny baby clothes and pack your hospital bag) or your baby’s first days and weeks of life,  Collect is a free app that lets you create a beautiful visual one month at a time.

Remember the Baby Names You Considered

You scoured books to create lists (and lists) of potentially perfect names for your baby. Remember your rejected list of monikers with this clever idea from Ritzy Rosebud. Scan your scribbles (use Fontifier to create a font of your actual handwriting) and add the top name contenders to your memory book. Your baby will get a kick of knowing what their name almost was, and you'll have a helpful naming resource if you have another child.

And the Envelope, Please...

Take this tip from the Newly Woodwards blog: Kraft paper envelopes (or homemade envelopes) make the perfect receptacle for saving congratulatory cards, hospital bracelets and other birth day memorabilia right in your memory book.

Once Upon a Time...

Every fairytale starts at the beginning, and your story should be no different. This set of free printable pages (found on the Plucky's Second Thought blog) leaves room for you to fill in the sweet reactions to a positive pregnancy test.

Tricks Up Your (Photo) Sleeves

Photo sleeves (sometimes called photo pockets) come in a variety of configurations and let you mix precious artifacts with photos and tell-all information cards documenting precious milestones. One Lovely Life provides awesome photo inspiration to get you started.

Track Your Baby Bump

Include images of your growing bump in your DIY scrapbook. You and your child will love to look back on your body's amazing transformation. Consolidate your images to a single-page collage, or dedicate a page for each bumpdate like Ritzy Rosebud did.

Create a Visual Time Machine

Did you battle a 1000 year storm on your way to the hospital? Or was it uncharacteristically sunny on the day your ray of sunshine was born? Consider including images from the newspaper, the weather forecast and even the gossip rags to tell the story of your baby's first days and weeks of life.