Road Trip 2014: Travel Journal Prep Part I

 STUFF WE BOUGHT...

Clara and I are starting a brand new project for us... travel journals/smash books.  Later this summer we'll be going on the Great American Road Trip (Yellowstone, Mt. Rushmore, the badlands, etc.) and we wanted a way to document it all.  We each have our own motivation for this project.  For me, I wanted a way to keep on top of the details so I can include them in my project life spreads and a bigger trip photo book when we get back.  We'll be gone 2-3 weeks, so that's a lot of stuff to remember!  For Clara, it's a way to keep all of the scraps of paper she loves to save corralled in one place, and a project to keep her entertained.  She's my crafty girl and loves projects.  We did a trial book for just her on our trip to South Carolina and it went pretty well.  We learned a few things, but in the end she has a nice little journal full of memories and it was a project that kept her entertained during the 2 hours our plane was delayed on the way home!

So here are the main things we bought for this project...

After much deliberation, we ended up with Michael's brand Recollections Creative Chaos Travel Journals.  I picked this out from the beginning.  Clara had originally purchased an official Smash Book for hers (she ended up using it for our Myrtle Beach trip instead).  After looking through mine, she decided that she wanted a book just like mine.  What drew me to this one primarily was that it was a three ring binder.  I wanted to be able to add stuff to my book... not just glue things to the pages.  I have visions of punching holes in postcards, brochures, etc. and adding them.  We'll see what actually happens though!

The cover is a nice hard cover and the pages are really thick card stock.  The pages are nicely decorated and have some pages that I really like (like the travel log above, I plan on using it as a run down of all of the places we go).

The other big purchase...

Dollar-wise, this was a MUCH bigger purchase.  It's an Fujifilm Instax Share SP-1.  It was my Mother's Day present.  I love it!  We used it during our trial run in SC.  It works really well.  It prints polaroid type photos from your phone.  Is the quality spectacular?  No, but it's great for what it is.  This is not to print every photo we took that day, it's just to print one or two each day to help tell the story in our journals.  It is super tiny (one of the main reason I wanted it) and easy to use.  Clara has the little Instax camera (in pink!) that she will be using as well.  They both use the same film, so I should probably order some more before we leave!

We've acquired some other stuff along the way...

This isn't all that we have that we might take.... and we're not necessarily going to take all of this.  It's just a pretty good pile of stuff to represent what we might take.  Still working on what we're packing and how we're packing it.  But that will be another post closer to go time!