When Eric was born there were so many ideas for capturing his first year - baby books, hand prints, etc, but it made me a bit sad that it all seemed to stop after this.
Then I started seeing long term projects - grown ups being given lamps filled with everything their mums had emptied from their pockets for years, journals full of letters from every teacher they had ever had, etc. I have friends who have made lovely shadow boxes filled with memories or personalised art.
This is sounded a bit complicated! I am not sure when I thought of it, but at some point before Little E was one, I decided to try and collect a birthday badge for every year of his life.
My collection so far! Every year I've tried to choose a badge with something Little E loves. It was hard when he was one, as we weren't sure what he really liked. He did seem to like the colour orange, so I went for an orange badge and that has turned out to be his favourite colour (along with green). Diggers for his second birthday and it is all about super-heroes now he is three! He doesn't really know who Spider-man is, but he knows super-heroes run around going zap and say "To the rescue!" He spends hours at nursery playing super-heroes with the other children.
My plan is to try and do this until he is 18 and then have them mounted for a wall hanging. Time will tell if I manage this. I don't want to hide them in a drawer until that time, so I pin them to this cardigan remnant and they live in his room. I hope he will at least enjoy them even if I don't manage to finish my project.
Hope this inspires some of your own ideas.