In the last year my son, Aiden, has received and outgrown whole catalogs full of baby gear. Tons of it he barely used once before it was stored or made its way to another home. While I am far more sentimental regarding items that Aiden treats as special, I still can’t help but want to hang on to all these adorable things. Of course without renting storage space, keeping everything is just not a possibility.
When I have time, I absolutely love to scrapbook. Before Aiden I would go to the craft store just to peruse the beautiful paper and accessories. My sentimentality became mother of invention as I realized what a fitting tribute I could give these baby items before their send off. I photographed them and used them as background paper for photographs of my son.
I started with the baby shoes. I love baby shoes, but since babies don’t really need shoes until they are ready to walk, they get very little use. In fact, Aiden just this week got the very first pair for walking outside. At a very tall eleven months old, he is now a size five shoe, which leaves a dozen pairs of adorable footwear in his closet that he has outgrown without even setting a toe in them.
True to my nature I shot dozens of photos of him exploring the world in his new shoes, and exploring the shoes themselves. Catching his excitement at the sound of Velcro was priceless. Then I tossed the rest of his shoes on the floor, Aiden helped me artfully rearrange them as I photographed both him and his pile of shoes. Needless to say we both had a lot of fun with the project.
The resulting display was just as adorable; I washed out the background with software so it wouldn’t overpower the pictures, and I used photo cutouts of the shoes to cover the corner tabs. Even better, I did it all on my computer, saving me a trip to the store. If there is something adorable that you want to remember for years to come, photos take up a lot less space, and are a lot more fun than a closet full of baby shoes.
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