Our adventure book: start one and keep it going for years
Start the book with a short list of plans and plenty of blank pages, then add photos, tickets and dates as things happen. It is a shared book that grows over years, not a finished album.
The idea comes from the film Up, where a girl keeps a handmade adventure book with empty pages saved for later. Couples and families now make their own, sometimes given at an engagement or wedding.
What sets it apart from an album is the empty space. The book exists before most of its contents do, so the format has to let you add pages and move them.
A book you add to every few months for ten years needs three things settled at the start: a binding that grows, a habit of dating everything, and one place to keep loose items between sessions.
Make the memory book together
Invite people to send photos and their own words, then choose what goes in the book.
Pick a binding that can take more pages
A sewn book with a fixed page count either runs out or leaves an obvious gap. A ring binder, a post-bound album or a digital book lets you put a new page where it belongs.
If you want a bound book for its look, buy one with more pages than you expect to need and accept that some will stay empty for a long time.
- With a post-bound album, check that the maker sells refill pages before you buy.
- Ring binders take page protectors, which also hold tickets and folded maps.
- A digital book can be reordered, which matters when plans happen out of list order.
The plans section at the front
Write the plans you mean to share, large and small together: a long trip beside a walk you keep postponing. Small plans get done, so the book starts filling instead of waiting on one big trip.
Each of you adds lines in your own hand. Date the list so you can see later when a plan first appeared, and leave the bottom third of the page empty for plans that come later.
Count the things nobody planned
In the film the book ends up holding everyday married life rather than the trip that was planned. You can take that as the brief: a first flat, a new dog and a holiday that went wrong all belong.
Give an unplanned event pages of its own instead of squeezing it under a listed plan. Record the date and place even when the only photo is a poor one.
Stop material piling up between sessions
Long projects stall when tickets and prints build up in a drawer. Keep one envelope or folder for them, and sit down with the book at fixed points, such as after each trip or at New Year.
Pencil the month on the back of each ticket or print as it goes into the envelope.
Pages to make
Opening spread
A photo of the two of you, or the family, taken on the day you start, with the date and place. The list of plans goes opposite, with blank lines left at the bottom.
The first plan done
Copy the plan's line from the front as the page title. Add two or three photos, the booking or ticket, and your own account written soon after getting home.
An unlisted event
Give it a whole spread: a move, a new pet, the night the car broke down. Date it, say where it happened and leave room for each of you to write.
Pages still waiting
At the back, blank pages carrying only a heading from the list. They show what is still ahead and give the next session an obvious place to start.
Questions
What do you write in an adventure book?
The list of plans at the front, then for each entry the date, the place, who was there and a few lines in your own words, written while the details are fresh.
Is an adventure book the same as a bucket list?
A bucket list is usually one person's goals, ticked off in turn. An adventure book is shared and open-ended, and counts unplanned things as much as listed ones.
What size of album suits an adventure book?
A 12 by 12 inch album holds several 6 by 4 inch prints and a ticket on one page. An 8 by 8 inch book sits more easily on a shelf but holds fewer.