Concept driven scrapbooks are creative way to tell family stories

This is a great activity for Thanksgiving but could be done at any time of year to encourage feelings of gratitude. Make one a year, and over the course of a few years, you'll see how attitudes change, says Smedley.

Select some pre-made picture frames with patterns and colors you like and have them spiral-bound so you have two frames facing each other with a blank page in between, then more frames, etc. Then have children (or everyone at Thanksgiving dinner) write what they are thankful for on a small card. Snap photos of all who participate. Glue each photo on a left-hand page and that person's corresponding gratitude card on the right-hand page. Glue frames to the pages, and you have a nice little "thankful" book.

Artwork book

A big challenge for families is saving all the artwork projects kids do in school, says Smedley. She got some divided plastic pages (the kind made for storing baseball cards), went to the copy store and made reduced color copies of the artwork to fit in the page pockets, wrote on the back a little description of what it was and when it was done on each and added ribbon tabs so they could be easily pulled out.

She put the pages in an 8x11 loose-leaf notebook, so more could be added, and mixed in pictures of the kids at the ages they did the work — and now has a record of art projects that is easy to look at and preserves the work in a nice way.

You could also reduce the artwork to fit the pages in a 6x6 or other size album and mix it with pictures.

Accordion-fold book

Buy a pre-folded book or make your own. Decorate each fold with a picture or a pre-printed definition tag or other embellishment around any theme you want. Smedley likes to use some big pictures as well as lots of 1 1/2-inch square pictures for variety. A great gift for grandparents.