I’m home from my cruise…now what?

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There’s nothing like a cruise, and so sad when it’s over and you have to come back home.  So, what can you do to keep those wonderful memories alive?  To quote a song from one of Epcot’s old attractions, “Taking pictures is making memories.” For me, it’s taking a ton of pictures of everything, and then scrapbooking them. There’s nothing else that can keep those memories alive like scrapbooking can.

Our first cruise was on the Carnival Fantasy.  I kept all of our Fun Times newsletters, and every other souvenir that we got on the cruise, including the candy wrappers from the chocolate they used to put on your pillow back in the day.  Taking hundreds of pictures, I had pictures and names of every employee that I regularly interacted with. Including the steward, the waiters, the cruise director.  I took pictures of the Captain and staff when they had the staff introduction.  You name it, I had a picture of it.

I went to the hobby store and bought a scrapbook, stickers, and nautical sheets of paper to use in my scrapbook.  Printing out every picture that I liked,  I spent hours putting it all together.  I have to admit though, it looks good, and it brings back the memories of our first cruise. But it was so much work and took so long to put together that I knew I wouldn’t do it again.  I had a mess on my dining room table for a month and I do not like clutter.  I am not a scrapbooker at heart like some of you are.

Shutterfly

I still scrapbook each cruise, but since that first trip I’ve been doing my scrapbooks differently.  For every cruise that I’ve been on since that first one on the Fantasy, I’ve started doing a 10 x 10” Shutterfly photo memory book.

By doing my scrapbooking this way means that I don’t have to shop for all the extras for a scrapbook, and I don’t have all that mess sitting around for a month.  I can upload my pictures to the Shutterfly website, arrange them on the pages, add some clipart and decorations, hit submit, and I’m done with my book in an hour or so, depending on how fancy I want to make it.

Shutterfly even has a way that you can upload your pictures and they will automatically go into a book, you don’t have to do much of anything.  But I prefer to arrange things myself and relive the experiences that led up to those pictures. After you submit your book and pay for it,  it takes a week or so to get the book in the mail, but it’s very high quality.

Videotaping

Videotaping is another good way to keep your memories alive.  You can buy camcorders in a variety of prices and sizes.  You can even use your smartphone to record video.  On a cruise ship, there will be plenty of opportunities to record, from dancing waiters to children’s parades.

At port you can record a mariachi band or a steel drum player, or you can record your trip down a zipline.  The sky and your imagination are the limit on what you can record.  When you get home, you can upload your recordings to your computer.  And there are a variety of different free editing software that you can use to edit your video and put it together the way that you like it. You can even put them onto a DVD so that you can watch your video on your TV or upload them to YouTube to share with family.  Check out this site for some ideas on free editing software.

Don’t forget to preserve the memories

So, don’t go on a cruise without thinking about how you’re going to preserve those wonderful memories afterwards. Be planning as you go so that you don’t forget to take pictures and videos of your favorite places and things. If you use a digital camera, take more pictures than you think you’ll need, you can always delete them later if you don’t want them.

Write down the names of your waiters and stewards, and get pictures of them.  If you make friends on the ship, get their pictures.  Walk around the ship and get pictures of everything you like, because you don’t know what you’ll want to look at again, or what you’ll want to put in your scrapbook.  Get pictures of your cabin.  Don’t forget a picture of the sunset from the ship.

When you’re in port, look for photo opportunities and make sure that you get photos of you and your family. Take pictures of your excursions and your excursion guide.  Get a picture of the ship in the ports.  If you’re going to do a paper scrapbook, keep everything, such as the cruise schedule, your seapass card, and tickets and brochures to anything that you do while on the cruise and in port.  You just never know what you’ll need to put together your scrapbook.  Comment below on other things that you put in your scrapbooks or other ideas for keeping memories alive.

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