I don’t have one of those “Home is where the Army sends us” decorations, but I have come up with my own way to commemorate all of our military moves. Each time we PCS, our dog gets a new identification tag for his collar. And the old tag becomes a Christmas ornament. So far our dog has moved four times, which means we have three ornaments with our old information on them. I enjoy hanging those ornaments on the tree and looking back, remembering our old addresses and phone numbers…and those homes, and crappy German cell phones, and all the memories the info invokes.
Do you have a unique way of commemorating your past addresses?
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Not the addresses necessarily, but we collect Christmas ornaments in our travels. Our reasoning is that they are small, easy to move, and it's fun to reminisce as we decorate the tree each year.
I love this idea for remembering your addresses, as well as your pooch!!
We take scenic portraits of a pretty part of an area in which we have lived, frame them and hang them on the wall. We have the beach in California, a gorgeous shot of the Puget Sound and Mt. Rainier, the WWI Memorial in D.C., a scenic bird house and field in Ohio … about to hang a shot of the Chatahoochee River near Fort Benning. When we leave Fort Campbell we'll be hanging a portrait of something pretty from around here!
What great ideas! We are just starting our military journey. I took a photo of my then 4 year old at Hunting Island near Parris Island and I will be taking photos of both my girls when we go pick up my husband from Camp Lejeune. I love the picture of pretty places idea as well as the dog tag idea (alas, no pooch). I will be doing the picture thing only with my kids so we can remember the place as well as see how the girls have changed over time. Last year I did a 2-D tree on the wall with garland and ornaments instead of a 3-D tree. Set up is easy and it all fits into a small gift bag. Sorta cheesy though.
I can't wait to get to his PDS, feels like we've been in transition and waiting through training sessions forever.
My scrapbooking friend Jen in Hawaii had a great way to commemorate old addresses. When she moved into a new place she'd take a photo of her kids in an empty room in front of something unique (i.e., not a plain wall, some feature of the home that would stand out). When they'd move out, she'd take another photo of the kids in front of that same feature. It was a great way to see the progression of the kids as well as remember the house. The page she was working on when she taught me this was looking down from a staircase onto her toddler and her infant, in a car seat, in a great room. The next photo in the layout was her Kindergartener and her preschooler standing in the same spot.
I did a photo of my kids in their jammies standing beside built in bookcases in the living room of our last house, and it was neat to see how much taller they grew while we lived there.
We also have a Christmas ornament from each year we've lived in a place, and a set of photos of us/the area in those frames that hold multiple pictures.
What a super cute idea!!! I just came across your comment and thought…. HOW NEAT. Now I wish I would have saved these from when we had our puppies. I saw that you do not have a "Home is where" sign and just wanted to let you know that I, in fact, create these very signs. If you have time, I hope you can take a minute to check out my page. I make cute things for pets too. I am open for ideas. So feel free to stop by and let me know you visited! I love to see new faces! Keep creating memories…. That's all the future we have to share with our families later. :) http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Military-Signs-b…
I guess that's one way to use dog tags. Personally, I just keep all of them in a little drawer so my dog has a tag for all occasions. The only problem is, I'm going to need more space since I tend to buy new designer tags from the dog boutique near here from time to time.