Creating a color story for your vacation

The quality of the pictures in this post is terrible, so I apologize for that right off the bat. I took them in our hotel room on the way to the beach sometime after midnight with the lights out when the boys were already asleep.

Since I just unpacked all of our clothes for the beach, I experienced the reverse flashes of red, white and blue that I enjoyed while I was packing for the trip.

So I thought I'd share a tip that is very applicable for scrapbookers, but also for people who just like to think ahead.

Creating a "color story" for your vacation -- just as designers would do in your home -- makes for beautiful pictures and easy scrapbook paper coordination once you get home. For example, when I pack for our beach vacation -- which always occurs over July 4th week -- I pack clothes with a patriotic color story in mind. I pack neutral shorts with shirts in shades of red, white and blue, usually some striped and some solid. Here's what I packed for last week:

NATHANIEL

NICHOLAS

JAKE

If you pack this way, the people in the pictures will almost always coordinate well, and getting a picture back and noticing that you match ("Hey, we match!") will no longer be a happy accident.

You might think that your family members don't have enough of any color or set of colors in your closets to make this work, but you probably do. And even if you have girls, for instance, and you're trying to pack for Thanksgiving, think about going with pink, green and chocolate for your key colors. You don't have to use orange, gold and brown to "say" Thanksgiving in your pictures.

Blue has become more widely used in Christmas decorations in recent years. Blue, red and green or blue, red and purple can make beautiful Christmas pictures. And of course you can't go wrong with the traditional red and green, and usually everyone in a family has SOMETHING they can throw on in one of those colors (or white) for a big family picture.

And when it comes to scrapbooking, today they're making more papers and stickers in new, different combinations than they ever have before. I've been known to choose what papers and embellishments I'd like to use, and then pack for our trip accordingly.

It might sound high-maintenance, but once you start thinking this way, it becomes second nature. (Just ask Grayson, who once wore an orange shirt to a 4th of July cookout on a farm. It made the scrapbook page impossible. He always checks with me before we leave the house now.)

You can revisit some of the beach posts here, here and here to see how the color story worked this year if you'd like.