Be a different kind of mom. Break through the distractions and create lasting memories. What’s the solution to gaining the balanced, meaningful life you desire with your family? Create traditions that bring joy and significance. Popular “Smartter Each Day” blogger and mom of three, Jessica Smartt explains why memory-making is the puzzle piece that today’s families are longing for. She highlights … highlights the tradition-gifts kids need most with 300+ unique traditions including:
- Food: Memories That Stick to Your Ribs
- Holidays: Fall Bucket Lists, Crooked Christmas Trees, and Lingering Over Lent
- Spontaneity: Let’s Go on an Adventure
- Faith: Why You Need the Puzzle Box
She also offers practical encouragement to modern parents to keep on adventuring–even when they are fighting distractions, are on a budget, and exhausted.
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When I purchased Memory Making Mom, I expected to discover some new ways to make holiday memories with my family-and I did. However, my overarching precepts of memory making and tradition building were challenged in the best way. I love the idea that “traditions make us implement what is important” (p11). Furthermore, memories are not just made on holidays but “that maybe we need both the comforting monotony of the everyday as well as spontaneous special days” (p17).
Portions of the text are dedicated to creating memories while taking our kids on learning adventures, while serving others in acts of love, while building relationships with family members as unique individuals, and even while ministering to our families in times of sickness.
As a mother of four, a particularly challenging concept for me personally is “the clincher in the whole thing about memory-making: we need ways to tell our children, ‘You matter’. You individually (p123).
The author, Jessica Smartt, paired thought provoking reasons to develop memory-making traditions with practical suggestions to reach families with children at various stages of life.
The book concludes with an Appendix of Memory/Making Ideas organized by concept or holiday. The chapters and appendix are chock-full of creative ideas along with the constant reassurance that you don’t need to do them all and that being a Memory Making Mom is worth the work.
The memories and traditions that we create for – and with – our families are a gift. This new book by Jessica Smartt reminds us that while it often takes some extra work (and she is the first to understand what that can mean for an already constantly busy mom), it’s important, worthwhile work that binds a family and has a profound, lifelong impact on our children- and us. It’s full of inspiration to create new traditions and memories, as well as motivation to continue keeping existing ones alive.
The book is full of fun and practical ideas- from those that require a bit more planning and work, to the very simple and easy to implement. There is NO pressure, no mom guilt. Instead we get plenty of ways to start small and make it easy if we want, ideas for more intentional memories that take a bit more planning and prep, and encouragement to seize opportunity for adventure and spontaneity.
I laughed out loud at parts, related to so much, and teared up a few times. I definitely came away with a resolve to be even more intentional to weave traditions and memories into areas I may haven’t considered as much before- sick days, milestones for different ages, learning together, etc. One of the best things about reading this book is that I never felt like I’m just not doing enough, or I need to do better or more. I just felt excited to add more fun, more celebration, and more silliness to the traditions and memories we already love. We can see every day moments as an opportunity to build a memory.
This book has been a wonderful blessing to our family! In it, Jessica makes the case for why building family traditions is important, then goes on to give practical suggestions we can put into practice without losing our minds. Not only has this been a handy reference book for me to look to when we need more FUN and SPECIAL and WHIMSY in our family, but it’s challenged me on a deeper level to consider what kind of mom I want to be and what I want my kids to remember when they fly the coop! I would highly recommend this book to moms with kids of any age!
LOVED this book. Building Traditions that Breathe Life into Your Home will also help breathe life back into our country and truly make America great again. If families focus on what’s most important–each other–we may see fewer college grads lamenting, “Adulting…I.Just.Can’t.” Jessica Smartt writes with humility and love. She confesses, “Me too” when acknowledging how busyness distracts us from what is truly valuable. She offers lists of ways to reconnect that are practical and inexpensive then goes a step further in explaining why these small things are so effective. We should all be striving to raise children who respect us and each other, community, and Creator. This book can help us get there. I’ll refer back to it often.
WOW! I WISH I’d had access to this book 10 years ago! But even though my kids are mostly grown, there are STILL ideas I’m going to use.
Jessica understands (so much!) what it’s like to mother littles. She’s also just a regular person like me, who wants to make memories with her kids and she’s tired and overwhelmed some days and still, she’s finding ways to give her children a childhood worth remembering. Also, she makes the reader feel like we can do it too!
This book will help anyone in any stage of motherhood. Just one idea found within its pages might make an ENORMOUS difference to one child you love. It’s an easy, quick read and worth every moment.