Vacation Souvenirs

Saving money for a vacation can be very time consuming depending on your budget. After planning all the fun activities you would like to do at your destination or the surrounding area, prices add up! Souvenirs are something that can get expensive quick, and are usually not meaningful purchases.

Since Greg and I have been traveling, we try and collect a shot glass from places we visit.  This is probably the cheapest souvenir (besides a postcard), with prices ranging from $4-$7. We would rather spend more money going to zoos, parks, sporting events, museums, etc. that are highly recommended, then spend $50+ on a t-shirt or tote that will get shoved to the back of the closet. Our shot glass collection is multiplying. I would like to find a place to display them and bring back memories of some of our favorite spots. We don't grab one everywhere we stop, but mainly places with meaning or where we remember to snag one. This past vacation, we added one from San Francisco and the Hoover Dam to our collection (we already had a Vegas one from our trip in 2007). 

Another thing we have been doing on vacation, is grabbing sand from beaches/oceans/lakes we visit. I only started doing this a few years ago, so my collection is not that big. You can check out the start of the collection here. This year we went to two different spots in Michigan with sand and also two places in California. I need to grab another RIBBA shelf from IKEA since my other one is full!

A new shelf will be added above the current one

Sand from Lake Tahoe, Muir Beach, Long Lake and Empire Sand Dunes

The variation is crazy! That darkest sand is from Muir Beach in the Pacific

The last thing we do to remember our travels is to add pins to a United States map that is located on our gallery wall. We have marked all the places that we vacation together. This trip, I added a pin to Lake Tahoe, San Francisco and the Hoover Dam. This gives me insight on vacation ideas and places we would like to explore. You can see we don't get West much :)

At the end of each year, I create a picture yearbook of all our memories. This highlights our vacations photos, along with many others, and we are easily able to look back at all our adventures. What do you do to remember vacations? Are souvenirs something you budget for?

xo, Erin