A great gift for any occasion. It includes a beautiful album with numerous empty pages to fill. The included guide gives many suggestions. The price is good for all that you receive.

A dear cousin gave me this album as a "bread and butter" gift, so I promptly began to fill it with mementos of our mutual family. About halfway through, I decided to order another to create a memory book of my 45-year-old marriage, so I ordered another. I guess that proves how much I like it.

RECOLLECTIONS: A SCRAPBOOK AND GUIDE FOR CREATING YOUR OWN FAMILY ALBUM is more than a box with a book full of blank pages. It does include a cloth-bound book of 100 archival-quality pages, and a box for treasures ( beautifully decorated with collages from Sallyann Murphey's book THE METCALF FAMILY ALBUM), but it's the booklet full of instructions and ideas for creating a truly valuable family memento that makes the all the difference. If you enjoyed the Metcalf book, here's your chance to create something similar for your heirs.

"The kit is designed," author Murphey writes, "to help recapture some of the treasures of our heritage." Then she proceeds to show you just how to do that, as well as how to select material and fill in missing pieces of your story. She guides you through the process not only with design suggestions, but with explicit directions on which materials are safe and which aren't. I found the section on rescuing old albums especially informative and useful!

Murphey helps the scrapbooker get organized, then tells how to put the resulting puzzle together. She gives web addresses for genealogical research and makes constructive suggestions on how to interview relatives.She even addresses subjects like how to balance the page when you're putting the pieces together, using color to unify the project, and suggests a basic tool kit of items you need to create your masterpiece.

Page by page she leads you, through mats and frames and handling pressed flowers to photo cropping, creating collages and how to write the memories that go with the pictures and mementos.

When you've finished you'll have gained a lot of confidence, had a merry time doing it, and be ready to start another.

Even if you've kept scrapbooks and albums for years, as I have, Sallyann Murphey's album and box will be a welcome addition to your collections. It comes as a large scrapbook filled with blank pages (100 of them, all archival quality) in a beautifully decorated box. There's also a booklet -- 32 pages of suggestions of ways to put your own memories together.

I received mine as a gift from a newly-found cousin. I am putting it together as a collection of the part of the family that I share with her, It begins with our mutual grandfather (several generations back) and once it arrives in the present, I'll continue it as that part of our history unfolds.

I've ordered another to put together for my marriage. That one will begin with our wedding and, like the first album, I'll add to it as the years unfold. I suspect I'll order others once these two are well underway.

The reasons I'll select RECOLLECTIONS over others? First, the size of the memory album --it's perfect for photos and memorabilia. Second, Murphey's booklet, which is included and is full of information and inspiration. The booklet begins with an introduction in which Murphey describes her motivation for presenting the album in this form as well as ways it can be used. She goes on to describe how to catalogue, organize, protect, store and preserve your treasures. Then she gives tips on how to fill in gaps you encounter and how to reconstruct the past with "less-than-perfect" evidence.

As you continue, you encounter suggestions on how to set up your workstation with tools and techniques to make your own album special. Then there are suggestions about written entries, including the selection of narrative details to add life to your family history.

As you proceed, you'll learn about proper album storage and find ideas for future books and finally, you'll find a section on resources -- where to get books, kits and other materials for your family archiving.

If you're contemplating buying RECOLLECTIONS either for yourself or as a gift for a friend, I don't think you'll be disappointed. Of course "it's what you do with what you got," but if you follow Murphey's suggestions, what you'll get is a real treasure.

Isn't quitting your boring 9 to 5 office job, moving to the country and living a quieter, humbler existence, everyone's secret dream? Well it has always been one of mine, and reading this book was absolutely a treat for me. In addition to thouroughly enjoying every page of this story, I actually learned many things from this book and was delighted to find that Sallyann included her recipes and tips from the story in the back of the book (although it did mean that the book ended too soon). I was especially dying to know the recipe for her Gorganzola and Leek Soup, and now I can't wait to try it out. I will fondly remember the Murphey's story as I try out her many wonderful recipes. I look forward to her next book, and hopefully a sequel to this story is in her plans.

I grew up in the country, so I knew Sallyann was in trouble when she named her turkeys! LOL I really did enjoy this book. I now live in the "big city" (Atlanta), and often dream of doing what the Murphey's did. I hope that if I ever get the chance, I will have neighbors as great as theirs. This is a wonderful book to read.

This book offers insight and hope to those of us who know there is more to life than deadlines and schedules but who are not yet courageous enough to abandon our societal expectations. Murphy has captured the essence of simplicity right down to the point of taking the infinite concept of living life simply and condensing it down to 309 pages of enjoyable reading.

Sallyann Murphey and Chronicle Books should have permitted themselves to believe that such a fluid, well-composed fitionalized history of the American experience from the points-of-view of women could be enjoyed and popularized, and be a commercial success, even if it were acknowledged to be fictional at the outset.
The writer, artists and publisher have done a masterful job of putting together this charming volume. It has flow and momentum, joy and sadness, sentimentality and a love of American life in different historial periods. It would make a wonderful motion picture.
It is certainly a delightful way to teach and illustrate American history through the eyes, sewing stiches and buttons, recipes (receipts) and celebration plans of women family members and the American(ized) woman's experience.

I bought this as a gift, but had to read the entire thing first! It's a really lovely story of generations of women & how they lived. The author speaks from different perspectives, changing with the times the characters live in. It's full of fascinating details about daily life in the past century. You'll get wrapped up in this fictional family's life, & it might inspire you to create your own family album.

This is a great book about the history of one family. It made me wish I had some sort of family journal. This is a great wedding present.

Zen is a word that the Japanese took from Chinese language. It is not an easy word, the semantics of the character are difficult even for the Chinese. Mrs. Murphey uses a deffinition from 'Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionary'. She does, however, acknowledge the use of the word in Buddhism. So, it struck me as remarkable that the first recipie in her book is for Pot Roast (the real thing--not gluten or Tofu). Therefore, although this may be a charming little book for some, I felt missled; and, as a vegetarian and great admirer of Zen Buddhism, quite dissapointed.

I loved this book so much that I found myself reading slower and fewer pages at each sitting just to make it last! I then ordered a dozen copies and have been giving them away as birthday and Christmas gifts. If it made me feel so good, I think it will do the same for my friends and family.