Creating A Family Timeline Keepsake

For so long I have wanted our family to keep a timeline/book of centuries but wasn’t too sure how to go about it, then one day I was browsing at Suzanne’s site and was so excited by the timeline that her boys were using and how they were keeping it. Finally the ‘lightbulb clicked’ and I thought “I could do that”. Suzanne’s timeline was Amy Pak’s History Through the Ages. I just loved the layout but the cost was too prohibitive for an Australian due to postage and currency conversion.

I started brainstorming other ideas, sourcing local realtors in my quest to make my own timeline. Contacting the local printers gave me a whole new education on the differences in the thicknesses of paper, I finally settled on 250 sheets of white paper 190gsm thick. This is thick enough for durability but will feed through the printer. You actually only need 130 sheets but it was cheaper in the bundle, purchased from Office Works for only $18! I was finally able to source landscape folders from the newsagent but they thought it would be in the vicinity of the mid $20s!! (They had to order them in) It finally occurred to me that I could bind the pages myself with my comb binder:) So I was in business.

With kind help I was able to settle on my dates then with the help of my long suffering Prince C. I , rather he;) created an Excel spreadsheet of the timeline to print (just change the dates for each sheet). We chose 5 marks per page, as the dates vary from 1000 to 100 to 50 etc it lends itself well for the marking this way. Admittedly it is time consuming in that you have to sit by the printer to turn each sheet as it prints on both sides.

However I am very happy with the result, it looks very professional and I just love my title page pics and our ‘title’ accolades go to Prince Charming for the catchy title.