4 Special Ways to Remember a Vacation

Part of the joy of going on vacation is remembering the great memories.

Rather than filling up your home with unused trinkets that fill your shelves, here are four special ways you can relive the memories in your daily life.

Special Ways to remember a vacation

Grab the Hotel Pens

Go ahead and grab some extra pens to bring home and place them around the house.

My husband and I will even have a contest to see who can bring home the most branded pens from our hotel.

Intercontental Hotel pen and pad of paper

We find that we’ll randomly pick up one of those pens and be transported to our vacation.

Shoot – we even came across one form our first vacation the other day and it made us smile.

And now that the kids are older, they’ll even remark about the pen that they picked up.

Keep your electronic key card.

Some key cards are just plain cool.

I really love it when hotels go the extra mile to create a really pretty key card.

Why not pop it into a small decorative frame when you get home?

My mom did this from one of our vacations.

I love walking into her home and seeing it there.

conch shell sitting on beach with blue water in background

Buy a decorative item that will remind you of your trip

I’m not taking about the plastic snow globes.

Get something that has no markings from the hotel or city you went to.

Instead, find something representative of your trip that is a beautiful decoration.

We have a large conch shell from Florida to remind us of our favorite beach.

And one year we bought a beautiful buffalo carved out of minerals to remind us of our time in Colorado.

We also have a tradition of getting a Christmas ornament from where we visited – so when we put up the tree, we’re reminded of that wonderful vacation.

magnolia beach bag sitting on pier to beach

Buy a branded item that you will actually use

Rather than picking up a cheap tchotchke, find a useful tool for the house.

When I went to London in my 20s, I bought a letter opener from Harrods, thinking it might be something I would use.

What do I use all the time that makes me think of that awesome trip? That letter opener from Harrods!

Other items we’ve really used over the years include a branded beach bag that has come on a number of trips with us as well as branded robes that we wore until they were threadbare we loved them that much.

What’s a way you like to remember your vacations?