This is a guest post from team member Mandy Ross.
In my time as a memory keeper, I find myself using the then and now theme for layouts quite often. This is such a versatile theme as it can be used to chronicle so many types of stories.
![[url=/]credits[/url]](https://www.simplescrapper.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/chastml-ThenNow-500.jpg)
The most obvious stories for me are those of my children. With the then and now premise, I can show how my little baby is now an independent preschooler with a love of adventure. I can also document the changes in the relationship my children have with one another or the changes in our home after adding each child to it. For parents of older children, they could document the changes in the home after a child left for college.
Relationships, in general, are a wonderful topic to use with this theme. Marriages, friendships, the development of a relationship or the destruction of a relationship can all be documented in this way.
This theme also lends itself nicely to documenting projects as well. Before and after photos tell a story far greater than using only words ever could. You have to admit, seeing a dramatic transformation laid out in the pictures of a magazine are far more spectacular than just reading about the changes that have been made. Whether the project is of the home improvement variety or the weight loss kind, the then and now theme showcases them both brilliantly.
Anything that has changed, or even hasn’t changed, over a period of time can be documented using this comparison approach to connect stories. What was the last then and now story you told?
Our daughter’s 6th birthday was at “Showbiz Pizza” (now Chuck E Cheese.) Ten years and a move later, we were living in the same town again with friends that had attended that party. So we went to the local Chuck E Cheese Pizza and reposed some of the same pictures. A friend in our previous location took picture of the others who had been at the 6 year old party. It was so funny to see how similar there expressions were even 10 years later. It is my favorite then and now page!