A Circle Journal Notebook

My niece, Mary, and I began this circle journal notebook in Nov. 2003. The book began with me posting current photos of us on the opening page and then I wrote her a note on the following page that began:

Dear Mary,
I hope you had a nice Halloween.

  Mary, age 8, wrote back a week later:

Dear Jackie,
I had a great Halloween.

Those were not the entire entries, but you get the idea.

We concluded the book in Dec. 2008. What a keepsake we have created in those 5 years that we mailed the circle journal back and forth between our homes in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Photographs, memories, handwriting, stickers, pets, siblings, birthday parties, movies, holidays and much more.

Recently someone emailed me asking about circle journal notebooks as she wanted to know where to get one. I happened to have the box that contained my second circle journal now in progress with Mary's sister (age 8). But when I checked the website and a general Google search, I found out that the company is no longer in business. Too bad. For $20 the kit came with a book, mailing envelopes, stickers, ideas and a website link to post photos.

But any book will do; a spiral bound notebook, a hard cover journal, a mini scrapbook. To see a very creative and inspiring example of a traveling journal, you can read this awesome blog post (with photos) at Everyday Correspondence. It's not really a circle journal in that this one does not circle back to any of the contributors, but instead, it keeps getting sent to the next person on the long list of recipients until it returns to the owner. Maybe it is a circle journal since it will make the trip out into the world and then return to its creator.