The idea I had to let Little Jo bring back a pail full of beach mementos from our recent vacation worked out far better than I expected.  Besides the benefit of only having a small container of beach finds to bring home, Little Jo had so much fun deciding what was special enough to put inside.  When faced with a space constraint, she was very particular about what she picked up to bring home.  She spent quite a bit of time sorting through her finds to select just the right objects to include.  The limit actually added to her experience rather than made her resentful that she couldn’t bring home every item she saw on the beach.

Then, we we returned home, she had a lot of fun picking out how she wanted to decorate the pail.  We ended up using rub-on transfers because you could still see through them mostly.  She also decided she wanted a picture from the trip on the lid.  I added the destination and the year to truly make it a memory pail.  If you notice, she even included some of her pirate treasure from the hunt we had in there since it was such a huge part of her vacation experience!