I have a blog that details everything from start to finish. I use in-wall touch panels in lieu of light switches and will run slide-shows from the build on the panels when they are not in use.

I plan on taking tons of photos and then maybe doing a photobook when we're done.

jrldh, what blog?

One of the best commemoratives is to plant a tree. Nothing to do with photos or blogs, but it's a great symbol. Plus, the house probably needs landscaping. Just be sure to not plan that blue spruce 10' from the house!

Standard "blue-prints" and blue-line and black-line prints will fade in natural light and are not permanent.

You may want to make a photographic print or giclee print.

Good luck on your project.

dBrad: It's a home building blog pretty much like others have posted here in the past. I use it as a diary for myself and family members who may be interested what's going on with my build.

If you're putting in a concrete driveway (or garage floor) you could put handprints (and paw prints) in a corner to "sign" it.

I stamped the year into the basement floor while the concrete was wet. I'm planning a photobook, and I'm going to take a picture, edit it to look like a sketch, and make T-shirts for those who helped me along the way (I'm pretty much building the house myself). Finally, I'd like to find a spot where visitors can sign. A friend of mine uses the siding on their porch, but the signatures are starting to fade, and they can't re-side without losing this memento.

We had to hurry out to buy a cheap shovel the day we broke ground because we had to bed some silt fence, so I might paint the shovel gold and hang it up somewhere for the first year.

Sort of related- I'm trying to figure out how to throw an open house so friends and family can see my efforts, without looking like I'm bragging, and without soliciting any gifts. We already have too much stuff, and are downsizing.

We took a precious picture of our kids holding, and resting their feet on, the shovel that made the first dig. I plan to frame it as well as make a photo book of the whole building process. Sometime after we have furniture and a driveway we plan to have the people who built our house over for a party to show our appreciation. Have any of you hosted subs for a party? Did it go well?

Like Savenann, I am planning to take LOTS of photographs of every step and make them into a scrapbook. I'm old-fashioned enough to prefer a book of photos on the shelf to an online something.

In part this will be for the memories, but I also plan to take photographs of the "insides" of every wall before the drywall goes up . . . that might one day be useful if/when something needs to be repaired.

Taking a range of exterior and interior photos is very good for insurance purposes, should replacement every be needed.

Ms. P's idea of photographing every partition before covering up with finish material is also good.

Since computers crash with frustrating regularity, it's good to either have a hard copy, and/or have the folder copied to another drive, thumb drive or cloud somewhere (although I don't trust clouds any more than my own computer's hard drive).

My SO made me a tiny custom shovel (1/3 the size of a normal one), painted it my favourite color and put an engraved plate on it with the year. I used it to dig the first hole and it will hang prominently in the livingroom once the house is done.

I also keep a blog, and when the build is finished, will have it published into a lovely book (there's online companies that will turn them into a bound full color professional looking book). That to me will be awesome, a permanent tale.

Last thing is since I drew my own plans, I'm having the first ones with all the engineers marks on them framed and they'll hang on the way up the stairs, with the last including the engineer stamp and the permit number : )

But now I love the idea of having my helpers sign something, which means I need to find a permanent venue for that!!

This is a good thread. We're hoping to break ground any day now (wrestling with the lender over their useless rules - grrr), and since this is the only home we'll ever build, I'd like to find some way to commemorate the process. We're taking lots of pictures. I might start a blog too, if I can ever discipline myself to do it.

Beyond that - any other ideas? I like the idea of framing some of the construction drawings, and maybe a few of the drawings that we came up with during the planning process.

Side note: we just got the go ahead from our lender to start site prep! We won't have the loan at this point - it'll take a few weeks to close on that - but we can still start. It seems like this has been a long time coming. Recently I've hated to go out to our property, even though it's so gorgeous out there, it's also been a difficult wait. So - woo hoo!

Are hard hats required when we visit the construction site? I've thought that if they are, perhaps "creative" looking hats would be appropriate? hmm.

We impressed our hand prints in the foundation floor and imbedded a new penney to mark the date.

We plan on an open house thank you to everyone involved.. But we love to entertain and have good friends/food/fun!

jen

I am a calligrapher - years ago I had a client come to me with a scrapbook she had created as a gift for her new neighbors. They had purchased the home next to hers, arranged for the fire dept. to burn the house down, and then proceeded to build a new home. My client photographed every step of the process and as a result had the most wonderful "welcome to your new home" gift imaginable! She wanted me to create a special title page and I stumbled on what has become one of my favorite quotes: "If I were asked the chief benefit of the house I should say: the house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace." Gaston Bachelard

We are still a good year or two from building, but I've already decided one of the things we will be displaying in our home is a satellite image of our property that we stumbled upon by chance last year while exploring Google Earth - the image caught us on a sunny day when we were enjoying a picnic up on our property - pure serendipity! :-)

What sweet ideas! Since I am two weeks from close and have totally passed the "honeymoon" phase of the build process (not my favorite time!), I think I am going to grab those keys at closing, lock myself inside, change the locks, and never come out!

I also want to frame my blueprints. I had my archichtect do a simple one page PDF. Top of drawing is a drawing of exterior elevation front of house. Below is the floorplan with most measurements removed.

I am also taking automatic pictures of the build. 5 days a week from 7-7 every 30 min. Turning it into a YouTube video. Already did a test video of the first six weeks looks pretty good.