Keepsake didn't really begin as an idea for a book.​

It began with us thinking about family, memory, and the things that stay with us.

​

When our son Teddy arrived much earlier than expected, our lives changed very quickly. He spent his first months in hospital, and for a while our world became very small. Days were measured in feeds, weight gains, oxygen levels, and little bits of progress.

​

It probably made us more conscious than we already were of how quickly life moves and how much the ordinary moments matter.

​

As Teddy grew, Morgan and I found ourselves talking a lot about the kind of childhood we wanted to create for him. Not in terms of big holidays, expensive things, or trying to make every moment special. More the opposite.

​

The little things.

​

A daily journal entry. Gratitude at the dinner table. A photograph taken in the same place on their first day of school. A collection started when they are young and handed over when they are older. The things children come to expect, then one day realise meant much more than they understood at the time.

​

We started collecting these ideas, first for our own family.

Then we realised there was a book in them.

​

Because the traditions that shape a family rarely begin as traditions. Usually somebody just does something once, then does it again. Over time it gathers stories, memories, and meaning.

​

That is what Keepsake is about.

​

It isn't a book about creating a perfect childhood. We certainly aren't trying to do that.

​It's a collection of simple ideas for deliberately creating the little rituals, traditions, and keepsakes that can follow a child through their life.

​

Some take five minutes. Some cost nothing. Some might continue for decades.

But all of them come back to the same idea.

The things we repeat with love become part of a family's story.

 

We wrote Keepsake for Teddy.

​

But we also wrote it for every parent, grandparent, and family who wants to create something their children might one day look back on and say: "We always did that..."

​

And hopefully, underneath those words, know exactly that it meant.