Kids artwork

If you have a hard time throwing away their artwork, then one solution is to take pictures of it. You can have it on your computer or in a scrapbook and remember it for years to come. You can now do all kinds of neat things with them.
1)I just had mugs made for my Dad and sister for their birthdays with special pictures on them.
2)You can give one or two a year to a Grandparent or Aunt and Uncle if you can't stand to throw it away, but you have your paper for the month. (My rule of saving only one paper for the month...but with most of these ideas, you can actually get rid of all the actual artwork but still see it for years to come!)
3) Frame some of their artwork and hang it. I was just getting a picture framed for a client and there was a woman there with her grandchild's art work that she was having framed to hang up. She was going to have it hanging in the guest room where her granddaughter stayed when she came to visit. She was using an expensive frame and mat, but the frames above in the picture are only $1.99 at Ikea. There are all kinds of cute colors and they would work great, so you don't have to spend a lot of money.
4) I remember growing up that our upstairs hallway was the art gallery. Both my brother and sister are artist and did wonderful work even in grade and high school. My mother had their pieces displayed in the upstairs hallway. They were her favorite pieces. Then if something new came in she would take one down and put the new one up. We all thought that was great and anytime guests came to our house, mom proudly took them upstairs to show them the "art gallery".
5) I heard a great idea from watching Peter Walsh on Oprah the other day. He suggested taking pictures of your child's artwork with your digital camera and then putting them in a digital scrapbook. You can use snapfish.com or shutterbug.com, and I also know that Creative Memories(their package for a 20 page book is about $99)does the same thing too. Actually Oprah offered a deal for 48 hours after her show aired for snapfish....you could go and purchase a 20 page hard covered book (normal price is $29.99) and get it for free. (I did have to pay S&H about about $7.50). I did not have pictures of the kids artwork to upload at that point, but I did make a book of our summer vacation this year though. I haven't received it in the mail yet.
But I do think his idea was great. You could make one of these each year with their artwork and it would be great fun for them to look at through the years and easy to pass on to them when they are grown.
6) Another thing they had on his segment of the Oprah show was to take carpet squares and use double sided tape and tape them to the wall to make a bulletin board. What they showed was using two different colors with two across and 3 down. Then they used that for a bulletin board and hung one piece of the kids artwork in each square to showcase it. This is one way you can change them often.

Let me know if you have any other ideas of what to do with your child's artwork!