How Shoebox Café was born...

Shoebox Café - http://www.shoeboxcafe.co.uk

How Shoebox Café was born...

This idea was created during a good old family discussion over skype with my parents whilst I was living and working in Asia in 2012. My mother and I were actually discussion how impersonal social media was making peoples relationships. Whilst the idea of facebook has created more connections, we were missing the real face to face socialising that seemed to be more and more difficult to arrange. This lead on to Pen Pals and how great it would be if we could appreciate and make more effort to keep in touch with our friends via letters, emails and postcards again and how I personal touch can really brighten up someones week. From, here my father anecdotally retold a story of his little suitcase in the loft that after 55 years, held his entire life's worth of memories (that actually happened to have a family of mice nicely nesting inside). We all remember and may still have a Shoebox underneath our beds with some of our most precious memories and how refreshed and connected you feel to the moment every time you take a peek and travel down memory lane. So we decided to use Shoebox Café, a place to make memories in a home from home environment as the umbrella name to the services I provide to families. Our Café aspect applying to both the meals I provide children in my care that we prepare and cook together as well as the online community space created within my social networks which today is the way we collect, share and treasure our precious memories. 

~Samantha~