It's here!! I ordered our 2011 photo album over a week ago and it's finally here!
I love it and I'm so excited to have this be the first of our collection of yearly photo albums. I came up with the idea when I realized that I haven't been good about printing our photos, but we have so many fun ones that document our first year (and a half) of marriage. Instead of making photo albums for certain big events like trips and holidays, it will be so much easier to have all the events that take place in each year compiled in one succinct book. Apparently I'm not the only one with this idea. The day after I placed my order, Young House Love posted pictures of their family yearbook, and they got the idea from the Bower Power family.
I basically spent all of my free time for over a week straight trying to get all the photos I needed and write little blurbs about our year. [I am hoping that I can work on our 2012 book throughout the year so at the end all I have to do is edit and order it. We'll see!] YHL and Katie Bower did it more of a yearbook style with no words, but with my horrible memory I decided it would be good to record a little more detail. It's always so fun to go back and remember what you thought at certain stages of life. I also want to highlight big prayers that were answered and reveal God's faithfulness in our life during that particular year. Plus, it will be really fun for our kids to look at and read one day!
Some pictures of our various vacations... we traveled a LOT this year.
I also did a spread on what our apartment looked like in 2011 and also how we both got grown-up jobs that year!
With the discounts going on at Shutterfly.com at the time I was able to save over $60 and get free shipping, so for a 12x12 album I only spent $34.99! This book is about 31 pages, but I imagine with each year it will get larger (especially one day when we have kids). I am not sold on doing Shutterfly every year, so we will see what else is out there. In the past I used Picaboo for our wedding album, but their baseline prices for a 20-page book are pretty expensive, even with the sales. And I'm definitely going to need more than 20 pages. I need to check out MyPublisher next year because I was blown away with the deal that John and Sherry got - $45 for 100 pages shipped! However, I was very satisfied with the quality of Shutterfly. They are still having some great deals on their books (maybe even better than when I ordered mine!) so if you're thinking of doing making a photo book, now's the time to do it!
Do you make a yearly photo album? What method do you use - do you scrapbook or make it digitally and get it printed? If you don't make one, now is the time to start! I highly recommend it as a way to document the years of you and your family's life!
This is such a great idea! Before I can even make one of these things I need to get better at just taking pictures of us! I'm always the behind the camera and Caleb hates having his picture taken sooo that leads to not many pictures of us!
ReplyDeletewhat an awesome idea. i have never heard of this.
ReplyDeletealso, i saw you went to gatlinburg. my girlfriends and i went there for a weekend after grad school. we rented a boat from a man named "Bird Dog" who was confused as to who would drive the boat since we were all women. The local newspaper, in case you didn't get a chance to see, is called "Real Talk". Like "The Washington Post", it's "The Gatlinburg Real Talk". Good times, good times indeed.
Sherri - I'm sure you have enough to put together an album! Or maybe combine all the first few years of your marriage before you have kids into one album. But I realized that too as I was putting this together - hopefully this year I will be better at taking pictures of our every day life!
ReplyDeleteColleen - that is so funny! I love Gatlinburg. I have been many times and there is always so much to do!
this looks great! i love the idea and your book looks really nice. i use shutterfly a lot but never thought about getting the cloth cover but it looks really good!
ReplyDeleteBen's school did a fab book like this as a thank-you to the teacher. Each child put a photo in and a thank-you message. These books make great coffee- table books for friends and family when they visit. Rx
ReplyDeletehttp://sandersonsmithstory.blogspot.com/