Photobooks and the Excitement of Getting Mail Abroad

Living abroad has made me as excited about getting mail as the average 5 year old. I always have a package to track or an order to make and the holiday season kicks that into high gear. The mail is full of delightful goodies like food products, clothes, shoes, cupcake sprinkles, good magazines etc. Bills come too of course, but those are put aside so I can focus on more important business like using new cookie cutters or trying out a newly arrived Penzy's spice.  Zita went to New York in Summer 2010 and I just got around to making the photobook now.

I love this full picture cover and the fact that Snapfish let me put a title on the binding.  This is the first time I experiemented with scanning in ticket stubs and journal entries and I'm so pleased with how it turned out.

Zita in particular savors every photobook and pours over her childhood books so often that my efforts never feel wasted. The books don't just contain photos, but every blog post I have ever written is pasted in, and a summary of the season is too if I get around to it.

Over the past couple of months, I did a major catch-up, bringing all photobooks current to Summer 2011.  Here's our Spring book that also just arrived. That's a huge pile of cork behind the kids in case you are wondering.

Our photobook library is getting so big that I'm starting to feel like a Royal archivist. (see why I like the title on the binding option? otherwise it's really hard to find the book I want) One day I'll either be loved or hated for making so many of these things. (around 75% are pictured, the rest are kept in the livingroom)

Tips:
-Always have a photobook pending and add to it as you upload photos.
-Make it a habit and it becomes easy to just make a page here and there. Having to start a book from scratch is much more daunting.
-Put in funny phrases the kids say- that is the part we enjoy the most when looking back at old books.
- When you're all finished, keep the book in your "cart" and wait for good deals before you order. I always get deep discounts on extra pages, extra books, and up to 40% off.
- archive photos on your computer by date. This makes it so much easier when putting pages together.
-when all else fails, try out books that Kodak makes for you, using your online albums. I did this for my Summer photos since I had thousands. The post book editing only took a few hours as opposed to the weeks it would have taken me to sort through so many photos. It's now in my cart, ready to go.

My projects for the coming year will include making a photo family recipe book, and scanning in old photo prints to make unitl-now life books for Zita and Moojie who do not have such fancy pants books of their babyhood and early years.