I love taking photos. The stuffed files on my computer will tell you the same thing. Problem is, with so many photos, I can’t possibly frame, print, scrapbook, or have made into coffee mugs all these photos. It used to be that every few months I would print a few months worth of my favorite photos and then slip them into photo albums to look at later. And we do look at our photo albums over and over again. But several years ago, I tried making a family yearbook and my first one or two were…yes, pretty cheesy, but I have learned a few things along the way and now these are some of my favorite things.
I thought I’d share a little bit about how I make our books every year.
I use Shutterfly.com. I know there’s other sites out there and Blurb.com is another good one that I ‘ve used. For me, I’ve always got a coupon code for 50% off or some offer of some form or another from Shutterfly, so I usually go with them.
There’s several sizes to choose from and my favorite is the 8×11 inch. Its large but not too large and I always choose the hardcover option, but you can choose soft as well.
Next thing is choosing your style and if you’ll go the custom path or the simple path. I always choose a style that’s just black and white. I don’t really want my books to look “scrapbooked” so that’s why I go that route, but there are a bunch of really creative templates, colors, and embellishments you can choose too if you like that. I just choose a simple style because I’m a simple girl. Then you can choose “custom path” or “simple path.” Custom will give you blank pages and you fill them in how you want to. You choose the layout and then put your pictures in. The simple path is, yes, much simpler. There’s already a chosen layout on each page and you just put your pictures where you want. You can even choose to have the pictures automatically slide into the layout. I’m way too picky for that, but it would be super fast to choose the simple route.
Usually these books take me about a month or two of evenings to put together. As you can see, I’m tied up most of the day…..
…but I love sitting down with a glass of wine or tea and working on my books. Usually I get all gushy and emotional remembering over the year. *Sigh*
When I take upload photos, I organize them by date, and then by month, and then by year. So right now, I have a big fat folder of all my photos from 2013. When I click on that, I’ve got 12 nice, neat littler folders, one for each month. I also label them like “2-2013” for each month, so they stay in numerical order by month, taking out any searching around for anything. Then when I click on the month, I have several folders from that month. I didn’t always do that, but it didn’t take very long to sit down one day and organize my photos. I back everything up on an external hard drive every so often, in case of a crash.
So for my books, I organize those pictures into months and usually in chronological order within the month as well. Once in a while, its weird because I have a picture of a school project next to a sweet baby moment, but that doesn’t really bother me because I remember that the sweet baby moment happened the afternoon we did a fun project about blood in school. I’m thinking about putting together some school yearbooks of the last few years of school and keep all those pictures separate. But then again, school is a big part of our family, so I feel like those pics should be part of our family yearbook. Oh, the struggle.
So at the beginning of each month, I usually have a still life photo with the title of the month. Sometimes I will add a quote that was special that month. Like for this one. Last April was super bittersweet for me. So much going on. I added a quote that really stood out to me on a really difficult day in April and I added it to the month’s title page. I know I’ll associate that photo/quote/month with what was going on in our lives years down the road.
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So then after that, I just put in the photos from that month. I don’t add a whole lot of narration, but I do a little. For each kids birthday photos, I write a little note to them or about them at that season. I wrote a shortened version of Vera’s birth story. I also add a ton of my favorite quotes. LOVE quotes. Love looking for quotes that go well with the photos. The other thing that I did this year, which I think is pretty brilliant, if I do say so, I add the kids’ quotes from the year. You know how your kids so some pretty freaking funny things through out the year and people always say…”you should write that down.” (in a screechy old lady voice) BUT where do you write that down!? Where does it go? A post-it note on a countertop? Where? So what I’ve started doing is writing on my notepad on my phone…because I know I won’t forget where I put it. I add the date and what we were doing when the child said it. Then I add those quotes to appropriate photos. I love that I have these someplace special now.
You might not be able to see it, but I added Sophia’s quote about shedding her training wheels last spring. Now its not just a photo, but a preserved moment and it makes me immediately remember that day.
I did something special for Noah’s and Sophia’s birthdays this year too. Noah goes on fun Boy Scout and church trips and take photos with a little point and shoot that we let him use. These have been on there for months, so I finally downloaded them all and put them into a fun book. I did use an outdoorsy style option that Shutterfly had because I thought he would like it. Now he has a little scrapbook type photobook of all his adventures last year. He loved it.
Then for Sophia, I wanted to save some of her art into a book. I did this one in a big size of 12×12 inches. I used a layout called “Little Masterpieces” in Shutterfly. It was perfect for this project. I added lots of fancy art terms and such, like “original art done in oil pastels and watercolor” and an artist’s bio at the end.
I also added some of her quotes and favorite colors, etc. as well as some famous quotes about art.
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So that’s it! I love our photobooks and the best part is, if anything ever happened to them, I can reorder…they’re always saved in my projects in my account. Hope you enjoyed!
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