Making a Photo Book

I don't know about any of you but for the past several years although I have taken a gazillion photos I have actually had very few printed out. I have quite a few photo albums filled with photos from when I was younger through Lillie's first six months and then I just kind of ran out of time to have them printed and put them into albums. I kept putting it off and then it seemed like such an overwhelming task because I was so backed up. I had made a few photo books online in the past but was never thrilled with them. Then one day I saw on Pinterest a link to a blog called A Thousand Words where the author wrote about using a company called Blurb. (She is ridiculously organized and she gives more info about her books towards the bottom of this post.)

I decided to give it a try and I couldn't be happier! This post is not in any way sponsored by Blurb, I just am so excited about this that I wanted to share. I started by doing last year and am now working month by month on 2012. I am almost caught up and then from here on out plan on just adding in the new photos at the end of each week. I also think I am going to track back and do 2010 and 2009 too. Our book contains well over 400 pages (and thousands of photos!) and was around $130! I know that's not cheap but if you calculated the cost to print out all the photos I used and buy the multiple albums it would take to fill then you can see what a great deal that is!

Besides the wonderful price, my favorite feature was that you design your whole book offline and then upload it once you are done. The program you download from their site is far easier than any other ones I have used! You can use their templates or create your own and you can add text as well. Anyway, I recently got the 2011 one in the mail and was so thrilled with it. I didn't do anything too artsy with it and kept it quite simple but here's a little look into it:

Right up front there's a spot where the blurb logo goes but if you want you can switch it out which I chose to do.

I used lots of my favorite photos:

And had fun with events like Lillie's 3rd birthday party:

I also included some holiday decorating (and also different project we'd done throughout the year):

And then, of course, there are pages and pages of random candid shots:

I organized the book in order of how the photos were taken and then at the end I have pages and pages of iPhone pictures. It's fun now having all of those random snapshots printed out. Two nights ago Lillie sat down with the book and spent probably a half hour to forty-five minutes looking through each page all on her own and then telling me to "Come look!" and "Remember that?" It made me so glad that I finally decided to go ahead and do it!

And here's the back (Lillie's first time holding Lola):

I was torn about including text on the cover but decided just to keep it simple and just added it to the spine.

I can't wait until January when I can print out the one for 2012!

I hope you all have a lovely weekend!