Picture Perfect.

Okay, I know it's not the end of the month yet, but I have just uploaded all our August pictures for your viewing pleasure! Click on the link below and remember, there is always the link to the right. I realize the 80% of the pictures are Kayla...but what are you gonna do???

August 2007

Do you want to know what overwhelms me? Seriously, there are not many things...I am a problem solver by nature and I view projects as something to be conquered. However, there is something lurking around our house that I am truly overwhelmed by...pictures. Are you like me? Do you have boxes and boxes full of hundreds, if not thousands of pictures??? I tell you, every time one of those boxes needs to be opened (usually to add more pictures to the black hole) I just feel completely overwhelmed. This happened recently as I was making my way though the house purging and organizing, when I happened across a ton more photos that had gathered in a pile in my closet.

I find myself asking: Why do we have so many pictures? Why aren't we looking at them? How am I going to remember what happened and who these people are??? How should I catalog them? What albums do I want to use? Where do I start? Fortunately, as far back as I can remember, I have had cameras that date the pics, so it isn't quite so bad. However, I just hate the thought of memories laying around without being organized and explained!

So yesterday, I had an epiphany - I will create digital albums! In this way, I can have beautiful coffee table books without all the mess of a photo album, and I don't have to worry about preserving and protecting pictures, because they aren't the actual photo! I spent hours upon hours online researching companies that allow you do put together your own album while they print it up and send you your completed work. Of course, there are the popular picks such as Snapfish, Ofoto, Kodak, etc. However, when it came down to it, there were 2 that really stood out to me: one called Blurb and one called Picaboo.

Blurb is really cool in that you are pretty much creating a published book! They even had this thing where it'll "slurp" information from your blog so you can have a printed memoir. How cool is that? This site allowed you to create your own book, whatever it may be (cookbook, autobiography, family album, etc.) complete with full color dust jacket! However, because it wasn't primarily geared towards photo albums, there were some limits to creative touches...and upon further investigation, there seemed to be some issues with their quality of printing.

Picaboo however, really impressed me! This site is all about making albums! So you aren't able to create a 400 page book like Blurb (their limit is 160), but the print quality is that of a coffee table book and the site and downloaded program is so user friendly with tons of options, layouts and help available. It is a bummer that you can't have a cool dust jacket to know which album is which (the title is printed on the front of the albums), but they do have an option to get the book in leather!

All in all, I am TOTALLY excited to finally start working on getting our photos out for us to look at, and I can even journal without having to use my own handwriting! I think what I'll do is start creating this year's album and then once I order that one, I'll start on back years. Sure, it ends up costing a bit (I think maybe around $150/album)...but isn't that about what I would spend on printing up the photos, buying an album I like, photo corners, page protectors...maybe toss in a few embellishments??? Regardless, in the end I won't have huge boxes of pictures laying around being ignored!