Remembering my years

So I did this really cool thing a couple of weekends ago. I made a 2009 Year in Review photo book.

I took all the pictures I'd taken in 2009 and uploaded them to Shutterfly (who I wouldn't necessarily recommend but I had a coupon so, yanno...). Then, in chronological order, I made a digital layout for each photo or group of photos that were representative of my 2009. I included everything from weddings, births (baby nephew ftw!!), and goodbyes to pictures of Ben and Logan cuddled up on the couch. I captioned pictures that had inside jokes or that had a larger story attached to them--things I'd be likely to forget in ten or twenty years without a reminder. And I dated everything, based on the date stamp feature of my camera.

I freaking love this book. I scrapbook in the traditional way, also. However, I'm IMPOSSIBLY behind and will never ever ever catch up. There's no way that i would have scrapped half of these pictures and, even the ones that would have gotten done, would have been done so far from when the events happened, I wouldn't have remembered half the details I do now.

I'm not quite ready to abandon my traditional scrapbooking for good, but this will definitely be an annual tradition in our house from now on. I strongly encourage you to do the same. It was a pretty powerful experience to see my year laid out before me. I love having the everyday moments captured as well as the big events. I even took a couple of pages just to journal my thoughts on some of the major things that happened to me last year (one page on my writing journey, a page on Ben's motorcycle accident...).

I'm not crazy about Shutterfly's user interface. Everything is small and I found it really difficult to get an overall sense of how the book would be in its final form. Also, there is a typo in the finished version (ARGH!!!) despite the fact that I read through it at least three times. Another testament to how difficult it is to really see everything you've laid out. My critique partners can attest to how thorough and picky I am at typos and grammatical stuff! They do have a lot of layout choices for your pictures, however.

If you have a Mac, I'd definitely recommend using their software. I've made a book for Kaz through iPhoto before, and also received one as a gift from my sister-in-law. Their interface is easy to use and has many choices. It was easy to see how the book would ultimately look. My only complaint about theirs is that you only have a month or so to order extra copies of any book you make. For example, I was out of luck when I decided almost a year later that I wanted a copy of the book I'd made for Kaz. On Shutterfly, your book is there forever and you can re-order it forever (as far as I can tell). You can make similar books through many other sites - Snapfish, Kodak, etc.

Anyway, I highly recommend this. Especially if you have kids. It's well worth the time and money to preserve your memories in a meaningful way where they can be enjoyed again and again, instead of just dumping your pictures onto your computer and never (or rarely) looking at them again.