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Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Train Up Tuesday: Document Their Childhood

Most likely, you have a digital camera. If you're like me, you love that you have 20 frames of the same shot (and are hesitant to delete ANY of them, because it's like deleting a child!!!). And probably, you've only actually printed a couple dozen of the 1.5 billion photos you have on your computer.

Or, maybe you are a scrapbooker. I love the thought in those, but I would NEVER have nor make time to actually make them myself...buying the right papers, stickers, punches, ribbons...too many decisions for this 'ole gal! However, I do think it's worth your while to have those photos out of the computer and in a book so your kiddos can actually enjoy looking through their (or your) past. I love going through my childhood photos with my boys, figuring out which of them they think I resemble as a baby, sharing memories of my growing up years. I also love going through their pictures with them as they say, "HEY! I remember that!" or "I was SO cute then!".

In the last few years, I've opted to make photobooks. The first one I made was through Apple to document our first family trip with our firstborn. It was nice, but pricey and I never came across discounts (I'm all about a "special"!). I've also used Walgreens (recently) to make a book for our middle's second year. That one was pretty simple, but I wasn't very impressed with the final product (too many small black print smears throughout the book). Shutterfly, however is the one I have been most impressed with. I had made a small photobook with them in the past for my husband on Father's Day. He keeps it in his office to "show and tell" ;-)

The latest book I made was to capture our first year of homeschool. I figured, we don't have a "year book", but this would be better! Instead of just a couple of photos of my kids, they get a WHOLE book to themselves! Shutterfly offers a "simple path" and a "custom path". I think you would be impressed with either. We opted to customize our book and it was a real winner! The custom path was really quite simple...even though it was custom. I like being able to make one of my own photos the background for displaying other pics. I was thoroughly impressed with the finished product.

Shutterfly often has deals and specials (you currently save 20% on their cards AND get free shipping on orders over $30, making now a great time to work on Christmas cards or maybe birthday invites). Perhaps the BEST deal you can try for is a FREE photobook from Shutterfly. Do you have a blog? Go here to sign up for a chance for a free photo book from Shutterfly. (Promotion ends soon as blogs must be posted by August 5th!)

Yes, I'm hoping for a free book, as well. Like I said, I have WAY too many pics on my computer and am working to backtrack on some pics that I want to be able to look at with my boys in my lap :)

Have fun capturing AND actually printing your moments with the little ones!

-Ashlie

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