A little bit overdone

Major accomplishment over here, folks. I finally finished Truman's first year album and I just have to gush about it a bit.

You see, I've always been really into documenting life in photobooks. I scrapbooked my life since age 15 and have a yearly album starting with high school all the way through 2009. I switched to digital scrapbooking in 2008 and have never looked back and even had my own little side business for a bit making wedding albums for others. So basically, all that is to say I really really like photo albums. :)

I turned a lot of my blog posts into pages with our family yearly albums in 2008 and 2009. Then I did a whole 'pregnancy journal' book compiling all of my pregnancy posts and pictures into one fatty book. I knew I had to do a baby book for Truman but I honestly felt rather overwhelmed with this project because of the sheer number of pictures (I think I took over 10,000 in the first year of life) and blog posts (can't even count them anymore) dedicated to Truman.

During my maternity leave I took the plunge and started Truman's album. I used lots of blog posts and even some personal journaling I did in Word those first few weeks. I didn't want to forget a second of that newborn magical time and also I succeeded in taking a ridiculous amount of pictures to commemorate it. I'd work on this album periodically, mostly in spurts. I would get really far behind, by months and months, and then I'd focus on catching up to the present moment. By Truman's first birthday I was caught up to November which wasn't too shabby.

And now? I have officially completed the largest, most ridiculous baby book ever. It has 174 pages in it. It's a 11x13 size and huge and rather pricey but I absolutely love it, you guys. I am so glad I took the time to do this for Truman but also, selfishly, for me. A few spreads for your viewing pleasure---pretty colors, my baby boy's face, and lots of pictures!

I'll try to post a link to an edited down preview version here. There are 'only' 81 pages I selected here so that your eyes don't actually bleed from staring at the screen.

Oh, and major shout out to Blurb yet again. I love this company so much and have never regretted using them as my only choice in albums. You cannot beat their quality for the price and apparently they are MUCH quicker than they used to be for printing and shipping. I got the book in my hands within a week of hitting the 'purchase' button and I know I used to wait for 2 weeks when I was whipping out wedding albums like nobody's business.

So anyway, that is that. I really think a lot of moms get overwhelmed by the idea of making a photobook for the baby years and I totally get that. But my best advice is just to take the plunge and get started. It doesn't have to be fancy, it doesn't have to have a million pictures or a ton of text---anything you do will be special.

And with that I better get started on the second year album asap... :)