How I make our family photo albums plus the dreaded photo storage issue

This is a post I had drafted way back in August, with the intention of writing about our family albums during my daily blogging month. Didn't happen. It just seemed like a really boring topic at the time, even though I had a few requests to write a post like this. Now that I finished Cecelia's first year album I am more inspired to share the process.

I have said it many times before: a big reason that I blog is solely to make my posts into books. More specifically, I use my monthly baby updates and create the text for yearly kid albums. I'll add in a few other 'random' posts into these albums, too, but mostly I stick to the basics. There is just something that comforts me to have these typed words in print. You know, in case the internet explodes or Blogger dies before my kids are old enough to read all of their posts online. It just feels safer to pull the posts into books.

But then there are also the hundreds (thousands) of pictures we take of our kids. How on earth could I ever USE all of these pictures for anything substantial, other than taking up a crazy amount of space on my Flickr account? And speaking of Flickr, how does one manage all of these images and videos? Where do they live other than my blog? Storage. Photo and video storage is no joke and super important, albeit very annoying at times.

Well, here is what works for me when it comes to photo storage and family albums. I apologize if this is totally boring. I will try to include some pretty pictures along the way.

Photo storage and organizing:

First things first: I take a lot of iPhone pictures, make iPhone videos, and also use my dSLR 'real' camera a decent amount. Which means that I have to force myself to organize and store all of these files or the memories are lost. And none of it ever happened, right? ;)

For my iPhone pictures: nearly every evening I use the Flickr app on my phone to upload the non-blurry 'keeper' pictures of the day. I pull them right over to Flickr and usually just create sets based on the month. Or if it's a special occasion, I will make a new set just for those pictures (ie 'Halloween 2013 iPhone' pics, or 'Colorado 2013 iPhone' pics). Using the sets on Flickr helps me find older photos a little bit easier. I should also title my images to help me find them later but I just don't. So far I've been alright paging through sets from yesteryear to find that one specific photo, and the blog actually helps with that, too. If I want to find a picture of Truman when he was 18 months old, I can go to his blog post and click on any picture. It will take my to my Flickr account and the correct set. Easy. My iPhone pictures live on Flickr and Flickr alone, I do not back them up onto my computer or the external hard drive. I delete the pictures off my phone and trust in Flickr pretty regularly. Cannot handle having hundred and hundreds of pictures on my phone. Purge, purge, purge!

For my iPhone videos: this is a little more annoying, which means I do this a LOT less. Like, maybe once every three months? I have to physically plug my phone into the computer, pull the videos into iPhoto and then put them onto Flickr from there. I have no idea why Flickr stopped having video uploads from the app. Super annoying but at least we can still add them from a real computer, I suppose. I also organize my videos into sets but they are a lot more broad. Mostly I will do 'CC videos' as a set and 'Truman videos' as a set, and just recently did a 'Both kids videos' set. Wild, I know. With the videos I will actually go back and add titles to reflect the date and age and all of that. Hate how my iPhone videos look all long and skinny on Flickr, with the big black bars on either side if I held my phone vertical. But at least we have home videos stored somewhere, I suppose.

Screen shot of my iPhoto events right now:

For my real camera photos: I pull the images from my memory card into the computer, into iPhoto usually right after I use my camera that day. I organize iPhoto into the events based on date. Then I go through that event I just made and delete any blurry or duplicate pictures, and then upload all of them directly to Flickr. This means I have all of my good images on the computer in iPhoto and also on Flickr.

External Hard-drive: every few months I will back up the images and videos on iPhoto onto our external hard drive. Mostly just because iPhoto gets really full and makes my older computer too slow, so I know it's time to delete the files. But I can't delete them until I know they are on the hard drive, too. I have considered trying out a new hip 'Cloud' concept but for now our external hard drive is my source for a second back up (after Flickr). I have this whole thing organized by topic and date (ie iPhoto 2013 Jan, Feb, March, etc). I'm not sure how much storage this hard drive has on it but it must be a ridiculous amount.

So to review---> iPhone photos = Flickr only. iPhone videos = Flickr and external hard drive. Nice camera photos = Flickr and external hard drive. I clean out my computer's iPhoto and my iPhone pictures pretty regularly once I have the images and videos saved online and/or on the hard drive.

Family Photo Albums:

Now the 'fun' part: taking those pictures and blog posts and making a digital, paper album out of them. I am attempting to do a first year and a second year album for each child, and then I will do a family album out of Instagram pictures, too. Once we get past our kids being two years old I will attempt to do one yearly family album after that. For now there are lots of monthly blog posts from years 0-2 that need a place on paper.

I've used Blurb as my album company since 2007, when I made our wedding album through them. Then I had a little album design business of my own for a few years and used Blurb a LOT at that time, and since then I've made the pregnancy albums, kids albums, and family albums through Blurb. So all together Cecelia's first year album is my 30th album through Blurb---you could say I like them a lot. I don't think you can beat their quality for the price even though it's never 'cheap' to make a 100+ page album. It's worth it to me and I love their sizes, their paper, and their printing quality. Of course, I applied to be an 'affiliate' with them through this site and got rejected so I guess a pep talk like this is not enough! But still. Like them a lot.

When you use Blurb as your album company, you can use their design software called Booksmart. That is all I use these days to make my albums but pre-kids I was crazy enough to design all of my pages by scratch in Photoshop, then I would upload those page files directly to a book. I didn't think Booksmart had enough design freedom but my tune has since changed. I now realize you actually can make your own templates for photos and text and you can move everything around to be more custom, not just using the pre-made templates for pages.

The first step in making a photo/blog post album for me is to pull alllllll of the pictures I want in said album. This.Is.No.Joke. I kind of hate choosing pictures for albums because I can't ever decide on a reasonable amount and it becomes overwhelming quickly. For Cecelia's album, I was smart and went through all of my Flickr pictures and/or iPhoto events and grabbed my 'favorite' pictures from each month of her life. I did this as I was making her first year slideshows and it ended up saving me a lot of time when it came to the album process.

So I had pictures from each month in groups on iPhoto, and then Booksmart allows you to select pictures that you want to use and will sort them out for you on the left hand column. I could select 'May 2012' first and then after those pages were done, I would move on to 'June 2012' and so on.

I also went back through my blog and copy/pasted posts that were all about Cecelia. I included the titles and the dates and made that text one solid piece, without photos to break up the paragraphs. This part is always kind of fun for me to go back and re-read those posts although sometimes it's overwhelming to decide which posts make the album cut and which do not.

Screen shot of Booksmart process:

This whole process of photos and blog posts took a lot of hours to complete for Cecelia's 112 page book. There are over 600 pictures in there so that was part of it. I personally love a cleaner, simple look to photobooks and if I could do a full bleed photo on every page I would, but then we'd have a book the size of the Bible so I had to do a lot of collages. Don't always love a bunch of pictures jammed together but if it's a clean layout I can handle it. I really don't have a choice if I want to keep 600 pictures in one book, anyway.

I chose the 11x13" size book for her first year, since that is the size I used for Truman's first year. My pregnancy and the second year album for Truman are the smaller 10x8" and I like those, too. In the past I have used a bunch of digital scrapbooking papers and frames (when I was designing in Photoshop) but this time I stuck with a plain old white background. Simple is better right now. I just wanted to get this baby finished!

A few of the spreads I like a lot:) You might be able to click these to see them a little bigger, since the font is pretty small shrunk down for these screen shots.

The back and front covers. I usually do one giant picture for these but had to do my monthly collages somewhere, figured this was the best spot:

First pages. Be still, my heart:

 I love photo/blog books so much. Guess I need to get going on our yearly Instagram album and then Cecelia's second year album. It never ends!

Miscellany

So many things to blog about lately. Let's hit as many things as possible in one post, deal? Numbered lists, and go!

1. I've decorated a bit for Valentines Day this year, something I've never done before, but (again) this is our first year with a mantel and it's just too much fun to dress it up. I also never know if it's 'mantEL' or 'mantLE' and I see it spelled both ways, so forgive me if I'm wrong today. I bought a cute felt heart-garland at Target (and 'Be Mine' was our first dance song at our wedding, as I gently reminded Nate), then found felt heart 3D stickers at Joann's for 50% off. Added those to some pipe cleaners, and a few to a ribbon. And voila!











2. Also, made a few new prints to put in frames around our house. Finally made the 'important date' one that you see on Pinterest everywhere. Made Erin one, too, because she's wanted one for years and it was an easy birthday present.  :)







3. My son is almost three years old. And he is painfully handsome with his newest haircut, if you ask me. And he is obsessed with those smoothie pouch thingies. Like, he could eat 10 a day if I let him. He is also obsessed with Nutella on waffles lately, hence the chocolate smears. Love sneaking in some veggies with the pouches. Love his dimples. Love this boy.




4. My kids are obsessed with Henry dog. And the feeling is quite mutual, since our seven year old first born is now the recipient of TWO portions of people food falling from the table. Caught Cecelia playing with Henry on camera and almost died of the cuteness. Especially when Henry kept licking her face, shaking her hand, and then flipped onto his back in order to get belly rubs. What a freaking ham. Love that Truman will say, 'Where's my Henry? I missed Henry today!'. He is such a good doggie, even when he is driving me nuts by his protective bark when someone enters our house. Even when he drops a stealth pee in the basement. He's still an awesome family pet and so good to our kids.






5. I am in love with with running to Justin Bieber's 'Beauty and a Beat'. And Taylor Swift's 'Never Ever'. Truman actually loves that song by Taylor, too, and does a really cute rendition of it yet to be caught on camera. But yeah. I'm 31 years old and love the tween stuff for running. No shame.

6. I never shared our Instagram book on the old blog! My philosophy on photo albums has been: doing a pregnancy album for each baby, then a yearly album for each child (probably just the first two years for each kid, I think). Before kids I'd do a family album every year but now I figure that the kids' albums do the job nicely. But this year, now that I'm heavy into the IG fad, I figured that using my iPhoto pictures in a family album would be good----and then Cecelia's first year album will hold all of our 'real' pictures and all of my appropriate blog posts. And so? I used Blurb, as always, and LOVED how this baby turned out. No text, very straight-forward, and 196 pages. I had to edit my photo selection way down, too, because even though I joined IG less than a year ago I'm completely obsessed. The book (with our last name covered by a hair bow. Random.)














Also, it should be noted: I totally tried to sell myself to Blurb. I wrote them and said that I've made 27 books using their company before, I am obsessed with them, and I have a fairly popular blog. Then I tried to make the stretch that maybe they'd want me to review a book for them and I could get a big fat discount (ie free?) book out of the deal. The customer service people were super nice and said they'd forward my email to their marketing folks. Did not hear back from them. However, the nice rep DID give my a coupon for 20% off so at least I got something out of the deal. I really do love Blurb even if they didn't want me to blog for them;)

7. Speaking of photos, my computer was giving me a 'warning: start up disk full' signal which is never a great thing to see. I checked my hard drive and sure enough---I had 95GB of images on iPhoto. Whoops. I cleaned up a few other applications first and then I knew I had to tackle the beast. So I FINALLY pulled off all of the images from my computer and put them on our external hard drive. Since I also put all of the 'good' pictures on Flickr as a back up, I don't get too panicked about putting the images on the hard drive, but I SHOULD because if something ever happened to Flickr and if my computer crashed I'd be screwed. So anyway, 10,000 images came off my computer. And that was only since Cecelia was born.

8. I should be writing Cecelia's 8 month post right now (happy 8 months, baby!) but I'm doing this one instead. Why do the monthly posts stress me out? Can't believe I did them all the way through age TWO for Truman. Yikes.

9. Speaking of Truman, I just realized the other night as I looked at all of the photos in the past year, that he is no longer obsessed with tattoos. I think last year at this time he was at his PEAK of needing to have one tat on each hand at all times. I remember taking fresh ones along with us when we both flew to Missouri for a wedding last February. Because I knew that if his current ones started to wear off while we were away the world would end. He had tattoos on when CC was born and last summer, too---but since then he hasn't requested any. Why does this make me so sad?? I mean, it's not like wearing temporary tats is the cutest thing ever and it was kind of annoying to ALWAYS be replacing them. But it just goes to show that phases pass quickly and something that was so important a year ago doesn't matter to him anymore. Makes me sad to think that sometime soon he might be 'over' trains---maybe that will be an even bigger pill to swallow, since I feel like his trains are such a big part of his personality right now. Obviously, kids grow up and their likes and dislikes change. But wahhhh--I don't want him to grow up and trade in his trains for video games and girlfriends!

10. I have a fun project that I'm making for Truman right now, inspired by this on Pinterest. I was actually just going to buy that daily calendar instead of making one, but then I found myself wanting to make ours a little bit different. And I haven't really worked with felt before and wanted to give it a shot. It's proving to be pretty time consuming but I think the end result will be worth it. We HAVE to figure out a way to teach Truman about the concept of time. Everything in the future is 'after my nap' and everything in the past is 'last time'. Not sure this calendar will even help but it's worth a shot!



(crafting with a toddler is a dangerous sport for toys)




11. Have I mentioned that I love Craigslist? Because it's my favorite place to buy furniture, apparently. We found our awesome dining room chairs there, I got Truman's cool 'big boy' dresser there, and we found the changing table and also our crib on CL. Add to the list this adorable dollhouse bookshelf for Cecelia!



It is by Pottery Barn (apparently, not sure I ever believe people when they say that) and is 6 years old. I think we got a pretty good deal on it because it's real wood and the price is basically the same as what we paid for the dresser and the changing table before. I might try to paint the 'roof' and the little windows, trading the light green for a pale pink (of course). But we'll see. Now Cecelia will have a place to put all of her books and it will make the nursery feel a little more complete! Just have to coordinate a time for Nate to get the bookshelf and then we might have to rearrange the entire nursery to make it fit next to the rocker. I have a thing about wanting the bookshelf RIGHT next to the chair in there--not sure why that is such a big deal to me, but whatever. Can't wait to see it in person. Thanks again, Craigslist!

12. I have become a bad commenter on other blogs lately. I usually read Google Reader while nursing Cecelia at bedtime, then I mark the blogs 'unread' so that I can go back and comment later when I'm on the computer. Which seems to be a LOT later than I anticipate. Why isn't it easier to comment on blogs on my phone? So many steps and passwords and redirections on that tiny screen. But anyway---commenting on blogs is on my ever-important To Do list!

13. Picky toddler at mealtime, anyone? Wow. Truman is actually getting a little bit better about trying new foods for us but it's always such a battle to get that kid to eat anything healthy (see above point about giving him glorified baby food in a squirt container). For the past two nights, we have had some...events at the dinner table. We make him try something new. He obeys. And then he gags and seriously ralphs all over. Tonight I made him a 'T and C' sandwich----not calling it a 'turkey and cheese' sandwich because I knew he'd tell me he doesn't like turkey. But I called it a T and C---for Truman and Cecelia. Cute, right? He was all about it. I had cut off the crust, made tiny cute little bites, and when he plunged into that first little bite his face dropped. He tried to play it off acting like it was all good and then....he gagged. And couldn't stop puking. Awesome. This is about the 5th time in his life that he has gagged on my food. The night before it was on shredded cheese which he usually loves so whatever. The child has a WEIRD sensory/tactile thing going on I've decided. Anything crunchy or super smooth is good. Anything with variable textures? NO. Again, he really showed me what I could do with my beloved T and C sandwich. He cried and felt badly about it, and I know he didn't force himself to vomit everywhere. But man. Kind of hard to push new foods when I know I will be cleaning them up later...

And what a way to end a post! ;)

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... :)

albums, computers, and shots

Today I was off work since I will work this Saturday. I spent a large majority of my day at the computer getting caught up on two of my current albums for my easiest client....myself! I say that I'm easy because I know exactly what I like and don't like, and plus I can just throw pages together in a hurry and not worry too much about if the client will like it.

So what two albums, you ask? Oh, just my pregnancy album and my everyday 2009 album. I am so freaking happy to announce that as of right now, this very moment, I am fully caught up with both albums. We are talking hours and hours of work to convert blog posts and 5000 pictures since January into nicely contained digital layouts. What? I got a new camera this year. You didn't think I'd just have a few hundred pics to sort through, did you?

I would like you to guess how many pictures are in our 2009 album thus far. Remember, beginning in January until present day, this album holds all of my self-proclaimed relevant blog posts and favorite images from the year. My 2008 album had 88 total pages from January through December. Do you have your guess?

Because it's only September and I have exactly 100 pages....and that does NOT include any pregnancy posts or pictures. Holy geez! Here are few randoms I thought I'd share from this album:






And then the pregnancy album? It's something I've always wanted to do and it's why I've tried to stay diligent with my posting during this amazing and thought-provoking time. I think I'll love looking back on my thoughts as a first time pregnant lady and I'll probably laugh. Maybe the baby will like to read what Mommy was thinking someday, too. But for the book itself I decided to keep it very simple and plain...all black pages, nothing fancy at all. Can't wait to add more pages to this bad boy!







Speaking of albums, I haven't mentioned much about J.Lorene on this blog for many many months. It's not that I haven't been working on gorgeous albums this year, because I certainly have and continue to upload all of my recent work to my site under 'examples', if you are interested. (I'm a total sucker for Chelsea and Jide's wedding in Cabo and could stare at this one all day long, but that's just me).

I'm still taking new orders but I'm really struggling with whether or not I will continue to go full speed with my little side biz. I still love it and enjoy the extra spending money but I'm starting to feel like I will need every free moment to prepare for the baby. Once baby comes in March I'm absolutely certain that I'll need to take a break from J.Lorene to focus on my new job as a mommy....but then what? Do I continue fun hobby that in all honesty is purely a labor of love because I really don't make enough money per hour to justify spending time away from my new baby consistently? Or do I just limit my new clients to allow for a more laid back time frame and less pressure to perform quickly? I don't know. I'm torn. For now I'm just thinking of continuing on until I have a stronger opinion one way or the other.

On a different note, my beloved iMac aluminum keyboard protested the number of hours it was hard at work to complete my personal albums. All of a sudden in the middle of typing a comment on a friends blog I couldn't type the word 'that'. All that was coming out was 'ha' which was totally frustrating and confusing. Then I realized that my letters B, G, and T were all not working along with the letter 5. If you look on your keyboard you see these pesky letters are all in a diagonal line. CURSES! Have you ever tried to type anything without these letters? Totally maddening. I didn't spill anything on the keyboard and I hadn't done anything to tick it off besides work the crap out of it all day long.

After some research and a quick trip to the Apple store it was official: the 1.5 year old keyboard gave up on life. It was broken and not repairable. So we basically HAD to buy a new one unless I could figure out a way to work the English language without the letters B G and T. Ugh.

But failing economy my left cheek---the Apple store is always hopping with people who are dropping mad cash in there like it's no big deal. Seriously. Every time we go in we are of course drooling at all of the new Macs and iPods but also staring in astonishment as people wheel out gigantor iMacs in multiples. Who are these people and how are they spending this money?

I suppose I shouldn't talk since we do technically own two Macs and a few iPods but still. 'Tis craziness in there.

And finally, the topic of flu shots is always a fun one, right? You see, I work in a hospital which is full of very sick people. Those sick people are my patients and thus I am literally inches away from their faces as they sneeze and cough and do other nasty bodily functions. Anyone in health care should automatically get the flu shot, right? Plus, I'm knocked up so that puts me at the top of the 'must get flu shot' list even more than before. BUT....

I've never gotten one before and I've been fine. I realize that I'm totally lucky to have never gotten the Flu and people tell me that someday, when I do get a real respiratory Flu bug, I'll be begging for the vaccine every year afterwards. I mean, the shots are free at work and they literally wheel around carts through the halls ready to plunge the needle into your skin. I asked the nurse and she said that the shots they have at the hospital are the preservative-free kind, which is what us pregnant ladies should get.

I'm just not sure I want to deal with it. I have heard of people getting sick after the shot (even though it's not one with a live virus) and of course, many times 'they' pick the wrong Flu strain to guard against so the shot is totally pointless. I know it can't really hurt the baby to get the shot but I still have a hard time committing to it....don't ask me why. My doctor's office recommends it, my work recommends it, and yet I'm stuck with this one.

Any advice? Let's not even get into the topic of H1N1 though. When that vaccine comes out I'm going to do lots of research there, too, and I know they'll push for pregnant peeps to get it but again, I'm torn. I know of some preliminary reports that show a startling correlation to the vaccine and Gullian Barre, so of course that makes me a wee bit nervous.

So that's that. More miscellany coming at you just in time for me to watch The Office. Oh, Jim and Pam. How I've missed you.