thoughts on keeping the memories alive when there's no time to scrapbook

I'm clearly taking a break from my behavior management homework (again) to share some of my latest additions to my scrapbook collection. What's different is that these did not involve pretty paper or adhesive, yet I love them just the same.

For my birthday, my friend Barbara knocked my socks off and surprised me with my blog from 2014 printed into a hardback book. She secretly had it done through blog2print.com, just slurping my posts and pictures into easy-to-use (or so she says) templates. She picked a cute cover design and stole a picture off my facebook page. {Side note: I think it's kinda weird that she could do that without having my blog password, but she did, and the result is fabulous.} I have seriously been wanting to print my whole blog in yearly volumes for forever, but just haven't taken the time or spent the money to do it. One of these days. But this, my friends, is current, and none of my other scrapbooks are. The last I did any real scrapping was in my project life album, and I think that was in 2012. And, surprise, surprise, it isn't totally finished. It's very close to finished, but not quite. What I love about this is that it's really like a book I wrote. I've always wanted to be an author. Now I guess I am.

Getting that gift got me going. Shortly after my birthday I heard about chatbooks.com where you can print your instagram pictures into a book. When I set up my instagram account, I decided not to share every single picture on facebook. Some people do, but I kind of wanted to keep the two separate. I do share some pictures from instagram here on my blog, but for the most part, they just stay on instagram. Anyway, at chatbooks they print in chronological order, 60 pictures per book + the date and caption for $6. Shipping is free. You can't even print 60 pictures at Costco for under $10, so this is a steal.

What I liked about chatbooks is that you can choose your cover picture and if there are pictures you don't want to include in your book, you can easily select to not put them in. Once you sign up, it's kind of like a magazine subscription. Every time you have 60 new pictures ready, they'll email you and you have a few days to make changes if you want before it gets shipped to you. I got 3 of them and I love them. The books are 6x6 and the photos are 4x4ish.

So once I got those in the mail, then I got to thinking about a Shutterfly book I made back in 2012 when I did Week in the Life. It has been finished for 2 years, just sitting in my shopping cart waiting to be ordered. Well, a 50% off hardback photo book sale showed up on my facebook feed, so I went ahead and ordered it.

It's cool to look back and see what's changed and what has stayed the same. The master bathroom is no longer poop brown. The main bathroom is still yellow. The kitchen is blue now and I have yet to paint the cabinets white. We still don't have the curtains up in our bedroom. One of these days. . .

Wilson is a lot bigger now and he just licks shoes, he doesn't eat them. I no longer teach kindergarten. In fact, my job has changed a couple of times since then.

So, the lesson in all of this is, get your pictures off the computer and out of your phone, people, so you can have a tangible record of your life. I still have a lot to learn about that myself, but looking at these books makes me happy!