Before I had kids I swore I was going to be the best at keeping photo albums up to date. I figured it was the one thing I knew I would be on top of, after all I had spent years carefully curating all my photo albums. I would spend hours in my room as a teen clipping things from magazines to add to my photo albums and carefully captioning pictures. This was a practice that I mostly kept through college and in to married life. And while my albums weren’t as elaborate as they were when I was a teen, they were still put together in a timely and orderly fashion.
Fast forward to new motherhood and everything changed. I found myself snapping dozens of photos a day (over 600 by the time Jack was 6 months old) and sometimes I would share them on Facebook or post them on the blog but for the most part they stayed on my phone or in my computer. And every time I sat down to put together an album I would make it a few pages and then I would get distracted or I would find myself unable to wade through the thousands of pictures I had taken. Cause through my mom eyes each moment was precious. And the whole process became really overwhelming.
It took me till Jack was over 2 for his first year albums (yes I needed to make 3) to be finished. And at least another year till I got around to year 2. I was totally failing at keeping up. And the harder I tried the more bogged down I became. With a new baby on the way, I knew I needed to change my ways and do a better job of keeping up with our family memories. When Shutterfly offered me the chance to check out their new Make My Book, photo books, I knew it was my chance to catch up on Jackson’s photo albums.
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With Make My Book, I pick the book size that I want and upload my pictures, I don’t even need to curate the pictures, my Make My Book designer did all that for me. In 3 days I was emailed a custom designed book to approve or change as I saw fit. Once you order the book there is a one time $9.99 fee in addition to the cost of the book.
I uploaded all the photo’s from Jackson’s 3rd year and was able to put in a few notes to my designer about what I was looking for. Honestly I wasn’t sure what I was looking for I just wanted someone else to wade through my mess of pictures and make it pretty.
Three days later I was emailed my book to proof. I did go through and make a few small changes, mostly because I realized that I had submitted way too many pictures. But after a few quick edits, my book was perfect and ready for me to order. And when I clicked submit, I didn’t have my usual feeling of “this took me way too long to do” instead I was excited that it was done and it didn’t involve a ton of effort on my part.
My book arrived and like all my other Shutterfly photo books it was beautifully put together. One of the things I love about Shutterfly photo books is the little details from captions inside to being able to put the title of the book on the spine. These features take me back to my teen days of carefully personalizing all of my albums.
Jackson has just turned five, I’m ready to use Make My Book to tackle his 4th year, so that by the time six rolls around I will be on top of keeping all his childhood memories intact. And maybe baby number 2 won’t have to wait so long to have her photo albums done.
Are you like me and way behind on your photo albums or are you on top of them?
I was provided with a Shutterfly Make My Book to review, all thoughts and opinions are my own.
It’s such a time saver!! And surprisingly, I’m on top of my photo albumns. I make one per year after the Birthday Party, and it’s like the only thing I can say I consistently do lol.