We're Back!

Wesleigh and I got back last night. We had a great time in Tennessee but are happy to be back home in our own beds ;) Wesleigh was so excited to see the boys last night and they were just as excited to see them! I have some pics of a pumpkin patch that I'll get together to post a little later. I had to laugh because on the plane, I was asked if Wesleigh had ever flown before. Ha!! Yep...you could say that. I just laughed.

I have had many questions about the book I did of our China trip. I thought I'd answer your questions and tell you about the process. I used the Creative Memories Storybook Maker software to create this book. I'll be honest, I've had the software for a few years and this is the first book I've printed. Of course, I've had great intentions, but just never got it done. I have used Shutterfly to print a Christmas book and thought it was great, but wasn't satisfied with the lack of creatitivity it offered to me. All you do is click and drag photos and journal. It was very easy and looked great, but I wanted to be able to do more. Years ago, I was a scrapbook addict. I had a library of traditional scrapbooks that represented hundreds of hours of work and even more wonderful memories. I LOVED them. When we lost our house to a fire 5 years ago I lost them. It is still hard to think about all that hard work, not to mention the pictures...gone! I decided I would never scrapbook again. I couldn't bear to collect all the "gear" again and start over. Eventually, everything started moving to digital and I started to see other possibilities. I'll just run through a couple of the reasons I decided to do it this way:
* Number one for me is that it is replaceable. In 10 years if I don't like the way it looks or the pages look worn, or the book is destroyed somehow, all I have to do it get online and order another one.
* Everything is on my computer. No mess and "gear" to deal with.
* I am able to make the pictures as big as I want. There were a couple of pictures that I made the entire 12 x 12 page.
* Creative Memories has a great photo storage system called Memory Manager.
* There was someone to help me. My consultant was so sweet to help me figure out what I was doing.

I am sure there are many other companies who have great software. I don't even pretend to know about any of that. I'm just sharing what worked for me. (I have no affiliation with Creative Memories. I don't want you to think that I'm trying to make money off of it.)

Has anyone printed their blog into a book? I would love to do that after Christmas. Let me know if you've used a particular company and were happy with them.