We’re working on hanging our new pendant lights so we’ll be back to share those pics in the morning. In the meantime, let’s talk about something people ask about all the time: photo storage. Ever since seeing Katie Bower’s family photo book two summers ago, we’ve been drinking the photo book Kool-Aid – starting with our very first Family “Yearbook” that we made last summer (you can read about that here). And now that another year has wrapped up, well, let’s just say this arrived last week:
It’s one big glossy photo book stuffed to the gills with all of our family photos from 2011. Except the perk is that while it has around 600 photos, it’s only about a half-inch thick. Which is awesome for storage purposes (way less cumbersome than thick overstuffed photo albums that only hold 100-200 pics each). We ordered it through MyPublisher and thanks to a promotion they were running for free extra pages, we got to max out their page limit (100) and pay nothing extra. The discount (which has ended since we received our book – but they tend to pop up pretty frequently) actually saved us $79! And we’d easily pay $44.99 to print all those pics (not to mention having to buy a bunch of albums to put them in) so a photo book can actually end up being quite the deal. And no, they didn’t pay/perk us to write this, we just like our photo books. Haha.
We did our last “yearbook” way after the fact (like mid-2011), so it took a bit of backtracking to organize all of the photos. But for 2011 we planned ahead and kept all of our photos in one iPhoto album (which automatically kept them in chronological order for us), which is why it only took a couple of weeks into the new year to actually get this one done. So let’s take a quick look through all one hundred pages… just kidding. We’ll just take a peek at some of the highlights – like our opening page that we edited to include some text to summarize some of the, well, highlights from the past year. We think we’ll love looking back on it (and having a summary of the whole year on one page).
We also tried to group big events, holidays, and milestones – like the several spreads of Clara’s 1st birthday party. Check out how dark our kitchen was in the bottom left corner!
We also used the preset page designs to give some really special photos the layouts they deserved, like the ones Katie B. snapped when we visited the Bowers in June.
And since it’s not hard for these albums to turn into a Clara-fest, we paid special attention to making sure Burger got plenty of love as well. He even scored a few dedicated pages throughout (every album needs a good Burger-montage or three).
We also thought it was fun to put all of the photos we took for our Blogiversary “Day In The Life” post into the yearbook in order. That way in 15 years we can look back and sort of remember what a normal day was like way back when…
We nearly ran out of pages by the time we got to Christmas (darn 100 page limit!) but managed to make room. Heck, we even squeezed in a collage of a bunch of our holiday card outtakes. Yeah, we’re kind of into our kiddos.
So since we’re on a family yearbook high – especially now that our collection is two albums strong! – we’re already excited to make the 2012 version.
But because that’s not possible yet (unless we want it to be 3 pages long) we’re thinking that we may try to organize our old digital photos and make one or two books that’ll hold all of the photos from 2005 (when we met) to 2008 (right before our 2009 album picks up). Maybe we’ll work on those books once a certain manuscript is in the can.
Oh yeah, and here’s our favorite photo bomber again, just trying to get in on the action.
Anyone else making photo books or albums to document the past year? Or any other event or period of time? We’d love to hear other systems people have for organizing and displaying their family photos.
Suki L says
I did a super quick search to see if you’ve blogged about this question or not.. didn’t see anything, so I’m asking.
How do you organize your photos digitally? Do you keep the ones you use for your blog separate from the rest of them? I’ve tried a few different ways and nothing seems to feel intuitive for me.
YoungHouseLove says
We don’t have a flawless system, but we use iPhoto. All photos are organized in “Events” and we keep blog photos organized by projects (an event for all of the unsorted photos, then we flag the ones we like and create a new event of the final selects). For our family photos we keep just one big “Family 2011” or “Family 2012” event that contains hundreds of photos from the year. iPhoto automatically organizes events chronologically so it’s easy to just dump things into one big folder and know we can find anything by generally knowing what time of year we took the photo. It made making the photo book easy because all of my photos were in one folder.
-John
jeanine says
I make one every year for my mom for her birthday. She has 6 grandchildren and I make it month by month so you can see the kids grow. The kids love to see pictures of themselves and look through the books all the time. I also have a problem with the 100 page limit. With that many kids and 12 months it’s really hard to decide which pictures to cut out.
I have never used My Publisher and it’s nice to see they are good quality. I had a terrible experience with Blurb so now I use Shutterfly and I have been happy so far. I like that you can make your own custom page layouts.
Kristen says
I have made more than 10 photo albums over the years and love the way that I can fit so many photos into one book that looks great. Most of mine have been made with My Publisher (though i have used snapfish and shutterfly as well), because I thought it was the easiest program to use. Last year I discovered Adoramapix.com and now swear by them. The design tool is a little clunkier and they are more expensive, but, man, the quality is better, in my opinion. The pages are actually made of photo paper, so they have so much depth to them. They do have sales that pop up, so it may be worth a try sometime. They are now my go-to choice for photo books.
Shannah @ Just Us Four says
We do something very similar to this each year through Snapfish. We started it back when our daughter was born in 2007. Ours is 99% though and very little writing because I always run out of time :)
Hannah says
After seeing your first post & Katie’s posts about My Publisher, we actually decided to use them to create a book of our engagement photos. And, since they were running one of their BOGO 1/2 off sales, we ended up buying 2 of them and using one of them for our guest book at our wedding. Since the hubby & I met in high school, it was sort of our way of honoring that by having a guest book that sort of resembled a yearbook. :)
joyjoy says
I’m a huge photobook fan! I made a photobook to use as a guestbook at our wedding 4.5 years ago, and made photobooks of our wedding (in addition to the photographers album) and honeymoon, too. I do photobooks of all of our large/long vacations, and lately I’ve been trying to catch up by making family yearbooks as well. I normally use Blurb since it’s a bit cheaper than MyPublisher, but I’m really liking the layout options in your album! I may have to try them out next time.
Nevin says
I got a deal from craigslist as well. I have been holding on to some pieces of old slate roof tiles. They are sooo pretty – gray, yet with some brownish rust spots from the nails. My goal has been to use 1 or more to top off a small table. Well, I am in need of a a bigger wine rack and I scored one off of Craigslist. It retails for about $50 and I got it for $15!!!! Oh, the slate -well get this! The dimensions are just perfect for one to sit on top of the wine rack to serve as a place to chill wine and serve cheese & crackers. I am so excited that I was patient. love a great deal!
YoungHouseLove says
Wahooo! Love hearing all about everyone’s deals. Haha. I’m a dork.
xo,
s
Jenny says
I love this idea! I made a scrapbook with 2-3 photos of every month in 2011 and added comments to each one of them, like “Remember our friends came to visit?” and gave it as a gift to my boyfriend. He was overwhelmed and happy and I’m thinking about continuing this tradition in future years.
YoungHouseLove says
Aw, that’s sweet!
xo,
s
Jenna at Homeslice says
We’ve done photo books, but never for a whole year. I like the idea though. Maybe I’ll have to look into it.
LuLu says
Where oh WHERE did you find the time to do this??!!!!! Do you have any tips to offer in photo storage on the computer that *might* have streamlined the process a bit?
LuLu
p.s. You two (plus Clara and Burger!) are amazing. Your blog really makes my day.
YoungHouseLove says
Oh yes, as we mentioned in the post it was really helpful to keep a folder of all of our 2011 photos in iPhoto since it keeps them in chronological order automatically. Then we just dragged the pics we wanted in and popped them into pre-set layouts!
xo,
s
Robin says
This is such a wonderful idea! Thank you guys for sharing! I just spent a few minutes this morning brainstorming some ideas on how to organize photos and share them with family. Now I know exactly what I am going to do. Such awesome timing. You guys rock!!!
Sally G says
This is definitely the inspiration I needed to get ours done! :) Thanks!
Joanna says
Your books look great! I make photobooks with my travel pictures. So far I’ve made one for Paris and one for New York (http://playingaround101.wordpress.com/2011/06/13/the-books-are-here/). It’s totally addicting!
YoungHouseLove says
Love it!
xo,
s
Sarah says
Love the yearbook and thanks for sharing! Did you do a separate book for Clara’s first year? We have 2 kids and I was going to do separate books for them, but that now seems like way too much work. My current thinking is to do a baby book(s) for each and then do family books every year or so after.
What hangs me up is all the writing I’d like to do to go along with the photos. But that is time consuming (and hard to remember 1 year after the fact). I like your format with text in front and then just photos. Thanks again for the ideas!
YoungHouseLove says
We did a separate book for the grandparents of her first year with all of our weekly photos, but it didn’t have family pics or non-weekly pics from the project in it- it was just all the project pics together. That was fun to do and we’ll do that for the next kiddo(s) too!
xo,
s
Rebecca Ort says
I NEED to do this so bad!! My mom just downsized and moved….sent me all of the family photos..so fun to look at all of them now! So, if I don’t get all my images off my hard drive and put in some kind of album, years from now my children won’t have any photos to look back at!
I have visions of my 3 kiddos fighting over these photo albums when they are older! ;)
I also plan to put a DVD of all the movies from that “occasion” or “year” in the back of the photo album.
Amy says
I LOVE doing this! I actually used MyPublisher to create our wedding album. I preferred paying the $75 for the extra large album to the $1,000+ my photographer charged (as wonderful as she was)! My husband and I love to travel so we’ve started making photo albums for each big trip. We plan on making family albums when we have kids just like you do! Love the idea!
Nora says
so cool! love the photo on the cover.
Laura M says
I used MyPublisher to make my boyfriend & I a 4 Year Anniversary book! It has all the pictures I had of us from the moment we met up until when I needed to publish the book. Oddly, our 8 year anniversary is in two days, and while we’ve taken lots of pictures since, there’s very few from recently. Maybe this is something I should keep in mind for our (hopefully real soon) wedding & the future…
Nikki says
I LOVE this idea! I did a family yearbook photobook for 2010 and am working on 2011. Love Love Love My Publisher! They make it so easy to do this. I’m just hoping that they will offer their “free extra pages” again because I’m already on page 60 and I still have oct-dec to finish!!
Amy Jackson says
I also love photobooks. My mom did such a wonderful job of photo albums growing up and I just love looking through them every time I visit home. I decided a long time ago I would do that, but as we grew up my mom had a hard time finding albums that matched previous ones. When I got married I made my first photobook and decided that is what I will do for all of our families- and you’re right the best part is that they are so skinny, cheap, can be custom made, and hold so many more pictures than a normal album! I love it. Plus with shutterfly they store all your projects so if one were to ever get ruined I could just order another!
Danielle says
I look forward to making our family yearbook each year. We organize ours by years of wedded bliss (from our anniversary to the day before our next anniversary) instead of calendar year so we can look back on how our lives have changed and grown during the previous year of marriage (since it’s just us and the k9 kiddos).. Love it!
YoungHouseLove says
That’s sweet!
xo,
s
Angela N says
What a fantastic idea!! Might have to steal this one!
Cindy says
Are you sure there are not more hours in your day than the rest of us have?? You guys are amazingggg!!! How DO you do it all??
YoungHouseLove says
Haha- we just don’t sleep! Just kidding. John is a computer wiz, so he did the book about 1000 times faster than I ever could have!
xo,
s
katrina says
i used the exact same sale!! i made an album of our wedding/honeymoon/the parties, and am pretty happy with the way it turned out. i can’t wait until they have the same sale again…. i think i might steal your yearbook idea and make something up like that! it’s sooooo much easier than scrapbooking!
Kelsey says
The printed album is an especially fantastic idea for anyone planning a big move, not only are they space saving but they’re going to be cheaper to ship! I just moved back to the mainland from Hawaii and when trying to ship a couple pounds of photo albums I was told it would be three time the cost of shipping my books via media mail. If I had the time, I’d scan all my old photos and make books ASAP!
Kristi rediske says
I do a book of thanksgiving and Christmas every year and then when those holidays come around I get all the books down and when all the relatives arrive they look through them and we all have a fun time seeing how everyone has changed! So fun! It is worth every penny plus I am like you all and have so many photo albums- no room for more!
jo says
Love photo books! I love scrapbooking, but way too time intensive to get it the way I want and I do not have that time or patience. I’ve been making year books for the past few years. I keep an eye out for when the books are offered free! I’ve made them on both Shutterfly and Snapfish and was pleased with both. I keep our books simple grouping photos by the month and doing one or two pages per month.
Julie says
I have been reading your blog for a little while now and have never commented on anything before, but I have to rave about MyPublisher. I used them to make our wedding album, as well as photobooks for each of the major trips my husband and I have been on since we were married in 2008. I even started the last book while we were still on our trip. There was a lot of travel time so it was great to get a head start before we even came back home. You could start your 2012 book now and add to it as the year passes. It is always daunting to tackle that many pictures at once.
Katie says
Since he was three we’ve been keeping track of all the cute things our son says throughout the year and then for Christmas we create a photobook keepsake for our family and close friends. There’s always a Christmas promotion going on which means we save crazy amounts of money while shopping for half of our Christmas list in one fell swoop. We’ve used Shutterfly and Snapfish. Here’s an example: http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=2Qasm7lwzZu-A
YoungHouseLove says
Such a fun idea!
xo
s
Deborah says
Love your family books! I make a photo book for my room mother of her child througout the school year and present it to her as a thank you for all she does for my classroom. Always a big hit.
YoungHouseLove says
Such a cute idea!
xo
s
Emily says
I haven’t done this. YET. But my sister has a blog that purely talks bout her family and what is going on (as well as pictures that go with) and every year she makes a book that is all of her posts from that year. they are pretty amazing.
YoungHouseLove says
Aw that’s so much fun!
xo,
s
ann says
I just ordered an album from them too! I switched back from Picaboo because they offered a better price at MP but I was shocked by how many more options they had too. I find I’ve been doing a couple a year but maybe this year I’ll try and squeeze it all into one; I like how compact it is!
Rachel says
I first made a photobook for 2010 and am just putting the finishing touches to my 2011 book.
With the 2010 book I didn’t start it until the end of the year so what started as a fun project became a bit of a chore after endless evenings spent in front of the computer. With last year’s book I did a little bit every couple of months so has been much more fun and manageable. I use the iPhoto Photobook and I love the finished product!
This year I’ve set myself an extra photo challenge too – Project 365+1. I’m 24 days in and so far, so good. I’m planning to have a separate photobook for the 366 photos that I take for every day of the year.
MamaJ says
I am usually really good at keeping up with printing out photos and putting them into albums, but I really love the idea of these books for special things :) Thanks for sharing.
priscilla says
Hey this is so much fun to see your book!
My daughter has 2 year old twins, and has a blog with tons of photos about raising them. Each year she prints the full blog and photos on her yearbook. It’s great to read as she mentions cute little things they did, or now are saying.
Years from now we will be able to see not only the photos but the darling things they said.
Meredith R says
I love Shutterfly! The storage is free and they promise never to delete your photos…no perks for me either, I’m just a very happy customer :)
Between my husband and I we have 4 cameras (2 cell phones, 1 point & shoot, and 1 DSLR) and a FlipHD video (we named it Flippy ;). I make sure all media is eventually saved on our external hard drive, and shop Shutterfly sales to make photobooks. My last purchase was unreal, between 2 coupons and a sale I saved $40 on a $60 order!
We (who am I kidding, it’s all me!) organize chronologically and tend to buy an album per event. So a family vacation is its own album, our first year in our house will be an album, and our puppy’s first year is a separate album. That way I get to add little notes and details about what made that photo special and it helps to relive memory. However, I love your mostly text-free album! I may have to try that :)
Karen says
I love My Publisher, and have used it twice. I made wedding albums which we gave to our parents (and kept one for ourselves). I also created a photo journal from a 4 month long humanitarian trip I was part of a few years ago. Actually used text pages for the content of my actual journal, with photo pages to go along with it. Came out amazing! Love your idea about family yearbooks. That’s something I’m sure we’ll do once we have kids!
Megan says
I have one that should be arriving any day! I have been focusing on creating books for my daughter as she ages but I really have been thinking about doing general family “yearbook” style stuff too. Maybe I’ll start with 2012 and work backwards… 2011 sucked and I’d rather not live through that mess again right now (my brother passed away from cancer). My mom made a book too recently of family recipes from her step-mom and gave it to her sisters. It included scanned copies of all the hand written recipes their step-mom collected over the years. And I’ve made one for my parents’ 25th anniversary years ago that kind of summed up their time together.
Taylor Parrish says
can you give more detail on how you organize? do you have a separate iphoto folder for specific year book photos? clearly you don’t keep all of your pictures for an entire year in one folder right?
YoungHouseLove says
Yup, one folder with all the pics in it! They’re automatically chronological, so we just go through the folder (it had something like 1200 pics in it) and dragged all of our favorites into the my publisher template in that order and just dropped them in!
xo
s
Malissa M says
Ohh that turned out fabulous! Such a cute family you have. I print off my family blog at the end of the year through Blurb for our yearly family journal. I love looking back and reading all the stories and seeing how much my kiddos have grown (and Blurb’s quality is awesome!)But lately I’ve been thinking about how the kids won’t have anything to take with them when they leave the house (those blog books are MINE baby! :-)) so I’m going to make them each a photo album with “real” printed pictures. I may even do a simple version of the Project Life albums that way I can include little notes to them about what’s on the page. Key word simple though… we’re about a month away from welcoming baby # FOUR (all under the age of 7 – ahh!)so I’m sure I won’t have time for anything to time consuming. Wish me luck! haha
YoungHouseLove says
Hah- lots of luck! You can do it!
xo,
s
Malissa M says
P.S. If anyone is curious how the Blurb blog books look printed… I have some pictures on my blog. :-)
Jessica @ Stay at Home-ista says
I make photo books for all (six!) grandparents and the two great grandparents. It’s the best way for the those far away to be able to show off the cute kiddos to their friends, who might not be so tech savvy. At first I tried to personalize each album with pics specific to that grandparent, but it’s just too hard, so they all get the same one now.
With two kids in preschool I find that they so often need a “hard copy” of a photo, that just printing them out, and putting them in standard slide-in albums is still worthwhile.
Stephanie says
LOVE MyPublisher. And that free pages deal is a steal! Can’t beat it. I do two books for each year–one for Jan-June, one for July-Aug. I used to be able to do one book a year, but now with three daughters…well, there’s just too many pictures to cram into one book.
Have you guys tried out their mini-books? During the last MP sale, those mini books were only 75 cents. At that price, I couldn’t pass up making some for my kids. They are great fun for kids and grandparents and party favors.
YoungHouseLove says
Wow- that’s awesome! What a steal.
xo,
s
Kasia R. says
What an absolutely gorgeous idea! Love it, and you’re blog! Very inspiring ideas!!!! Thank u for sharing!!!
Lindsey says
I love your photo book, too cute! Despite working in a scrapbooking/photo memories store, I too am drinking the photo book Kool-Aid. Since my grandparents couldn’t travel to attend my wedding in September, I designed a book so they could “live” our special day. When I saw how inexpensive it was going to be ( I did it through Apple/iPhoto), I got hooked! Watch out past 8 years worth of photos, here I come!
The Mrs @ Success Along the Weigh says
Man, we just got our 2011 photobook today and it looks rather wimpy next to yours! I just chose the 5×7 version because we want something small and compact to hit the highpoints. We’re super cramped for space so I don’t even know that we could bust it out yearbook style. But once I have a closet to dedicate to storing those kinds of things, watch out!
JenWoodhouse.com says
Of all the ‘baby books’ you can buy at the bookstore, I couldn’t find one I really liked. Besides, it meant having to handwrite in them, and 1) I abhor my handwriting and 2) I’m such a perfectionist, I’d buy another book because I’d most likely mess up somewhere…
It’s taken me over a year to complete, but I’m over the moon about Evie’s baby book! Here it is, in all it’s glory!
http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/invited/2357588/fd5794ab6ff54576952eec7a76e894be7cc382dc
I plan on doing this every year, as we take photos throughout the year, birthdays, celebrations, vacations, etc. and compiling them into a yearbook. So much nicer than having to print out pictures and stick them in an album.
YoungHouseLove says
Amazing!!! What a lucky gal.
xo,
s
Kari says
Love the idea of a family “yearbook”! Have you thought of ordering a second set to put aside for Clara to take with her one day when she’s all grown up? would be a great addition to the time capsule!
YoungHouseLove says
That’s definitely a sweet idea! My Publisher saves the books so if we want to go back and reprint it they have it. Love that!
xo,
s
Ashley @ DesignBuildLove says
have totally been thinking about doing this, but wasn’t sure what company I’d use!!! So glad you guys shared yours! LOVE them!
Shannon says
We’ve been making a yearbook for the last 5 years as a Christmas gift for our families (it started when we moved away so they could see what our new lives were like), and now everyone looks forward to it! We use Blurb because we needed a really economical option and they also have great quality. I absolutely love being able to go back through them and see everything we did and everywhere we went. Going through the year’s photos is probably one of my favorite times of the year because it reminds me of so much stuff that happened that I already forgot! Glad to see others are doing this as well.
snosie says
Sherry, I can’t BELIEVE you don’t like grouting. It’s great impact for so little time… (and a sore hand/wrist!) I just did 2/3 of my bathroom (before I ran out, it was a ‘oh I have this tub of grout, let’s see if I can grout the floor, oh now I better use all I’ve got and get as far as I can). Need more tomorrow, and then I’ll finish the visible areas! It’ll look awesome – no more random shallows and deep old grout, but uniform white grout between each teeny tiny tile!
YoungHouseLove says
It’s true, the difference is really amazing! Congrats on you hard grouting work!
xo,
s