As you can tell, I got way behind on blogging. The start of football season, school, and just the overall care and feeding of 3 kids has severely limited my "free time" and sometimes staring at a computer after a good 8-9 hours in front of it is just less than I can handle. I also committed myself to a new scrapbooking goal. Instead of editing and cropping photos mostly for use on the blog, I thought my kids would appreciate an actual photo album. So far, we have exactly 6 100-page digital photo books chronicling Ryan's first 2.5 years. And that's it. Not one book with Cohen in it, not to mention Avonlea. Typical first child syndrome, right? It also had to do with the fact that the online company I'd been using to store all my photos and make books (whenever they had a flat-rate sale), Winkflash, went out of business for a while and when they finally got bought out, a lot wasn't the same and the book-making section was probably worse, instead of better.
I spent a long time "fishing" for the best site to commit to based on cost, sale patterns, ease of use, and sometimes even just simplicity of use (less is more sometimes). I finally landed on Snapfish. One of my main reasons is that you can import directly from flickr, which is where I decided to back up all my photos and videos. I am manually uploading folders by months from my computer but another nice feature is that you can download the app and it will auto-sync the stuff on your phone so in case something happens to your phone, all your un-downloaded photos won't be lost. Snapfish also has a 50% off sale fairly often, which is when I plan to buy books. You can also get a 10% cash-back rebate from ebates. (If you're not on ebates, you totally should be.) I've already ordered my first book and I'd say the quality is decent--good enough for kids albums but probably wouldn't do wedding photos. But, it's mostly due to all of my photos being taken with my phone.
Here's my plan:1 8x10 book per kid per year that they will receive at Christmas. Since my kids were all born in the fall, it works out that they'll get the year starting from their birthday up to right before their next birthday. So, "the year I was 2", for example. I am hoping it will be a fun thing to open at home on Christmas morning and that we can spend time reflecting on the past year. It will also hopefully keep me motivated throughout the year to get at least part of it done over the summer so I just have to fill in the last few months before ordering for Christmas. So far, I have Cohen's book complete and received and Ryan's just needs 1 more month added. Avonlea's isn't started and I think hers will be the longest because the 1st year has so many picture taking opportunities.
Anyway, this is a really long way for me to say that I'm going to be a little more sparse on the blog and hopefully spend that time on the photo books. If you know me in real life, you can follow me on instagram @cobo2000 (I won't accept your friend request if I don't know you personally) or you can find me on facebook (also keep to people I know in real life). I will try to do some updates here as it really helps me keep track of what my kids were up to at different ages and I personally enjoy reading it. But, it might just be a little less detailed, etc. Thanks for understanding!
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