Blurb

I just received my NEW favorite book in the mail. It is my Blog Book! I followed my little sister's lead and printed my blog into a book.

I love that my blog serves as a journal and scrapbook for our family. It is my feeble attempt at "family history" or record keeping for myself and our family. But I got to thinking about -- will my kids ever sit down and read what I have written on my blog? Will they look at the pictures and remember the stories if they are just hidden deep in the archives of cyberspace? I figured, no. So I decided to make it into something tangible and accessible to my husband, kids, and myself. And someday maybe the grandkids and future posterity will enjoy looking at it.

Technical info -- in case you are considering doing this -- (otherwise skip this paragraph). I used the company Blurb. They have a process called "Slurping" that takes your blog information and slurps it into their book format. Just like slurping in real life it is fast, but messy. It still required A LOT of work to get it how I wanted it to look. It pulls in all the words and pictures, but I had to resize nearly all the pictures (they were TINY) and play with the placement and font size, etc. It isn't beautiful or perfect (I kind of rushed it to get a 20% off deal) but I am happy with the final outcome, for the most part. The interface is a pain to work with at first, but once you got used to it, it was okay. I did years 2007 (when I began my blog) to 2010 and it was 140 pages long. It cost a little under $50. I think that is very reasonable.

And so far so good. The kids have been pouring over the book. Renae is using it as her daily silent reading. The little kids love to have me read to them from it. My only regret is that I didn't start blogging in 2000 when I first had kids -- but I had never heard of blogging. Sigh,what can you do? Maybe someday I could go back and just use old photos (they would have to be scanned in -- that was pre-digital camera days for me) and tell the stories that go with the photos. That can be a project for when all my kids are in school in a few years. Maybe.