Up to my eyeballs in memories

After lunch Saturday, I went over to my bff's, Carrie, to help her with a project she's working on. Her son, Tyler, is graduating from high school this year. She wants to put together a book for him from birth to age 18.

Carrie & her mom have been working on getting pics together & figuring out how old he was in each one. It is a major undertaking. They have 17 ziploc bags labeled 0-17/18. They put each pic in the appropriate bag. Saturday evening we went through all the bags & placed them in the order she wants them to be in the book. His birthday is in February, so each 'year' is going to start with a picture of him & his birthday cake. (And Carrie's mom is a major picture takin' kinda lady. So they have a pic every year of him with his cake...except 1.... & trust me - that year is haunting her as we speak!) But I told them they'd done a pretty darn good job with all the different pics they did have!

We finished putting the pics in order Saturday night. (Starting with his birthday pic, then springy/summery stuff, then fall, then Christmas... Carrie's kooky like that!) And she needs my help with the pesky computer stuff. So yesterday I went over to start the tedious task of scanning each & every one into her computer. We scanned up until age 8 because her mom has some of her pics on discs after age 9, so we wanted to wait to see what she had before we scanned anymore.

So here's where the fun part comes in. It took about 2 hours to scan 8 years of his life (of course if all your pics are in digital format - that parts already done for ya!) And then I wanted to go online & look at the different websites that you can upload them to to make the books. Just to get an idea of what we were getting into. Carrie had seen books her cousins wife had done & really liked them. They were from picaboo.com. You can choose soft back or hard back in different sizes. The pages are glossy too. If anyone has ever seen Alicia's blog books or her books from snapfish - same basic concept...

So we went there first to look at the prices & different layouts. And what I like about it is that it's not web-based. You actually download an application to your computer. Then you select the way you want the page to look with the pics. Like if you have 6 pics to a page - you have like forty thousand choices of ways to lay out them out. If you want words along with the pics - there are layouts for that too! And I was like, "This is gonna take us forever because there are too many choices!" But once we got our groove down, it went pretty fast. And it was super easy once I got my bearings & figured out how to do it. It's as simple as dragging & dropping...

We had been working at that computer for 5 hours. We got all the way up to age 4 put into the book. So we decided that we needed to wrap it up. But then we wanted to go & look at some backgrounds for a few pages. And THAT'S what makes the book awesome! You can go online & find free ones & just drap & drop them onto the page! And it hit me...duh! This is what I need to do instead of those silly scrapbooks. Because I can't ever decide what to put where. And the beauty about the picaboo software is that it does it FOR you! Ahhh, be still my heart!

And yes, they cost moo-lah, but if you think about all the little cutsie things you need for the scrapbook, it may just even out. PLUS, I don't have to cut & glue or use my brain! Perfect!!

After we got backgrounds added up to age 1, we stopped & called it a night. I know it sounds dumb, but sitting at a computer for all that time really wears ya down! And we are hella excited about how cute it looks with the backgrounds so far! I really think it's gonna look great & it will be something he can keep forever!

And I've been inspired to work on doing either our cruise that I was gonna scrapbook & started on but haven't finished yet - OR doing one for our trip to Vegas in 2005. Just to see what I can come up with & see how much it costs. (At one time I was gonna copy-cat Alicia & do a 'blog book'. But it was gonna cost like $100 just for a year! Hhmmm, think it's 'cuz I don't know how to keep stuff short & sweet?! PLUS - her blog is kinda like baby books for her kids. My blog? Not so much... mine is more of the entertainment variety. But I could totally take pics I've been taking for the blog & put them together in a book.) Eh, who knows?! I'll keep ya posted! :)