Let’s talk about how we preserve our memories and photos for a quick second.  I remember when I was a kid how excited I was to look through my mom and dad’s old photo albums.  My mom was young with long hair.  Wait, scratch that long hair part… that was my dad.  But I remember looking back at photos of them camping and hanging out with their friends.  I loved it.

Now we all have digital photographs.  What in the world will my kids grab off the shelf to look at?  I do have a ton of scrapbooks from the past, which you will hear about in one second.  But seriously!  This is something that bothers me a little!  Are our children going to say, “Hey Mom, where is your old external hard drive?  I want to browse through a few files of photos from when you were younger!”  Doubtful.  The only reason I looked through my mom’s old photos was because the albums were there.  It makes me sad that things like photographs and memories have all gone digital.

As I just mentioned, I was a scrapbooker.  I think I can say that I have exceeded my scrapbooking days.  I used to be very into the hobby of cutting card stock and using fun stickers to display my photos in an album that eventually became super fat and could barely close.  Every vacation I would take, I would grab odds and ends that would look cute or have just the right touch for my scrapbook.  I did them annually, and for certain events like vacations or graduations.  I loved it. The cost didn’t really matter to me.  I don’t think I ever really realized how expensive that hobby was.  Scrapbooking was definitely my creative outlet for many, many year.

But now I have a ton of scrapbooks on my bookshelf that are simply collecting dust.  I will occasionally look through them, smile, and reminisce, but these albums are big and bulky.  They take up tons of space!  If only they were thinner and smaller I think having several shelves of them wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

Which brings me to my next discovery.  It’s not new, by any means.  I have had friends making these books for years.  Actually my Swiss family has been really good about creating one for every vacation or event they go on.  I just created my first digit (iphoto) album!  And I love it!  I decided I wanted to make an album to summarize the year 2010.  Since I am a Mac User and I love iphoto, it was so incredibly simple.

In the end my book was well over the allotted 20 pages but with the number of photos I take in one year, there is no way I could summarize 2010 in just 20 pages!  My page count wrapped up at 46.  The finished, hard back, large book, including shipping, was about $60 (through Apple).  I know it is probably less expensive through other companies, but it was so easy to use iphoto since all of my pictures were already there.

When I first finished my photo book, before ordering it, I was a little set back about the price.  $60 is a lot to display photos isn’t it?!  Then I started to ponder how much scrapbooking actually cost me.  The album?  Probably $15-ish.  Each colorful background page?  About 50 to 95 cents each.  Printing the photos?  Maybe 10-ish cents each.  All the extra odds and ends that went into the book?  Goodness… beats me.  Oh, and don’t forget the plastic page covers that you put the pages in!  It adds up just as quick!

The front cover of my book.

So simple!  You just click how many photos are on the page and it gives you several different layout options!

So if you are anything like me, and you LOVE to be creative, you don’t have the time or space to do the scrapbooking anymore, but you still want a way to display your photos… I highly recommend you check this out.  If you don’t use iphoto, check out shutterfly.  I always get coupons in my email box from them!

Next year I think I am going to try to create a calendar with iphoto.  Has anyone ever done this?  I am leaving tomorrow for my vacation in Charleston, SC.  We are doing a photo tour of the city, so maybe when I get home I will have to create a book just for this vacation!!