Peek-a-boo!

I never showed you the photo books I made earlier this summer, did I? Fresh from our annual Ocean City trip, Flickr’s “Print & Create” tab sucked me in and forced me to have an album of our adventure printed and delivered to my doorstep. I was powerless to resist, I tell you!

It was kind of a rush seeing my photos in print – I rarely have printed anything since switching to digital when Eamonn was an infant – and before I knew it, I was having another book made.  This time a baby book for Eamonn.  Yes, I know the poor boy is seven already, I just never made the time to do it before.

Anyway, those two books whet my appetite and got me thinking about all of the other albums that would be fun to print: family photos (an album for every year since going digital), my project 365, favorite blog photos…

I like the two books I got through Snapfish via Flickr just fine, but I recently came across Picaboo, which kind of blew me away a little bit.  Want to see a few pages from the book I ordered from them last week?  It is here already!

Unlike the other online photo processors, Picaboo has software that you download in order to create your book.  I like this a lot better than the online interfaces I’ve used elsewhere.  It’s nice to work locally, I think, and speedier.  Plus, it seems easier to take your time and do it in bits and pieces – a few pages today, a few pages tomorrow.  It’s nice not to have to do it all in one sitting.

I was curious to see how some of my favorite blog photos from this year looked when blown up to 8×10, so for this book, I filled each page with a single large photo.

If I had wanted to, though, I could have fit several photos on a page, and arranged them in any number of ways.  The software has very few limits in terms of layout.

It all strikes me as so very versatile, with something for all skill levels (and levels of patience!)

I am so thrilled to have this book full of some of my favorite blog photos from the past year!  And here’s the coolest part: it was free.  Yep.  Picaboo has a coupon right now for a free 20-page photo book.  You do still have to pay shipping, but even so, it feels like a bargain.

I’m a happy customer, and I definitely plan to make more books, starting with a family album for 2009.  I’d really like to make one for every year since we went digital, but I plan to work backwards and take my time with that.

By the way, the coupon expires on August 31st, which is less than a week away, so if you think you might like to make a photo book, you should probably hightail it over there.

And on a completely unrelated note, thanks for sharing my van experience with me yesterday.  I’m happy to report it was only the glass of the window that was affected, and I’ve already had it replaced.  Whew.  I’m out a few hundred dollars, but we’re all safe and sound, and no longer have a precarious branch hanging overhead!