Memory books

Amanda over at Soulemama has posted today about the memory book she's had made out of her blog. For those of you who keep track of your lives via a blog this is a GREAT idea. She used a company called Blurb for her project. They have a tool that sucks the content out of your blog, lets you adjust layout, cover and posts, and then they produce a bound version for your coffee table.

I'd seen this at a conference last summer, and at the time I wasn't super impressed with the print quality, but from Amanda's post it looks like they've improved since then. Do check out her post to see for yourself, she's included pictures.

I've been planning to do the same thing for my blogaversary (a ways off!), but now I'm thinking I might print them quarterly, or every x100 posts just because I like schedules (even if I don't always keep to them).

I have a bunch of projects I'd love to do with web based tools, but I don't have the time or funds for them so I figure I'll share them here. If you try 'em out, let me know who it goes -- I'd love to see pictures!

• I've been wanting to do a photo album by school year for each of my children. A personal yearbook, if you will. Now that we are planning to leave the Bay Area and all their friends, I think this will be an extra special way to capture the memories. I prefer using Ofoto, to Flickr's partners for this sort of thing because the paper and print quality is so much better.

• After I printed my Moo cards it was immediately obvious to me that I should make a memory game out of them. I can imagine doing this with children's artwork, pictures of friends, family, clip art... too many possibilities!

• I would love to take the "best" of my children's work by school year and make a book of it. We've used Lulu.com to self-publish Tomas' book. It's a simple process: scan, save as PDF, upload. Easy peasy.

• My daughter has taken to writing and illustrating her own stories. They'd be another great candidate for my Lulu publishing antics -- and easy gifts to prepare for eager grandparents.

Comments

[anna]

I did this for my parents and in-laws for Christmas. I pulled out entries about the kids and added some photos. We used lulu.com for publishing the books also so there was no simple web-based software. The quality of the previews is horrible, but the books themselves are fantastic.