Sharon Thacker, February, 2007 Blog Book Finished and Printed

Better late than never!

I started keeping a blog towards the end of 2006. Blogs were the new big thing and everybody was starting one. I lived far from my family so it seemed like a great way to keep the family up-to-date along with record keeping for our little family. It was fun at first but like most things, it began to fizzle after a few years. Thankfully I had a conversation with my dear mother-in-law who said, "oh, I really love seeing pictures of the kids on the blog!" I didn't have a clue she was checking it. I'm so glad she made that comment because it gave me the motivation to keep it up and I am happy to say that almost all major events in my families history are recorded on the blog. I wish there were more casual everyday posts but I'll take what I have.

With the blessing of the blog comes the decision of what to do with it. I had over SEVEN YEARS worth of stuff. I have had friends who have printed there blogs using different companies but it seemed that the pictures were always tiny and there was a lot of wasted space. I even dabbled a little but didn't like the results when these companies would automatically convert my blog to book format. I needed more control.

Thanks to Prjoect(s)Connect I knew my days of excuses was over and I needed to figure it out. I decided to go with Blurb because they have there own design program (Book Smart) that you can download to your computer. The program lets you customize everything about your book!  I downloaded all the blog posts into the program covering a little over a years time (60 posts). I would upload them one at a time to the 2007 book and then spend the time tweaking them so the pictures and words looked right. The book ended with 50 pages so there are 1-2 posts per page. It took FOREVER at first. It took time to learn the program and I had to think back to my old yearbook days about page design. Thankfully the time I had to spend on each page started to decrease rapidly. I found that making myself do three blog posts a day kept my sanity and kept the project moving along. I was surprised that it was also difficult emotionally. I felt so much nostalgia for the times that have gone buy. One of the posts was about my sons Matthew's birth and he is now SEVEN.

Then the magical day came and the book came in the mail!! I love how it turned out. The cover color is a little more brown than I thought it would be but the pages look great! All the work paid off and now I know my future efforts will pay off as well because I have SIX more of these to make.

I have a good friend who has a great up-to-date family blog. After she posts her blog update to the Internet she imports it to blurb and makes any necessary changes and then she is done. She had her 2013 blog book on her coffee table the second week in January! I'm not quite there yet but wouldn't that be great?

My goal for March: No Yelling (after February does anybody have any sanity left?)

The back of the book.