Monday, April 23, 2012

The Day It Came.

4.07.12

It came.

I was laying in bed getting ready to take a nap while the baby girl snoozed and the husband mowed, since I was scheduled to maybe work tonight {signed up for overtime}, when the husband came in and handed it to me.

The book. The blog book. It was finally here.

I ripped it open so quickly I thought I might rip it open. And there it was. All 276 pages of it. Our journey. Our Story. Words upon words. Pictures. Memories of our past. From January 2010-June 2011.
It was here.

It felt so... untouched. So clean. New. The pages so perfect. Begging for me to skim through them. Just asking for me to read it.

And I did, and I loved it, and I think I may or may have not fallen on my pillows with the book in hand staring at he ceiling like I just met the love of my life.
In the form of a book.

So I layed there for a while and skimmed the pages. Wondering why it took me so long to finally do this.

It was much more exciting than I anticipated it being. I knew I would be happy to have it, but I just hadn't realize how happy.

The site that I used was blog2print. I actually started using BLURB when I was designing my blog book, but after spending countless hours on it and realizing that I was only a fraction of the way through, I realized that I would never get this thing printed at the rate that I was going.
So I browsed through blog2print. I had issues with the loading {probably because my blog book was so big}, and I had to try multiple dates in order to finally settle down with January2010-January2011. It had the capability of being more than the 276 pages...  however, it said that I had reached my max pictures {1,500} for one book.

Which is okay. Because I plan on making book number 2. And three. And so forth.

The only other issue that I ran into was that when I was deciding on which dates to put in the book, I ended up with having 4 books. I finally settled on my final product, did the editing touches {front page, back page} and then clicked to purchase.

Unfortuanately, I clicked the wrong one to purchase and didn't even realize it.

The only difference though would be that my front cover and back cover would have looked differently. Otherwise, it is the exact same.
And? I'm happy with it. More than happy with it.

I knew that my blog meant a lot to me. I knew that I have always been passionate about it for multiple reasons. One of those reasons being to document our story and have a memory book of our lives. But I never realized how important it would mean to me now. More than ever. Now that I have it in my hands.

The thought of sharing this with my children when they grow up, and then my grandchildren.... well that makes me all sorts of happy inside. Gets me teary just thinking about it.

And I can't believe that at one point I was afraid to document our lives. Share the little details that maybe others could care less about.
But at the end of the day? This book is for me. 
My family.
And our future.

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Book details:  I used blog2print.com. The pictures are black and white, but the book is in color. My book is the standard portrait (8.5x11) hardcover. I went through my previous blog posts and deleted those that did not pertain to my family and things I did not particularly want in my book {you can also do this on the website without deleting your posts... I however did it a different way. Both work}. The maximum per book for pictures is 1500. I post a lot of pictures. If you want it perfect, I suggest sitting down and editing each page... however, I did not want it perfect... I wanted it just the way it was naturally, and to me its perfect that way. You can write a dedication/about this book on the website... it's pretty neat. I plan on making ten million more. AKA 10+.

34 comments:

  1. I'm so glad to hear that you are happy with Blog2Print. I also started one on Blurb but I quit after about 10 posts because it was taking SO LONG! I couldn't decide what to do instead but now that I see how much you love yours I'm definitely doing Blog2Print. Yay! :)

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  2. love love love this!! I want to see it in person!!

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  3. Thats awesome! What a great idea!! It will be so fun to have that book for the rest of your life:)

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  4. I've been wanting to do this for all of Hadley's post and make that her baby book. May I ask how much it cost?

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  5. I started my blog book on blog2print as well but I haven't hit that purchase button yet. This kind of motivates me to do so.

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  6. Love love love! I cannot wait to do this with opmy blog!

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  7. This is such a fabulous idea! I am seriously considering it myself! Thanks for the idea!

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  8. I've always wanted to do this too! Maybe I will now. Can I ask you how much it cost?

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  9. So cute! My husband used a site called lulu.com, and I love them. It did take him a lot of work to transfer the blogs to the right format, but he is also a bit of a perfectionist. It did end up being cheaper than blog2print though which was nice. The books are so much fun. Just wait until your kids start flipping thru them in excitement over remembering the events. Reminds you why you blog in the first place.

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  10. This is such an awesome idea! I've only just started my blog but I will definitely do this in the future! What a wonderful way to store memories! x

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  11. What a great idea! I'm going to have to do this myself!

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  12. Very cool! I'm glad you posted this, I've heard of websites that will print blogs to books, but I wasn't sure what people thought of them. :) Thanks. Now I seriously want to do this.

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  13. Awesome! I do this with my blog too and I LOVE it! I didn't even know it would let you do that many pages. I have just done mine a little bit at a time. I kinda wish I would have done a bigger time span because now I have like 5 books! ha BUT I do it that way because then my total is never super high. I did mine in color but with a soft cover and it turned out great! I was surprised at how easy it was! Ive never tried deleting any posts, but I am sure thats pretty simple too. For those asking, I think the hard cover is $25? My soft cover was like $15 I think, but thats just for 20 pages I believe. Its so many cents a page after that. I never do more than 100 pages or so and its usually in the $30 range. I really dont think thats too bad! I just do one whenever I have some extra cash :) Thanks for sharing! Glad I am not the only one who does these!

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  14. What a GREAT idea!! I can't wait to do this one day with my own blog! Thanks for sharing!

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  15. If I blogged about anything other than pointless crap, I'd totally do this too! :)

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  16. What a great idea! Never heard of this before. Thanks :)

    -Amy
    http://theblankpagesblog.blogspot.com/

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  17. This is awesome Becky! I was totally hoping you'd post the details and what site you used because I would like to do the same thing for our family. My blog is basically a scrapbook (kind of fluffy, I know!) but I'd love to have it in print too!

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  18. I'm glad you posted about this!! It is such a great idea, I never thought about doing something like this until seeing your original post!! Something I DEF need to look into!! :)

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  19. LOVE IT!!!

    I am so going to do that! What a great way to keep memories for the kids!

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  20. I've wanted to do one also but just haven't figured the right dates to include. I have a question for you though - I know you have watermarks on most/all of your pictures. Was there a way to get the watermark off for the book or did they transfer over too? I just recently started using a watermark on my blog but I'm not sure if I want the pictures showing up with it in the book. Thanks!

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  21. This is so amazing! I have never heard of a blog book and I am soooooooooooooo making one. OMG! Thank you for sharing this!!!!

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  22. I've never even heard of this! I love it! Something you can have, physically, forever. Thanks for sharing Becky :)

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  23. WOW! Becky that is AMAZING. Seriously the best little book I've ever heard of. What a special thing to look back on. Goodness your family is stinking lucky to have you :) Thanks for sharing and thanks for sharing your life! I'm always rushing to see what is next. True story.

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  24. This is awesome!! Question though...did you re-upload your pictures without your watermark?

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  25. Whoever 'invented' the blog book is a genius!

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  26. I did a 365 photo project back in 2008 and I had grand plans to make it into a blog book, but once I started on blurb, I got so discouraged. This definitely is making reconsider doing blog books of my regular blog and that one, which I have now privatized!

    I found your blog via Ashley at Happiness Is and I hope you don't mind if I continue checking out your blog! :)

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  27. Ive been wanting to do this for some time but just havent done it for whatever reason. This makes me really want to sit down and do it before our little girl turns 2 next month.

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  28. SOSOSOSO AWESOME! How have I never heard of this before!?

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  29. I have wanted to make my blog into a book SOOOO bad. Yours is AWESOME. I am going to do this.

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  30. Just a word to the wise: I have also used Blog2Print. The first two books I got were great. However, I recently received two more books in which the saturation of the pictures were so great that most of the pictures were very dark and, in some cases, almost black. Since my blog is a gardening one, with pictures of flowers, it is necessary to have a correct color saturation. Upon receipt of the book, I notified them--even sent pictures of the original pictures and of the ones in the books. They are not standing behind their product and will not reprint them for me. I also waited 3 weeks for their decision, after many unanswered emails and phone calls. I am very unhappy with them. I will not be a returning customer. I also want others to know that they will not stand by their product in case of printer error. I checked my book out with a local printer and their is no reason for the great saturation in the printing. I feel it was $200 total wated money--I have to get them printed off again--but be assured, it will not be with Blog2Print!

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