My two new Shutterfly books unveiled

I've been wanting to post photos of the Shutterfly books that I did for Christmas this year.  The primary objective of these books was to share with my in-laws the ancestor photographs I have collected over the years. I then decided that the pictures would mean a lot more if there could be a little history for each of the ancestors.  I also decided to look online for more photos and really hit a bonanza at dupinternational.com for both photos and histories.  I mean I had a lo of both categories to begin with but I found even more.  It was great.  Anyway, it took me a long time (relatively speaking and no pun intended) to figure out how to lay out the different generations so as not to lose the reader as I moved couple to couple along the pedigree chart.  I assigned each ancestor couple a number on a graph at the beginning of the books and put that same number on the beginning page for each couple.  I also gave each couple a different color of page background.

Here is a photo of one of the books:

Here is the layout for the first page for ancestor couple #2, below.

Here is a shot of one layout for ancestor couple #8, below.

I wrote or copied history information, up to one page for each person for whom I had a picture.  I even included things like this cool headstone.

I also included some source pages--not really doing official bibliography per se but giving enough information so that a person would know where I found the pictures or information, see below to the source pages.

Here is the other book, below.

Here is couple #2 in this book.

I just loved some of the cool pictures, particularly these, below.

Because my mother-in-law's favorite color is blue, I alternated the different ancestor pages in her book between this color (that I inadvertently used for all three sample photos) and other, darker colors of blue.

If I had the time, I could blather on for many more cyber lines about these books.  I am currently, but at a much slower pace, putting together similar books, one about my mother's line and one about my father's line, with no particular end date in mind, but in the hopes of doing them for my children.  

The problem with my parents' books is I have too many pictures so the picture layout (where I currently am in the book process) is all about leaving photos out and winnowing things down.  And for the ancestors for whom there are almost no pictures, it is a very glaring lack when compared to the other pages.  Sigh.  Plus, for my father's book, it doesn't take many generations back on one side for there to be absolutely nothing since they were immigrants to the USA.  

One issue I've wondered about since printing these is whether I should have included the two-page histories per ancestor couple for those ancestors WITHOUT photographs but for whom I had some historical information.  In my mind, these books were all about sharing pictures and then enhancing the pictures with text.  However, now that I have taken a breath, I'm wondering if I shouldn't have tried to be more thorough, at least as to the fifth generation back from my in-laws, where I had some but not all the pictures of those ancestors.

It is past my bedtime and I have to close.  Good night.