Christmas book

 Here is the Christmas book. The cover's red color is more vibrant in person than I achieved in this picture but here it is nonetheless.  Every element on every page was constructed/designed, from page color to embellishments, by me using the custom mode on Shutterfly.

 Here is an example of Christmas letters.
Left, I typed out the letter so as not to use a photo of the ugly stationary I used that year (well the stationary was cute, but the ink from the printer had gone a weird pink over time) and I found a picture of B and me from that year.  

Right, I composed a letter from information from my journal and typed it directly in the book because I probably sent cards that year and not a letter. I found the only picture I could find of B and me from that year (my eyes are closed--that is why I made it so small).

 Here is a cute page to show the use of a letter that I actually sent out (scanned the letter, uploaded it, cropped it). The picture I sent out that year was copyrighted as was the paper.
So I used other pictures from that year in the book and I cropped the photo of the letter to leave out the copyrighted designs on the paper. 

 Here is an example of a picture AND the letter we actually sent out one year.
That would have been so slick to put the book together speedily if I had these for all of the years (non-copyrighted photos and stationary).

I alternated backgrounds: blue, green, red and brown.  Here is an example of a red background.

Here is an example of a green page and it matched perfectly the picture card and letter that we sent out that year (of course it did--I matched every element on this page).

This double-page spread has the letter and picture that we actually sent out that year, with candy cane book embellishments. This was the "retirement" year and this photo was used with the photographer's permission.

This is another example of a red page--there were varying shades of green and red.  The blue pages had different backgrounds and the brown was just brown.

And here is the end of the book . . . to be continued in another twenty years.

My newest book--Twenty Years of Christmas

Why do I always feel a little apologetic about the topics I write about on MY OWN BLOG?  I haven't figured that one out, yet.  All it takes is a bout of stomach flu and a lot of my own company to make me a little reflective.

Yesterday, on this very blog, I "shared" my newest Shutterfly book, "Twenty Years of Christmas: 1990-2010," which is a compilation of all our Christmas letters and pictures for the past twenty years. A year ago, when I realized (a) that I'd been doing the holiday letter/picture thing for about twenty years and (b) that I had saved most of them for the kids (at least since the time they'd been born) but had not saved any for me, I gathered them all together in a binder for me. That took some time--finding other Christmas-themed letterheads and retyping and printing letters, and finding, scanning and printing pictures.  Some years, there was no letter so I made one up from my journal entries and some years there was no picture, so I gleaned pictures from my albums to slot in there. I even had a year or two where I sent no letter and no picture. So gathering all those things together was last year's project--to compile them in one place for my perusal.

When I had the pictures and letters in plastic sleeves and in a binder, I pondered whether to scrapbook the photos and just couldn't bring myself to scavenge around for all the paper products necessary and do all the physical scrapbooking. Just. Couldn't. Do. It.  Then, of course, the Shutterfly bug took over and I thought how much slicker and smaller and tidier a Shutterfly book would be.  I had a $20 coupon from the two books I did at Christmas and could see that just scanning and uploading an already-collected group of things would be fairly quick.

One thing that slowed me down was being copyright conscious.  I noticed as I scanned that some papers (on which the letters were printed) were copyrighted.  So I had to either type those up on the computer or crop out the copyrighted design.  Also, there were some copyrighted photos and I had to go hunt up other photos to use.  Luckily some of the copyrighted material I had permission to use but I had no idea how to contact the one place and decided not to bother about the other--thought the pictures were so cute of the kids.  What is the price of one's soul? (I used to ponder that one as a bank teller surrounded by lots and lots of other people's cash and I realized that there is no good price for one's soul.)  I had to do what was right so I could enjoy the book thereafter with good conscience.

Largely hampered by this issue of conscience, I could not hit the deadline to submit this Christmas book to claim that coupon.  It was about 11 p.m. the day of, and I was on 2002, with two hours to go so I gave that up.  However, I kept plugging away and still made the "50% off and free shipping by February 1st" deadline.

(With the 12x12 books, they are more expensive to begin with, and it helps to watch for these 50% off deals.  This had to be 12x12 size to accommodate the scanned 11-1/2 x 8 Christmas letters.)  I was able to save nearly $70 (shipping and the 50% off), and it cost about $50 with tax.  I am such a challenged deal shopper that I was very proud of that savings.  I ordered just one for now but intend to order two more so each of my children will have one.  That will require more deal watching.

Back to "this here blog!"  In the Christmas book "sharing" process (essentially posting my book to this blog), I did not realize that ANYONE could read virtually every single word throughout the entire book. I had hoped it would be a sort of thumbnail version. Anyway, I left the book on long enough that I hoped that my two most interested friends in these kinds of projects, QV and EM, could have a look but I just could not go to bed with that much information about me sitting "out there."  So it is gone from here but I will take pictures and post them here (of course I will) when the book comes in the mail.