Samples from my Shutterfly book

This is the front cover from the book I made at Christmas time on Shutterfly for my in-laws. It is 12 inches square and 78 pages. (The package starts with something like 20 or 25 pages so you see I exceeded that.)

Please be advised that Shutterfly changes its prices at random and without notice. Finish your book well before you need it and shop the company's prices until you hit on a combination of prices (if you're doing multiple books) that works for you. Hind sight is 20/20.

First, why Shutterfly: I looked at about ten other sites that offer photobooks but this was the only site (and book format within that site) I could find at that time that offered a lot of text spaces (or journaling spaces). Most of the other books allowed just for photo captions.

By the way, I won't go into the harrowing experience it was trying to do this project justice in just two weeks' time and all the pitfalls, unforeseen catastrophes, and setbacks, nor the huge number of hours this took and how happy my family was when I finally sent it off and how supportive they were (behind the complaints) and how I think I was given by God stamina and mental clarity beyond my physical ability during those two weeks. Now where was I? Oh, yes.

Second, beware the text issues of this format. I could not cut and paste within the project--if I decided to move text (which unfortunately occurred OFTEN), I had to write it out long hand and retype it elsewhere. That was hellish. When I complained about this to Shutterfly, it claimed that it could be done but I was not able to get it to work despite my efforts AND I think they're lying or at least misguided.

I liked the general looks of the pre-set background pages--they were very nice looking--although working with the pre-set openings (for want of a better word) in which to insert pictures and that combined with pre-set phrases like "Passions" or "Challenges" really was limiting and difficult in the long run. They needed many more pages and combinations of openings and the ability to change the caption from "Passions" to "Fun Times" or something more fitting the photos.

I chose to make the title page picture sepia tone but I selected to do all the other pictures inside the book black and white (but one) to unify the look of the book and to make it all seem "vintage."

Two warnings: Shutterfly does warn you if a picture isn't the right resolution for a particular spot (i.e., size) but that does not mean that the picture will really look wonderful. I would say that nearly all the pictures I was working with were snapshots and small pictures, often poor quality, but they were all the pictures existing from the past--not like today when we have really too many pictures to choose from. The book was 12x12, so many of the snapshots were being blown up far beyond their original size. I was both heartened that some of the pictures turned out MUCH better than I thought they would and disheartened that some pictures which seemed good turned out worse than I thought they would (the picture of the man, above, being a case in point and nearly the first picture you see when you open the book). Overall, I am OK with how the pictures turned out and feel they, mainly, turned out better than they should have given what I had to work with. But you could not REALLY tell from the computer screen exactly how the pictures would look in the finished book. My DH was disappointed with the quality of the photographs in nearly every instance.

There was also more to putting in the pictures than dragging and dropping them in a slot. You had to refine the size so it looked right in the opening. There were also other tricks I had to employ to get some photos to even work within the openings.

Here is another sample of a layout. One note about text again. As I said, it was the most hellish part of the project. Just because Shutterfly has a small font size available, do not blindly rely on its presence there as an appropriate font size for your project. You need good bi-focals or a good magnifying glass to read many of the text sections of my book--I usually started out with a larger font but as I collected more and more history, I would add and add until the text was reduced to its smallest font. I would not "blindly" (pun intended) use the smallest font size in reliance that it will be a readable font. Hind sight is 20/20. However, on the upside, I believe most family books like this become photo albums after the first read (or they become door stops, or worse :-).

I thought the pictures on this page were particularly cute and representative of many of the classic/vintage pictures and important family images that the book contained. The background pages were great and I might still be trying to decide how to arrange my own backgrounds if I'd chosen to create my own.

Here is a sample of two of the ancestor pages I included. I searched out and included little nuggets of information about each individual. Some of the pictures I obtained from books or from the internet and some were pictures my in-laws had never seen before. That was pretty exciting for me. Ever since I married into the family, I have been actively collecting ancestors' pictures and so I had more than I actually included but ended up collecting new ones in the process. I ended up scanning about 200+ photographs, some multiple times to get them right, and some I had rescanned by professionals trying to get the best possible resolution. This project was scan-intensive. I don't think the book contains 200 photographs but I did scan more than that just during the two weeks I worked on the book.

Here is the only colored photo (see inset at right) and the layout is a great sample of how text can be used in the book. One problem is the text did not "flow" from column to column--this was extremely problematic because you could not change things around without much difficulty. Despite this, I think it might have been simpler in the long run (assuming I would follow my own advice and have everything typed out in advance) to have used these pages more and just done little captions and maybe a story here or there on the other pages. But my text evolved--I'd rearrange and then have holes where I needed text so I'd call and get information. Invariably there were more new stories than could fit so I would then find a "home" for those bits (and so the font shrank), etc. Going in to the project, I had not intended to have as much text as I ended up with--text was to be incidental--but the project seemed to demand that it was done right, and so I ended up doing interviews with family members and many telephone calls to my in-laws to get more information. I hope I got the details right, particularly since I initially relied on unreliable histories someone else had written. Egad.

Here is the back cover of the book. This is the only other sepia colored photo and I opted to go sepia here because I'd already used the same picture inside the book in black and white.

Overall, I feel good about the book and feel that it was definitely my very best effort under the circumstances. There are things I would do differently now I've been though the experience once (and so I give you the benefit of that knowledge) but I did the very best I could at the time. I have heard that my in-laws really love the book and bore all visitors by talking about it. :-)

Today

This morning started out as usual, 5:55 a.m. We did the normal morning routine and then I got dressed and took J to the chiropractor before school. At J's school, I paid some lunch money for J--the boy with the ever-present hollow leg--with a bit of breakfast money thrown in for those days when the smell of donuts or something yummy is overwhelming for him.

Then, I went to get M for her hair appointment and I hoped to find out more about Aunt R's situation. I talked with Aunt R but she was off in her own little world--seeming to be busy with some kind of imaginary work, all the while lying in bed. We held hands while we talked and I told her I loved her.

M seemed very drifty herself and really was not perking along like usual today. The employees said she slept really well, so I don't know what the trouble is. She was doing quite well yesterday afternoon when I visited. It is like this sometimes.

M always loves to have her hair done and she always gets lots of compliments from the other residents when she returns from having her hair done on Mondays. I returned M to her place and by then, some of Aunt R's family members were there. I visited with Aunt R again at her request. This time, she talked and talked but it was not all sensible, about half and half. Aunt R is not really eating or drinking. Evidently, Hospice said she has probably two days to live. It is not unexpected when someone is 101. However, I don't think Hospice has accounted for the toughness of those G---ers, although not my generation but hers. Aunt R told Aunt A yesterday that it was hard to die, or hard work to die, something like that. I don't think Aunt R wants to go.

After I left the home, I picked up prescriptions and I'm happy to say Walgreen's has picked up the pace. Last time, I waited at least 45 minutes and today I waited five. Last time there were two people to handle the crowd and today, there were four. Good job!

I went to L's school and paid lunch money there, too. I feel like a stranger there--I was such a fixture for four years on account of T and now I hardly ever even enter the building.

I had the van washed inside and out. I think it has been months and was so overdue. To have a clean van is like pampering myself. It gave me a morale boost disproportionate to the actual event.

I came home for lunch and then B and I went for a walk with our faithful hound R. Just blocks from home, we saw DV & J's cows escape with DV trying to get on his four wheeler while shouting cuss words at the cows. B tried to help herd those cows but DV seemed to be purposefully driving the cows away faster than B could round them up. Actually, I think DV was so mad and impatient with the cows that he was just going about things wrong. In fact, until I talked with J, who said she suspected that DV himself had left the gate open, I thought DV was driving the cows away from their yard because they must not be his cows and had thought that was not a real neighborly thing to do. At one point, DV even rammed the cows with his four-wheeler, causing the four-wheeler to stall and, seeming none the worse, the cows headed for the highway and points west. It was eventful. Eventually Bishop M got involved as did DV's son Bl. DV slid and fell on some gravel, and had blood all over his hand and sleeve. The cows were eventually corralled. Bl had to chastise his dad for letting the cows out, and for not waiting until 3 when someone was coming to do whatever it was the DV was trying to do mid-afternoon. Boy, do I remember feeling exactly the same way with my mother or father on many occasions. R did her best to bark and bark either to tell B to come back or to tell him to wait up, but she was too far from the action to be of any help. We'd run out of time for our walk, so we hurried home and got here just after J arrived home from school.

I took J to his hair appointment--he has a nice, short "do" now, just the way he likes it.

I took the kids to the bank to cash/deposit checks for their work on G-ma's yard. We returned books to the library. Whew. No fines. Afterwards, we went to the S family's house to visit.

Then we came home, had dinner, had family home evening, and now we're all headed to bed (other than the night owl who will watch TV). This was an eventful day.

Eternal stewardship

"Each of you has an eternal calling from which no Church officer has authority to release you. This is a calling given you by our Heavenly Father Himself. In this eternal calling, as with all other callings, you have a stewardship, and ‘it is required of the Lord, at the hand of every steward, to render an account of his stewardship, both in time and in eternity.’ This most important stewardship is the glorious responsibility your Father in Heaven has given you to watch over and care for your own soul.

At some future day, you and I will each hear the voice of the Lord calling us forward to render an account of our mortal stewardship. This accounting will occur when we are called up to ‘stand before [the Lord] at the great and judgment day.’”
Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin, “True to the Truth,” May 1997, Ensign, p. 15.