The Things I Love Most

Tips To Enjoying Life With Your Family

My Blog Books & Why I Think Everyone Should Have a Blog of Some Sort

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A couple of years ago I did a series of post about digital scrapbooking. You can read them here.  I have always loved to paper scrapbook, but hated how much time it took, along with buying all the papers, embellishments, binders, page protectors, and then finding the time to get it all out and try to do it before my kids bombarded the kitchen table or the baby was crawling around eating paper scraps.  I knew digital was going to become my new best friends.  Going digital not only made my house cleaner, I spend WAY less time and money on my scrapbooks and I love them just as much if not more!

These are the four I made before I started digital…

(This is for only 4 years and they are super bulky and take a ton of space.)

I was always years behind until I started digi scrapping.  Just this last week I got completely caught up with scrapbooking my married life! (Almost 12 years, 11 days, of marital bliss!!)  I scrapbook once a week on Sundays after church when my kids are either having quiet time or watching their Sunday movie!  It’s a great time for me to scrapbook the pictures for the month and also to blog about life.

I am sure you are wondering why the title says, “Why I think everyone should have a blog of some sort”  Let me tell you why….I started a personal journal blog about 6 years ago.  I was always so horrible at writing in my journal until I started blogging.  This is the number one reason I think everyone should have a personal blog. I used to try to remember to write stuff in my journal, but I never would.  When I started a blog I wrote more.  I also invited people to read it that were my close friends and family, but you don’t have to do that.   You can also make it private so no one can read it. I try to write a couple times a week, but if I want to remember something I can now, with my smartphone, talk it into my phone straight onto my blog and save it there until I am ready to publish it.

The number two reason I think everyone should have a blog is in case of emergency.  If my house burnt down or my kid ripped my book, or I lost everything on my computer, It is all uploaded on the computer!  Last year our old computer crashed and I lost a year of pictures.  I couldn’t believe it.  I was so so sad.  We even had an external hard drive, but I had unplugged it.  Then I remembered I had uploaded all the important pictures to my personal blog!!!!  I was SO excited!

Every year at Christmas time, as a present to my family.  These were my two this year…

I put two years in one book.  The bigger one is my scrapbook with little words and mostly pictures and the small one is my blurb journal book with mostly words and small pictures on the side of the posts.
This is 6 years of scrapbooking and 4 of blogging, my wedding album, and a cousin scrapbook!
(And it takes as much room as my 4 years of 12X12 book)

One of my favorite things to do with my kids is to look at the books, or to open them up and read a few pages from my blog book.  It makes it all worth the effort of creating them!  I love reading through them and remembering everything that I probably wouldn’t have had I not written them.  
I print my books through a company called Blurb (aka Booksmart, which is the program you use to make it) If you don’t like to upload pictures to the Internet, Blurb is a downloaded  program and you can blog straight onto your blurb book, but in order to print them you will have to upload the books.  It is private and password protected. It can slurp your blog straight into the program and then you can format it how you like it.  I have found that Blurb has the best pricing hands down.  They always email me a 30% off coupon a couple of times a year and I use those, or I google a coupon and at least get 25% off.   I never buy a book without a coupon.  They also have great customer service.  I had a small printing issue with my last blog book.  I took a picture and emailed them and they mailed me a new book within 2 weeks.  Another great thing about Blurb is that once you have bought a book through them it saves it in your account forever!  When our computer crashed I lost 2 books, but then realized they were still in my Blurb account FOREVER!!
So there you go.  That’s my two cents about scrapbooking and blogging.  If I didn’t love doing both I probably would at least blog.  Having those written memories attached with pictures is priceless.  Take 30 minutes a week and write stuff down and add your pictures to it.  You won’t regret it…I promise!

Comments

  1. This is AWESOME Kendra!!! And one of my DREAMS! As you know, I have not blogged much since I started working more. And I haven’t worked on my scrapbook for a few years either. YIKES! THANKS SO MUCH FOR SHARING YOUR GREAT EXAMPLE AND INSPIRING ME TO GET TO WORK!!! 😀
    Corine 😀