Thursday, January 26, 2012

another (year) bites the dust

I have always been a photo album nerd.  I have tons of them.  Just a few months ago I was at my mom’s house, and I found a cabinet full of all the albums I made growing up…there are at least 20 of them.  I used to have a disposable camera on me at all times, and all the prints I got would always go straight into an album. 

Even once the digital world came around, I was still always diligent about ordering prints and filing them away in an album every year. I have a shelf with at least 5 albums on it now, which just covers the past couple years, and a box somewhere with I couldn’t even tell you how many more albums inside.  Not to mention the separate albums I have from vacations, our wedding, our honeymoon…  See what I mean? Photo album nerd.

Anyway, over the past year or so I have gotten bad about ordering prints.  (I think part of that is because the number of photos I take has significantly increased…)  And any of the prints I did order, well, those have started to accumulate into quite a large pile.  So, after seeing the idea on several other blogs and on Pinterest, I finally figured out how to solve my problem.

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A yearly photo book!  I already upload my pictures to Shutterfly on a (somewhat) regular basis, so all I had to do was drop them into one of their templates, tweak a few things, add some text, and viola!  Not to mention they were having a sale, so the whole thing only ended up costing around $20.

I basically just went in chronological order, and made a page (or in some cases a couple pages) for each event, adding a little text here and there.  Here are a few of the pages (most of which you will recognize, because I’ve blogged the pictures already):

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This was one (of 6!) pages from our vacation to Texas in July.  Highlighting our crazy zip lining adventure, as well as the 4th of July.

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This is my concert page… in July we saw 311 (if you do not know by now that this is my favorite band, you must not pay much attention…) and I also saw the New Kids on the Block and the Backstreet Boys with my mom and cousins.  It was a boy band dream, let me tell you.

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And as you can imagine, miss Lexi makes a few appearances in the book. :)  The session we did in August was one of my favorites, so I had a hard time picking just a couple of pictures to include…

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These pictures are from a Royals game we went to with our friends Ash & Zach (who you may have seen before on here…) and also the Chiefs home opener game on 9-11.

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And of course I had to do a spread for Halloween.  I don’t think I ever blogged these pictures (they aren’t my best work…what can I say…party + point & shoot - does not equal high quality photos!), but as you can see we had some interesting characters attend the party we went to.  Snooki and The Situation even made an appearance!

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And then on the back cover I had to put a few “family photos”.  Of course we don’t have one with all 5 of us together (I don’t think that will ever happen…) but at least when I look back through this album I’ll be able to see how cute all of our furbabies were in 2011!

I am now planning on keeping this tradition up and making a new book each year in January.  Although I still have an entire shoebox of pictures from 2010, and even some from 2009…I have yet to decide if I will just ditch the prints and make a 2010 photo book or if I’ll actually fill up one last album (or two.  or three.  I have a lot of prints in that box…)

I’ve already looked through this book at least 10 times.  And I will probably look through it another 10 times before I move it off the coffee table and onto the shelf with all of the other photo albums.  I just love it, what can I say!  Did I mention I was a photo album nerd?

Sunday, January 8, 2012

Lexi ~ 2 years

ok, so technically she is 2 years + 1.5 months.  close enough.

on an unseasonably warm day last week, we finally squeezed in Lexi’s 2 year session.  Amazingly, we were able to run around outside, without coats, and we had lovely sunshine to work with.  Not your typical January in Kansas, that’s for sure.

We actually ended up at Wonderscope Children’s Museum – we originally went to Old Shawnee Town…but it was all gated up.  That turned out to be a good thing, though, because the outside of the Wonderscope building is a great place for photos!  They have so many colorful walls, and fun things to play on.

Before we get to the 2 year photos, lets take a quick trip down memory lane…

Here is the little munchkin at only a few weeks old:20091229_Lexi_21b

And at one year:

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And now, at two.  She is growing up so fast, it's unbelievable.  But she just gets cuter by the minute, and thankfully my camera is there to capture it all. :)

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I had so much fun with this session…nothing like spending an afternoon running around outside with my favorite two year old. :)  Especially when we get blessed with such beautiful winter weather.

And to top it all off, I leave you with a kiss! :)

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Thursday, January 5, 2012

just a typical Thursday in January…

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you know… just hangin’ out at the park… in short sleeves… and sunglasses…

yeah, that’s just a typical Thursday afternoon in January around here (HA!)