45: 365 baby album

Source: stsfineart.com

I’ve started planning for some big projects during the baby’s first year, and I wanted to share what I’ve got in store for the future!

When Craig and I got married, we were given tons of photos taken by family and friends and they were all put into an album in a (somewhat) chronological order to help preserve them, however we wanted to do something a bit different with our professional photos.

Our photographer, Jill Promoli, gave us all of the negatives on CD in both colour and black and white, so it was the perfect opportunity to try out those photo books you see all over the internet.  I ended up choosing to use Blurb as they had a program you downloaded to your computer and could save your progress in, and as well you could use any of the fonts on your computer, so I was able to recreate our invitation on the back cover of the album.  Awesome.  The book turned out fantastic (as in family members still ask if they can get a copy), and so I knew when we had kids, I would like to preserve all of our favourite photos and memories in a bound book like that.

Our wedding album if you’d like a peek!

Untitled by Our Wedding | Make Your Own Book

 

Fast forward to today, on the eve (sort of) of welcoming our first child.  I’ve seen some blogs around the internet wherein the authors have committed themselves to taking one photo every day for a year to capture the memories, growth, and changes in their family, and it seemed to me like a great way to document all of the BIG changes that occur in the first year of a baby.  They do so much growing and developing between their birth and their first birthday, and I would love to capture those special moments each day (and maybe even the meltdowns) and have them together in a book so you can re-experience that first year whenever you page through the book.

As well, with Craig away for the first 4 months of her life, I can then send him photos daily, or post them to our family blog, so that he can ‘be there’ experiencing her day to day life, even from like 10,000 km away.

Problems with this album idea:
1.  I would have to have my camera with me ALL THE TIME to make sure I capture those great moments each day, and then I’d have to sort through the photos and pick my favourite for that day.  I’m laid back enough about the project that if I don’t get any photos one day, that I’ll sub in a photo from the day before or after – I’m going to basically be doing the single mom thing for the first four months with a newborn, I’m prepared to be forgiving with myself!
2.  Craig pointed out that chances are very good that this will only happen with our first baby, and like often happens, the second (third, fourth, fifth! hehe) won’t have a daily photo as we just won’t have the time.  Or their photos will all have their older siblings in it.  Again though, I’m willing to be flexible with it – it’s ok if their siblings are in all the pictures, that is the reality of their first year.  And hopefully it will have become habit.
3.  Finding the time to sort through and organize the album.  Honestly, I was SUPER anal about our wedding album, and it took forever to get it arranged in a way that was pleasing to me.  There are so many different formats for all of the pages, it may be difficult for me to make all of those decisions!  Maybe the construction of the album will be a joint project for Craig and I. :)

 

Regardless, this is definitely a project I would like to go through with or at least attempt, so I am planning ahead and starting to create page formats in BookSmart (the Blurb software) so that I can easily the photos in every few weeks.