MY "BLOGGING" BOOK

Hope everyone had a good week-end...Mine was pretty different for me as we hung pretty close to home and didn't "do" much of anything at all. I came down with a cold last Wed. and haven't felt like doing much. Really wasn't too bad as far as colds go, but I always feel like if you rest more it will go away quicker, so I have been doing a lot of that. I'll admit I was kind of paranoid too after my last one developed into pneumonia, (SUCH a nightmare) but didn’t even really get a cough with this one so I was grateful ~ now if my ears would just unplug, haha…

However, one of the things I did do I am VERY excited about. I have been thinking for quite a while now how I would LOVE to collect all of these blogs I have written and put them in a book. Seemed like such a perfect way to not only have a journal of it all, but pictures to go with it etc. I thought how I would LOVE to have such a thing that my mother wrote, or my grandmother etc., so I imagined my kids might someday too. (not that any of them read this very regularly NOW though, haha) Now my original plan was to do it through Blurb which I have used before. I put together a family cookbook for Melody when she was engaged. It had recipes from both our side of the family and Mike’s. It had personal messages from family members to both of them, favorite Bible scriptures and prayers, and lots of pictures. It is a hard back book with over 100 pages. It took me months!

I had a book printed for me, my mother, Mike's mother and Mike's grandmother.  I should have made a paperback copy for Mel and I to use, and had this hardback one to "save"...I am soo messy when I cook...live and learn  = )

This is the inside of the cover flap.

A sample of the personal messages section...

This is a sample of a recipe from the dessert section.  There were 5 sections of foods...all of the pages (or most of them anyway) had a picture of whose recipe it was, and a scripture at the bottom of the page.  This one was of me...look at how dark and short my hair was, haha

Now I am not the speediest person in the world, and it might have been that I was also making her aprons for every holiday I could possibly think of, and was knee deep in wedding plans as well, but whatever it was it was QUITE the undertaking. Sooo, I have not exactly been in a rush to get to it. And meanwhile of course I have been blogging since Feb. of 09. BUT THEN!! I read on Genn’s blog @ Life at  the Hass House about how she had done a book of her blogs through Blog2print! It was soo easy. They do everything for you by simply copying your blog page by page etc. Now I chose to do mine as a simple copy so that the pictures would be with the corresponding post the way I originally did it which does make it more expensive. You have the option of picking and choosing what you want, changing pictures etc., but seemed like WAY too much work to me. And for what I wanted, it did seem like the better option. It was not exactly inexpensive, but felt like I couldn’t put much of a price on such a keepsake. I did choose my picture for the front and back of the book. I should have it in a couple of weeks and I will of course take pictures to show it to you then. I guess I could have waited until then to share this whole thing with you, but I was too excited. Now this one is for 2010 and covers from Jan. to Dec. I will do one for 2009 next month so I won’t have the expense of two books in one month. I really don’t see the need to print out all of my pictures anymore either with these books. When you have been married as long as I have (almost 36 years) and have as many kids and grandkids (16 altogether so far ~ counting my sil and dil’s) there are WAY too many pictures to really store and keep track of. This just seems like the perfect alternative. Now I still have individual wedding albums for all of my kid’s weddings, and a LARGE picture collage that displays recent pictures of them all in my home, (and a couple of special pictures of course) but I have decided that I am not going to print out pictures anymore and keep tons of albums. I have boxes and boxes of pictures both in albums and just loose. I was always going to keep it all organized but somehow life got in the way and it all got away from me. I am not sure WHAT to do about them all. When we moved recently it made me take a GOOD look at just how many I have. I might divide them all into piles of each child, but even that would be a MASSIVE undertaking, so for now they are stored in my giant walk in closet and even some in our shed. For some reason it bothers me and I will have to eventually address it, but for now these neat little books with a journal of our life in both my thoughts and pictures seems just perfect. THANK YOU SOOO MUCH Genn for the suggestion!! I have also decided to start writing (maybe one day a week or so I don’t know yet) about my past. How I met my husband, old family memories, etc. so that it will all be chronicled in the book for my kids and grandkids to have should they ever be interested.

So there you have it.  Guess maybe I should start praying that it all comes out as well as I am hoping.   Hope you are all having a WONDERFUL Monday!