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Tell me about photobooks/albums as gifts

bellbird

bellbird

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i have half an idea of using one of the benefits of digi, 'reprinting pages' that i have in a bunch of albums on my shelf, and doing a 'Best Of' kind of compilation photobook for my mum - so not the 'best of' my scrapping but more a 'best of' of my fave photos from the last like *gasp* 15years. I imagine she would be happy anyway to have her own copy of some of the pages and will gladly accept the book anyway but here's my question:

So i know from the gallery, i'm not the only one that scraps 'real life' (ie. not just the smiley moments) but have you given anyone an album with 'real' photos in them and what was the reaction?
I feel like this year I need to focus on happy moments & that's why i was thinking compiling 'happy' pages but if i make a book of like 30-50 pages of my kids just 'portrait cheese smiling' as well as random genuine smiles that it's like misrepresenting life and might not be interesting to look back on? Am I over thinking? None of my photobooks are just smile after smile but i think that would be weird for me to flip through (knowing that my kids are in no way perfect like that & she for sure knows this as well but she has the benefit of distance which can colour even the worst things a fair bit more rosey pink, y'know).

Any way, all opinions and discussion welcome. Thanks in advance!
 
This sounds like a great idea! If it were me I'd include both the cheezy smiles and the goofy grins (my kids LOVED to do goofy faces once I took the "good" one). It might take longer, but maybe make sure you did a good amount of journaling about each page/event and why it was so fun/happy/silly/enjoyable. That way all the smiles would fit right in. I think we all know that life isn't all smiles, but it sure is nice to remember those times that we did. Please let me know what you decide to do - it sounds like a great future project!
 
I should add I once made a recipe photobook for everyone in my family, using all our family recipes. I added comments, random photos of us cooking/eating meals. It took FOREVER and it had many mistakes (even though I proofread the thing like crazy), but my sister said it literally stopped Christmas present opening because everyone wanted to read it from cover to cover once they opened it. So, your album will be LOVED!
 
QuiltyMom said:
I should add I once made a recipe photobook for everyone in my family, using all our family recipes. I added comments, random photos of us cooking/eating meals. It took FOREVER and it had many mistakes (even though I proofread the thing like crazy), but my sister said it literally stopped Christmas present opening because everyone wanted to read it from cover to cover once they opened it. So, your album will be LOVED!
Click to expand...

This is my plan for this year. My grandmother passed away in May and I have all of her old recipes. =)
 
Make your scrapbook real for you. What works for someone, won’t work for another. It sounds like you want to include the “real life”. Your mom will like it because it is “you”. Moms are like that.
9617B358-B305-4DFE-8B5F-55692631908B.jpeg
This goofy picture of my grandson is one of my favorites. It won’t win a photography contest, but it is the perfect expression of my grandson’s quirkiness and any documentation of his life that does not include this is, well, wrong.

Go for the real!
 
So...I'm in the "it depends" camp. My kids are teens now. I know there's no way they'd want to bring copies of all our books with them when they move out, but I also want them to have something. So my thinking is that I'll make them one or two photobooks with their first 18 years. In my grand dreams these are all new pages created for the project, but who am I kidding? Those books would take me years. In reality it will be pages I've already made, so I'll have to choose the 5 or so most meaningful pages from each year. Some of those will be the best photos or a recap of their favorites. Some of them will be our annual family photos or big events, like graduations or learning to drive. But when I really think about it, 5 pages a year is hardly anything. So I'm not saying that my books will be all sunshine and light with cheesy smiles--I'll probably include an adorable toddler tantrum and a photo of them pretending to attack a sibling in a mock battle, for example--but I don't think that many of the tougher moments will really make the cut. Especially when I'm using already scrapped pages--if I scrapped a tough time one of them had at age 10, other pages from that year would probably have helped give it context, and maybe the real resolution wouldn't even be on the same page because it took a year or two to get beyond that stage. So it just wouldn't work that well to pluck that page out of an album and re-print it in isolation. The cute moments, cheesy smiles, milestones, "this is you at age..." and insightful comments tend to lend themselves better to that IMO.
 
I've actually started doing this with birthday cards. I'll make a birthday card with extra pages and fill it with "best of" as you would say photos from the past year. I find between cell phones and digital cameras, I take so many photos over time and never look at or enjoy them (let alone print them out!) so with a birthday it forces me to do so at leat once a year to find great photos and memories for that one person ........ and I love it! It's always very well received too, each birthday card is like a mini personalized scrap book.
 
Books for grands will be made some day and as they age, they'll like them. When he was in his mid 40s my eldest suddenly was interested in genealogy and some of the layouts I made of his childhood. Otherwise, no books as gifts now.
 
I make themed books for my daughters that cover multiple generations along one theme, e.g., birthdays, sports, st.Patrick’s day, Easter, Halloween, Christmas, etc. My next book will be “On stage” incorporating school plays, dance recitals, and the like. I may use layouts that are years old for the books. They are fun projects.
 
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