Shutterfly photo books help kids remember distant relatives

From Amy:

I use Shutterfly for distributing my digital photos to family and friends.  They also have very reasonably priced photo books.  I made one for our parents for Christmas.  I made a second called "People Who Love You" for my daughter - I included photos of each relative, with a caption, and created a personalized bedtime story.  "Aunt Megan loves you!  She likes to read books to you, and to teach you things.  Grandpa Jim loves you!  You are his first granddaughter, and he thinks you're awfully sweet and awfully special..." etc.  This worked well for our very large, distant family.  As she gets older, we'll add "stories" about special events - birthdays, outings, etc.  They're very reasonably priced, and they came out beautifully.  I think they'll be a treasure when she gets older.  I'm not crafty enough for scrapbooking, so this is a nice compromise for my daughter.

Tags: Parenting, Shutterfly

Comments

[Patrick Fitzgerald]

Great idea. Other photo services like Flickr also have similar products.

Every time my mother visits she takes bunches of photos, then sends a hand-made story book describing all the things she did with the grandchildren, and they love it.

[Lewis]

I love using the built-in book-making capabilities in iPhoto. You "make" the book on your machine by dragging and dropping the photos, and choosing the layout, typing out captions. You have a lot of control. Once you have it perfect, you can save it for later, or buy it with the click of a button. So easy, and excellent results!

[Denver Dad]

Yeah, those photo books are great! I made one using iPhoto as a gift for my mom (sort of a "here's what you missed of your grandson, then here are some pictures of you two together") and then made another one for my wife (a Mother's Day present sort of chronicling our son's first year) using Shutterfly. They're both really great. The Shutterfly book was a little cheaper than the Apple book and had a neat "window" cut out in the front cover, but I did appreciate the control you have using iPhoto. You can duplicate a lot of that with Shutterfly's system, but it takes some monkeying around to get it the way you want it.

I'm working on another one for my wife, for when she goes to Europe later this summer, and I'm using Apple's iPhoto. You have a little more freedom with designing the type of book you want and I liked the smaller size.

I really like the idea of doing them as a storybook! Doing it around an event might be good, too. So, maybe a "2nd birthday party" book or something.

Hmmm... this could get expensive fast!

[Parent Hacks Editor]

Parent Hacks is an affilliate partner with Shutterfly, so I get access to discount promotions. They have one going on right now for photo books:

20% off thru 6/20/06
code: AFF7-BOOK

Here's my affilliate link (it should work despite the Tiny URL):

http://tinyurl.com/fawlx

If not, just go directly to shutterfly.com.

[Emily]

We are doing one for our daughter's first birthday. So much easier than traditional scrapbooking and no messy clipping on my floor after the project is done. Thanks for the hack!

[Trent]

My wife ~made~ such a book as a scrapbooking project. It turned out beautifully, and our 7 month old dearly loves it. The pages are unfortunately getting a bit of drool stain on them, so we may laminate it soon.