Authoring

Coool!

My photo book from Blurb (www.blurb.com) arrived today. It's full of pictures of our vacation in France and the text from my vacation blog entries. It looks awesome.

Only problem was it cost me crazy money to get it shipped to England. I didn't know that it would until I'd spent hours compiling the dang thing - and so I just sucked it up and paid.

Blogging, digital photography and vanity publishing have converged and mean that I can actually create a photo album. Before what I had was really good intentions and a stack of prints and some wadded up ticket stubs. I have a couple of empty photo albums. I even have some undeveloped rolls of film (e.g. our trip to Norway - which would have made an awesome photo book). This is my third photo book and the best so far.

I have big plans for baby books. But I know that a lot of first time parents have big plans for baby books, and as time progresses the plans remain but are joined by a big stack of photos in envelopes and locks of hair and blood stained baby teeth. Elizabeth of Career (aka Busy Mom) and Kids has blogged about this recently - and sought advice on how to get moving on getting photo albums finished.

But of course, I won't be like that. I won't be as bad as my own parents either. We moved so often, and my parents were so disorganised on the photo front that my childhood is largely undocumented - except for the studio photos my grandparents proudly displayed. I'll be different, I'll do my online photo books and make duplicate copies as gifts for proud grandparents. And my kid won't misbehave or break things and will never use the outside voice when the inside voice will do.