My New Goal

I've written in a journal off and on throughout my life. When I was a teenager I was the most diligent, probably because I was full of so much adolescent drama that I had to record it somewhere so posterity could say, "Yeah, that guy was a total jerk and Sandi was definitely right! What injustice!" What I secretly wanted was a live tv audience clapping and booing and ahhhing at all the right spots (there was no reality tv back then, remember) but since I didn't have a live tv audience I just wrote in my journal.

While I was dating Nathan I wrote surprisingly very little, considering I finally had interesting stuff to write about, but I guess that's because I didn't feel like there was any great injustice going on that other people should sympathize with me about. After I got married I sincerely regretted not writing more, and yet, I'm still not that great about writing in my journal.

My blog, on the other hand . . . yes, my blog is very easy to write in. And since I write about the good and bad that happens to our family, it has become our family journal. This summer a friend showed me how she had printed her family blog off as books, one for her, and one for each of her four kids to have when they get older. I tucked that idea away for a few months, until I saw a half-off deal on a blog book last week at Blog2Print. I couldn't resist. It only took me half an hour to put together a book from my 2008 blog posts. You just type in the address of your blog, the date range you want, and whether you want to include comments, and it makes it for you. You can tweak things, like pulling out individual posts or comments, or switching pictures. It's not as totally user-friendly as I would like, but it's pretty good. I ordered a hardbound copy for me for $37 (free shipping if you don't mind waiting 3 weeks) and a softbound copy for Annalee for about the same. (Softbound are cheaper, but I had a coupon for the hardbound.)

Then I couldn't stop. I stayed up waaaaaaay tooooooo laaaaaate the next night, turning 2009 into a massive book. (I guess I was just getting warmed up to blogging in 2008.) Even though I took out a lot of posts that were about killer deals or other temporary things, it was still huge. And gorgeous. I ordered another hardbound for myself, and a softbound for Annalee. (I take out all the comments in her book, since she won't care who my friends were, but I leave them in for mine.)

And now I'm looking even further ahead. Or back. See, I have never been great at scrap booking. My sister recently told me that she loves scrapbooking, both the work and the finished product. I hate both. I make a colossal mess, get only one page done, and think how second grader could have done better. Oh, I also have to keep it away from Annalee once it's done so the pictures don't get pulled off the page. But I've tried my hand at digital scrapbooking before, and I love the results. I can pick the layout, the backgrounds, the captions, etc, and just drop the pictures in that I already have digitally saved on my computer. I don't have to print, cut, or glue anything. When they're done, they look fabulous. And they're just as safe for my daughter to look at as any other book. So I'm thinking that I wish I could do that with all my pictures. And then I'm thinking why can't I?

So someday (Ha! "someday") I will scan all my old printed pictures into my computer and then turn them into books. I admit it's not likely to happen anytime soon, but it will happen sooner than traditional scrapbooking will. In the meantime, I'm going to turn the digital photos I have into books. And the easiest way to do that is to make them into blogs. So in the future you may see many more Blast from the Past posts from 2005-2007. I'll leave them on my main page for a while and then move them to their proper date sequence.

I am really excited about getting this done, finally. I realize that many of you may not care about things that far back, but since it's mostly for us I don't mind.