blog books

Have you heard of blurb.com? It is a site where you can turn your blog into a book. (you can make a book for anything, really. cookbooks (hint, hint, Michal), photo books, children's storybooks...the possibilities are endless) We are kidding ourselves if we think our online journals on blogger, etc. are going to be around forever. So, I decided that I wanted a hard copy of my blog. I had heard of Blurb and thought I would check it out. The prices were amazing compared to other sites like shutterfly.com and they have so many templates.

I chose to do my book with a black background. I think I liked seeing my pictures on the black background because I am used to seeing my pictures on my dark blog background. I was worried that when I got the book the black pages would smudge like some books with black paper do. It did not. I was amazed at how beautiful and professional the book looked. If you get hard back it is canvas and comes with a sleeve (that smudges a little, but wipes off easily). If you get a paperback there is not a sleeve, the cover you create is printed right on the book.

I decided to do a book each year. Since I started at the end of September I only had 23 posts to put in the book. It was really time consuming, so I am glad I started out small.

I took some pictures of the book for you to see. The picture of the cover has been edited, I had to fuzz out our name (I had our real last name printed in the book, but never use our real names on my blog). I will also add the link for you to see where the posts came from. You should be able to click on the pictures to see them bigger to see the detail if you want.

All about Dusty, All about Lucky. (for these pages I only added the memories that happened in 2007 or earlier, next year I will add all the 2008 and anything else I think of that I did not have on the list already.)

Doubleheader (the first couple of pages)

The end of I love these boys. And the beginning of Halloween memories.

The first part of D is for Doughnut. The slide show was a different post.

And the winner is... (I actually used a different picture in the book for this post because it had a better resolution). And the beginning of Baby it's cold outside.

I took this picture for you to see the binding.

The things I don't love about it.

• It was so time consuming. Don't let that stop you from making one--it was worth it!
• I had to go back and find the pictures that were on slide shows again. I suggest that if you decide you are going to do one of these, you make a special folder on your computer where you save all the pictures that you use for your blog in the highest resolution possible so they print clearly.
• I had to add the comments to the end of each post manually. I know that some people would not want them there, but it is fun to read them now, so why not 25 years from now?

Things I LOVE about it.

• The price.
• The many layout options. I didn't even play with all of them. There are so many.
• The quality. It really looks so good in person. Mrs. Morty saw it, she could tell you how good it looks.
• The service. Somehow an extra blank page was added to my book throwing off the layouts in the rest of the book. Blurb sent me a return label to send the old one back and a credit for a new book and shipping costs. They also emailed me back within a few hours each time I had a question for them. I love this company.
• I will have it forever and I do not have to depend on an internet company to be around forever to preserve my memories.