Remembering 2013

I believe I started a new family tradition this year. Well, technically I started it last year but this year I really stepped up my game and I am so so happy with the results! And by "the results" I mean this little package that showed up on our doorstep a few days ago and made me jump up and down in our living room (maybe). 

Yep, that's right! A photo book. And it. is. awesome! It contains nearly every picture from the entire year of 2013. I mean not including the 15 pictures that Elias took as he walked down the hallway and things like that. Obviously some editing went into this book but at nearly 100 pages with an average of about 6 pictures per page…well you get the idea. Lots of pictures!!

I used My Publisher this year which I'd never used before (I've always been a pretty loyal Shutterfly customer) and I have to say I am really impressed with the quality of this book. You do pay a bit more but to me paying for a good quality book once a year that can hold all of your pictures from the year is worth it.

I started it with a highlights page just outlining the major events that took place during the year. (Sorry these are iPhone pictures of pictures so the quality isn't great but in person it looks awesome!)

And then got to include page after page of pictures from our whole year! Like this one from Elias' first birthday party.

And this one from our ski trip last March.

And this one from our trip to Carlsbad.

I also included all of the random pictures of our day to day life: Elias' cuteness, date nights, things we did with friends and family.

For the cover I just used our favorite family picture from last year. Which is even more special because it includes the new bean who we found out about during 2013! Even though she won't be here till summer 2014, I thought it was fitting for this picture to be the cover.

The other great thing about this book is how thin it is. Over 600 pictures stored in such a thin album is a huge space-saver.

We are beginning to have quite the collection of photo books!. That is the 2013 album there on the end with the teal spine. That is a regular size traditional photo album next to it just to get an idea of width. These things are tiny!

I honestly couldn't be happier with how this book turned out! I did an album last year of 2012 and it was good but because I went with a much smaller, cheaper, Shutterfly book that was more "scrapbook-y" it only included maybe 75 pictures from the whole year. This year's book might have 10 times that! And even though it feels like an investment when you finally click "place order" on one of these (this one came to about $60) I keep trying to remind my hubby myself of how much it would cost to print that many pictures and buy albums for all of them. I would think at least that much if not more. Of course now I'm really tempted to go back and make albums just like this one from 2011 and 2012. Wouldn't it be so fun to have them all lined up in a row?! We'll see what my hubby (and the budget) say about that…

So for now I am just admiring this one like crazy! And if you come to my house I will probably show it to you…just be forewarned ;) 

And I might already be planning the book for 2014...