Projects

When I started this blog over three years ago, the point of my efforts was to keep family and friends updated on our family and to save me redundant email messages with photo attachments. It also became a hobby and an outlet for stress relief. What emerged from my posts were stories and pictures that recorded many details and milestones of my daughter's little life, and eventually my son's life as well. I have tried to keep the focus on my children in this particular blog for the sake of the theme and the original point of this project. Somewhere along the way, about a year into this gig, I felt like I wanted all the stuff I was recording in this electronic fashion in a more permanent and tangible keepsake form as well.
Dear Husband began to assist me with backing this site up on our local hard drive until I figured out the most practical way to convert it into hard copy. I considered taking it to a print shop, but even that didn't come without some conversion challenges as well as a pretty hefty expense. Without a good option readily available I just continued to hoard it electronically until something else made sense. About a year ago we finally invested in a laser printer/copier/fax machine. I needed it for my work and didn't know how I got along for so long without it. I also needed a flatbed photocopier for homeschooling. With a laser printer at my disposal, I decided that I could print it all out myself at home and compile it in a book (or volumes of books as it turns out). I considered using something like Adobe Pagemaker to put it all together, including printouts of the photos, but we didn't purchase a color printer, and I also wasn't sure how long the quality of a laser printed photo would last. The best option seemed to be to convert all the text into a Word file and print it out and place it in plastic sleeves accompanied by photo sleeves of the real photographs that correspond with the text. I've posted a lot of photos over the years.
This was a project that stayed in my head on some back burner list of "to do...someday." It was in line somewhere after the past two years of scrapbooking was caught up. In the meantime, we were busy with buying and selling a house and moving and all that comes with that.
A couple months ago I finished catching up the scrapbooks and so the blog conversion was next on the list. I have been working on this task for the past couple weeks. I have the text formatted and printed for the first two years and the accompanying photos printed and organized for the first 18 months or so. The next 163 photos are printed and waiting for me, which will complete the first two years. I will keep chipping away at it until it is caught up and then probably convert it and print it out on a monthly basis after that.
I have reread various entries and reviewed countless photos in the process of this project, and I am so glad I have recorded these things, as many of them would have been forgotten. Things like "The Hat Crisis," "poop bags," reflections on the "Metamorphosis," the relief that came when Dear Son finally slept through the night, "Learning Some F-Words," Dear Son's gas issues, the direct line to God, and backwards compliments to name just a few.
This project would be why I haven't posted anything new for awhile. Stay tuned, though...more will come!