Last year is soooo, well, last year. But before we bid it a formal adieu, let’s get into one of our favorite annual happenings:
Yup, we’re currently experiencing a resurgence of 2012 love thanks to the recent arrival of the 2012 Petersik Family Yearbook.
We love ordering a photobook each January (which we share every year) to encapsulate the previous year’s favorite photos. We were big fans of the first one that we bought back in 2010 from MyPublisher, so we’ve stuck with them each year since so that all of the books look similar (plus, we love the quality). So with the addition of yearbook number three, we’re finally starting to have a nice little collection going.
This year’s book was a bit late in coming because I’m very strategic about ordering from MyPublisher. I like to use up the maximum allowed number of pages (100). But since you pay per page (after the first 35) it usually costs over $100 per book. BUT, I get MyPublisher’s promotional emails every week (maybe I signed up on their site, I don’t remember) and I know that they regularly run a “FREE EXTRA PAGES” discount. So even though I put the finishing touches on our book in early January (I was quite eager this year), I camped out for weeks while I waited for them to run that particular promotion. And I’m so glad I did. Boom, $80 saved.
Just like we did with last year’s book, we opened with a “highlights” page to sort of summarize the year in a few bullet points.
But rather than just re-type them for you guys, we thought we’d share some of the corresponding pages inside. So here goes nothing!
Some of the other bullets were:
- Finish kitchen renovation
- Visit Granny and redo her bathroom
- Sherry turns the big 3-0
- Jesse & Slinky dog costumes for Halloween
- Host Christmas dinner at our house
One new thing that we did this year was also to include a special Instagram section at the back. Since 2012 was the year that we got started addicted, it was only fitting that we dedicated a few pages at the end of our family yearbook to some of our favorite little candid snapshots.
Now the only bummer is that we’ve gotta wait another ten months or so ’til we get to make the next book in the series. Oh well. I guess in the meantime we’ll just try to take lots of photos. Somehow I don’t think we’ll have an issue with that…
Oh and I think this shot really demonstrates the value of these books as a way to document your life year by year.
Three photo albums wouldn’t be nearly as thin and easily storable or displayable (their pages are thicker and their bindings are huge). But we imagine that even after a decade of yearbook-making we’ll be able to easily store (or display) ten or more of them in a nice little stack, as opposed to a decade’s worth of photo albums, which could easily take up an entire shelf.
And when it comes to cost, hello money in my pocket.
If you do the math, 100 pages of photos with an average of 7 photos per page = 700 photos. Which is a TON of photos for each year, but we’re snap-happy like that. And it usually costs around 15 cents per picture on sites like Target or Shutterfly (that’s their best “bulk” price), so for 700 prints it would be $105! But you’d still need to buy albums if you were doing it the old school way (at Target they’re around $15 for each album, and they typically hold 200 photos, so to store 700 you’d need four albums! So to get a nice custom made book for $45.99 versus spending $165 for traditional prints & albums – well, we’re down.
You can read our original post from 2010 with a little more about why we became photobook converts in the first place along what we put in that album. And if you’ve got another system – or an alternate photo storage trick – we’d love to hear about it. Until then you can find us taking pictures. Lots and lots of pictures…
Sarah says
On the Summer Vacation pages, is that Clara in the upper right hand corner? It looks like her, but doesn’t at the same time.
YoungHouseLove says
That’s our cousins’ son Edison. They do kind of look alike, though!
-John
Chris says
What a great idea with Photobooks not only for you, but I’m sure your daughter will appreciate those when she is a bit older.
Oh and btw, it was a genius move to wait for the coupon/promotion to save $$$$$ on the extra pages.
Nice job!
Shannon says
Ever since your first post about your family yearbooks, I’ve been doing the same with our photos. It’s funny because I have a section at the end with iphone pictures. I’m not on instagram but it’s the same concept. The “12 pictures per page” grouping might just be my favorite part! Thanks for all of your great ideas :)
Meg Bird says
Hello! I have a question for you guys, though I’m sure that you’ve probably been asked a billion times. Sorry for being a broken record!
My husband and I are looking into buying a house, and I know I’m going to want to DIY-it-up, if you know what I mean. My struggle is actually settling on how I want things to look! I honestly like so-many-different-styles that I don’t know how I would settle on just one for a room.
Any suggestions?? (Let me know if you’ve posted about this before.)
Thank you,
Meg
YoungHouseLove says
Here’s a post about how to pin down your style: https://www.younghouselove.com/2010/06/three-fways-to-pin-down-your-style/
Hope it helps!
xo
s
Heather says
We do this too, and I LOVE My Publisher. However, I was really disappointed with the quality of my book this year. The cover photo was orange, and on the pages where I had 12 instagram pics, the sides were cut off. It wasn’t like that when I made it, or on their little viewing tool. Also no one was willing to help me. I sent them pictures of what mine looked like, compared to what they ordered, and they said they could see nothing wrong.
Finally I got to speak to a manager and they replaced it free of charge. I now love My Publisher again =) Thank you guys so much for doing these yearbooks. You inspired me, and I can not wait to have shelves of them someday =)
Heather says
I’ve made photobooks before for trips that I’ve been on with MyPublisher but ended up getting a promotional coupon for Shutterfly and so made a book with them. When I got it, I immediately noticed a difference. I found the quality of the pictures with Shutterfly to be far less grainy and the book felt more sturdy. I don’t know if it’s because I tend to make smaller books or not, but was wondering if you noticed anything similar.
YoungHouseLove says
Really? That’s funny because we’ve heard from folks who preferred MyPublisher over Shutterfly (thought it was better made and more clear looking) so maybe it varies and sometimes one rocks and other times the other does? We love the quality in our MyPub ones (and actually used it since a friend of ours tried Shutterfly first and preferred MyPublisher).
xo
s
Megan says
Love the books! I do blog books each year and love having them as a scrapbook. The space, time and ease of keeping current makes it worth it. They take forever, but are totally worth it once I get them back from the binding company!
Ida says
Love it! We did the same this year. We created our first family photobook for our 2012 pictures. Will be posting it this weekend on the blog. We ordered ours from Shutterfly, they had a free book promotion, we only paid for 3 extra pages and shipping, total of $11.45! Score!
YoungHouseLove says
That’s awesome!
xo
s
Jenni McKay says
I made “365 Days of Carter” and “365 Days of Collin” photo books (which each ended up as its own 2-book set) using MyPublisher with one + pictures from every day of my guys’ first years, and they are some of my favorite treasures! We’ve continued with one book each year for Carter (while his baby brother was still getting his 2-book set completed), and this year we will move to a one-book-for-the-whole-family system since it’s pretty exhausting to get them organized and laid out. I usually do a BOGO coupon since my mom has a complete set as well, but I’m loving the idea of the extra pages sale since mine are always whoppers, too. I’ve thought about trying Blurb instead, but have stayed with MP so I have that nice, consistent set on my bookshelf.
YoungHouseLove says
Love that!
xo
s
Rachel says
We do a year book for our daughter now every year through Shutterfly. I love looking through it and seeing how much has changed and all the things we did during that year.
It is such a great idea!
Chris says
Over the years I’ve started so many scrapbook albums and have yet to complete one. Last year we went to Disneyworld and I made a photo book of our trip. I actually finished it and love how it turned out. Now we have to take another trip so I can make another book!
YoungHouseLove says
Sounds really cute!
xo
s
Roya says
I know you said you organize by date in iphoto. But I made a photobook for my son’s first year and just going through all that pictures and choosing the good ones took months, let alone laying them out in a page. Do you really do all that in hours? Or do you have a rating system for your photos that helps you choose?
YoungHouseLove says
It’s a few hours a day for a few days in a row. John usually sits down after dinner in front of the TV and does Jan-March or April, and then the next night he’ll do a few more months, etc. He’s oddly into it though – the second a new year rolls around he’s on it! Haha!
xo
s
Lindsay says
I love your books! I was almost convinced that I was going to do one for 2012, but I ended up printing old fashioned pictures a few weeks ago. (as we ‘speak’ they are still in the box on my counter). My biggest concern for not switching to the photo books is that I won’t have an actual printed picture. How did you get past that, or maybe you didn’t care? LOL I don’t know why I can’t get past that. However in 20 years, my kids will probably laugh at my ‘real’ pictures! :)
YoungHouseLove says
We have all the digital copies so we can get anything printed as a picture whenever we’d like, so that’s nice to know :)
xo
s
Stephanie says
I do a Shutterfly book for my daughter every year (along with a DVD slideshow of photos/videos set to music that I whip up on iMovie). My son will get his first one this year for his first birthday. I haven’t done a family one yet because want them to be able to take their books with them someday, but now seeing yours I’m thinking maybe I will start doing a family one in addition to their individual books :) I did select the “add-a-pocket” option on my daughter’s most recent book for keepsakes from throughout the year.
Sarah says
Off topic, but I read about this new quarterly in Apartment Therapy and thought of John… http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/a-talk-with-kindling-quarterly-creator-david-michael-perez-185664. Interesting, creative, (hunky) men talking about and how their professional and parenting lives intertwine? Yes please!
YoungHouseLove says
Haha, I love it! So interesting!
xo
s
Linda says
Love these! Are these their layouts or your own?
YoungHouseLove says
They have many layouts to choose from, so we just clicked on them and built the book that way. Very simple!
xo
s
N. says
Friends of mine make photo yearbooks too which are cool to have, but the pages and thus the photos now look like worn magazines/picture books. You’d end up having to print them again if pages get torn or so worn that they look ratty.
YoungHouseLove says
So far in the three years we’ve made them our books still look great, but we always have the digital file (we save it on our computer and MyPublisher saves it in their records) to reprint them if they ever get worn down (or we just want another copy to give to our kiddos when they’re grown, etc).
xo
s
Carla says
I read about your first Family Yearbook way back when and was hooked. I made our first one for 2011 and recently added the 2012 photobook to our stash (and for 2012 we went for the 100 pages). They are FANTASTIC! I get so many positive comments on them and have inspired quite a few people to make their own…it’s a great way to use photos (rather than them just sitting on your computer). So you guys have helped spread some ‘Family Yearbook’ love in Victoria, Australia…yay!!
YoungHouseLove says
Aw, that’s so sweet Carla!
xo
s
Angie says
Love this! Been wanting to pull off a family yearbook for a while. Right now I’m working on coffee table books filled with pics of the kids’ art (3 kids…it piles up!) Anyhow…thanks for sharing your sources. I’ll definitely be checking them out!
danielle says
I just ordered mine for the year. Groupon was running a special so I ended up saving over 50% off! I order them for gifts every Christmas for Grandparents also! I put quotes from throughout the year in them. The boys love it!
N Shirley says
OK- the suspense is killing me!
Heather says
Wow, your photobooks look beautiful! I typically use Blurb or Shutterfly, but this past Christmas I decided to use MyPublisher to make some Christmas presents for family. When they arrived, I was extremely disappointed with the quality of the photos. I use a beautiful DSLR camera, and the photos in the MyPublisher book were grainy, yellowy, and blurry. I was obviously disappointed, and after numerous phone-calls (of which no one ever picked up…sometimes I was on hold for 2 hours!), I ended up finally getting an answer via e-mail….weeks later after Christmas had passed and the gifts had already been given out (along with apologies on their terrible quality). Just a heads up! Although it seems like your books turned out great, so maybe it was just a glitch?
YoungHouseLove says
Argh that sounds terrible! And it really does sound like a glitch. Could you have been using thumbnails instead of high res pics? When we make our layouts every year MyPublisher flags any pics that might look grainy if they’re lo-res (from our phone or something) and then we either replace them or decide to shrink them down in the layout so they look clearer. We haven’t had any grainy or blurry or yellow photos in our books over the three years we’ve done them (and we’re pretty picky about photos) so I think there must have been some really odd glitch – which is really annoying for you! So sorry Heather!
xo
s
DeDe@DesignedDecor says
What a great idea to do a photo book each year. I wish I would of had this option when my kids were young. I had to do everything by hand with the scrapbooks, no digital camera when they were young!
Shannon says
Hi John & Sherry,
I just thought I’d mention – On my last couple MyPublisher order, I splurged for the “lay flat pages.” They are amazing! I will never order another 100 page photo book without them. They make the books so much easier to look through and you don’t lose any of your images to the inside binding. If you don’t select that options during your ordering process a lot of times it’ll pop up again at the very end for half off. It’s normally $20 but it only cost me $10. Definitely worth the couple extra dollars :)
YoungHouseLove says
That’s really cool Shannon! Love the tip!
xo
s
laura~eye candy event details says
seriously? you guys CAN do everything! Wow I am so in awe of you guys. I “used” to be a diligent scrapbooker but then life happens, kid & then I am thinking well maybe when she goes off to college I will finish! {sigh} but you guys MUST have a secret because doing these books takes a serious amount of time – am I right or am I right? lol
YoungHouseLove says
John just does a few months at a time (two hours in front of the TV after dinner one night might accomplish Jan-April, then another night he’ll tackle May-August, etc). I think breaking it down into manageable chunks (and doing it in front of the TV while relaxing on the sofa at night) isn’t too bad – and when the book comes John races to the mailbox. Haha! We get really excited to see it.
xo
s
Kathleen says
Love the yearbook idea – since my daughter was born I’ve been planning to do the same thing, but I have a LOT less free time as a SAHM with her!
On a side note, I just got my April copy of REAL SIMPLE magazine, and I wanted to congratulate you guys on your mention in their ‘Bookmark This Blog” highlight! Page 44 if you’re interested ;)
YoungHouseLove says
Ahhh! We haven’t seen that yet! So exciting!
xo
s
Sarah T says
I do this too (the yearbook idea)! Been doing it since 2006 when the hubs and I got married. I did one wedding album “traditional style” (for all the stuff besides pics like cards or other memorabilia) and one in Shutterfly. Been doing it ever since, using Shutterfly, for yearbooks, trips, etc. I give the yearbooks as gifts to my parents and in-laws every Christmas and they love them! Not only are they easier and smaller, but if something should happen – like I don’t know, your 3 year old spilling orange juice on one… – you can just reorder a new one and haven’t lost your precious photos forever!
Can’t wait to see what ya’ll are up to in that top photo!! Have a great weekend!
Christine says
Hi guys – I’ve been doing these for a while and giving them away at holiday time, especially once I scanned in all of our family’s old black & whites from great grandparents and such. I make a book for our aging aunts & uncles to keep which they always love. Anyway, I have a question and apologize up front for being so tech-unsavvy. I can’t figure out how to upload to MyPublisher photos from Instagram? Apologize, too, for not know how to do a search on all the replies here since someone may have asked/answered already. Thanks!
YoungHouseLove says
We save all of our Instagram photos in a folder in iPhoto, just like we do all of our other photos, so we just uploaded them from there. Since our iPhones sync the Instagram pictures to our iPhoto via Photostream we automatically get a copy saved every time we upload a pic to Instagram. If yours doesn’t do that, I’ve found you can go to your Instagram page (www.instagram.com/yourusername) and either take a screen capture or save the images manually from there. Hope that helps!
-John
Cara D says
Have you guys thought about putting your family blog into a book? I think Blurb even has an easy way of doing that. It would be nice for Clara someday you know in case a zombie apocalypse or something happens and there are no computers to check out the blog archives.
YoungHouseLove says
That would be cute! Love it!
xo
s
Alexis says
This is so FUN! Have you ever looked at the Snapfish website? They regularly run penny print and 50% off photo book sales. Just a thought!!
YoungHouseLove says
Thanks for the tip!
xo
s
Ian Anderson says
OMG! We’ve been doing the photo book thing for five years I think now.
It’s so important since we all went digital to have at least our favorites as hardcopy somehow, in case the rebel army or whatever set off a massive EMP and fry all the computers on the planet in 2022!
Joking, but you never know whats going to happen to stuff on computers, a photobook is REAL!
Just need to ‘retro’ print books for the years before we started doing the photobooks, if that makes sense!
Suzi says
I need to finish up my 2012 book too… I also love doing yearbooks. Though, now that we are a family or 5 (plus 2 kittens) I end up doing a book for each season of the year… I just can’t fit it all in otherwise! : )
Julie Ellen says
The beauty of these photo books is that you can often find a Groupon or other deal:
http://www.livingsocial.com/deals/624498?utm_campaign=3913921&utm_medium=affiliates&utm_source=cj
YoungHouseLove says
Great tip!
xo
s
Lauren says
I bet you guys are installing pot lights/can lights or recessed lights… whatever you call them lol… can’t wait to see!!
Ali says
Are ya’ll still happy with your Whirlpool Duets stack set?
What are the pro’s and the cons!?!
I’m in the market for a new washer and dryer set and wanted your thoughts?
~ Ali
YoungHouseLove says
Yes, so happy with them! We miss having the old counter over our first Whirlpools (in our first house) but we have been very happy with the stackable ones since side by sides wouldn’t have fit in this house :)
xo
s
Mark D. says
Cute picture book, I got one of those for Christmas from my kids and I love it. It’s a great coffee table addition.
Amy says
Not sure if this has already been posted but Living Social is having a deal for MyPublisher that expires in 3 days. They have a 20pg classic book for $9. I’m going to try it!! Not sure if I can add additional pages but I remembered you guys liked them :) We’ll see.
YoungHouseLove says
That’s awesome!
xo
s
Emily says
I love this. Definitely going to do this whenever I have my own little family.. I’m just not as camera happy as you guys (given my life is SO not as fun and exciting as y’alls), so I need to get started :D Such a cute idea!!
Cassandra says
Beautiful books! I love the idea of family yearbooks.
Did you use their formats or did you import images for full page spreads? I attempted using MyPublisher a few months ago wanting to design my own pages in Photoshop, then drop the images in, but ran into problems not knowing how much empty space room to allow for the binding. (I wanted to avoid cutting off pictures but didn’t want a huge gap, either.) I thought maybe ordering the lay-flat pages would be easier, but the formatting on the program looked the same, so I was still unsure if the cropping would look nice – I wasn’t sure of what adjustments to make, if any. I would just love to have a beautiful two-page spread.
I reached out to the company, and they gave great info on dimensions, but I haven’t had any luck figuring out how to compensate for the bindings. What was your experience?
Also, I noticed a lot of your photos go right up to the edge of the page. How did you ensure the photos went all the way to the bleed line? Do you just have then reach the bottom of the page and assume 1/8 inch or so would be cropped off?
Thanks so much! And again, your books are just stunning.
YoungHouseLove says
We used their formats, so it was nice and easy. As for the lay flat pages, we haven’t tried those but many commenters here have said they’re awesome and look amazing, so it sounds like they’re awesome! To ensure that things went all the way to the bleed line, we just previewed them all to be sure they were slightly larger than the bleed line and it all seemed to work. I’d just go a little outside of the box/bleed line and it should hopefully be all good!
xo
s
Cassandra says
Thanks!
Erin says
Hi Sherry! Just curious if you have any pages in the book that are really “wordy” to document any of the events in detail…. or is there just the summary page that you provided the picture of? I got my husband on board with this idea. It really is such a time saver too. I despise my current situation – which is having over two hundred photos to put in chronological order and then insert one-by-one into the album. Cheers!
YoungHouseLove says
There’s some type on a few of the pages (to describe an event or name people we thought we might later forget/get confused) but there’s not a full page of words or anything – it’s definitely picture heavy. Hope it helps!
xo
s
Sarah S. says
I was so inspired by your post, I downloaded MyPublisher and was determined to work on photobooks this weekend. But it doesn’t recognize iPhoto on my computer, so I can’t upload any of my pictures! I’ve called and spoken with a few of their customer service folks, and the only advice they had was to copy my pictures into a file on the desktop (meaning I’ll have multiple copies of my pictures on my computer- I don’t have the hard drive space for that).
Do you have any advice?
YoungHouseLove says
Oh no! We upload photos right from iPhoto to MyPublisher, so I have no idea why it’s doing that to you! How annoying! Does anyone else have advice for Sarah?
xo
s
maribel says
You mentioned you have average about 700 pictures in your book…so how many got axed. How do you you decide which get tossed and do you keep photos you dont use in the books. I’m having major anxiety about my pictures.
YoungHouseLove says
My only advice is that we just try to pick our favorites so we don’t have like 15 photos of the same activity (a trip to the part = 3 to 5 pics, so out of the 30 we took, we pick a few faves). It just helps me to look for “what we love most” than “what we want to cut” – for some reason cutting things is harder than saying “these three are my favorite” and then dropping those into the layout and moving on.
xo
s
Krista says
Love it! I used to “scrapbook” (it’s in quotes because I don’t think I have finished one scrapbook yet) but this year did a 12×12 album for 2012 thru Shutterfly – ordered with a 50% off coupon. WAY less expensive, quicker, easier, and great quality! I’m totally sold! Photo books are the way to go (I’m working backwards on previous years now:).
Krystal says
Your yearbook is beautiful! What size is it?
YoungHouseLove says
It’s the standard/classic size they sell on MyPublisher. Hope it helps!
xo
s
Jennie says
Have you tried Blurb.com? We use their “blog to book” option and get a book of 480 pages for about $100.
YoungHouseLove says
We haven’t tried it but it sounds awesome!
xo
s
Jan says
LOVE your books!
I hope this means you’re replacing the parquet floor!!!
danielle says
love you for posting this now!!! i just went through the mypublisher website to make our 2012 yearbook. i had it all finished in iTunes waiting to send to Apple for processing, but couldn’t stomach paying the $100+ for it. Apple does beautiful books, but never has promotions. Spent the past 2 days redoing it with the mypublisher application and just got 50% off!!!! thank you for the great tips!
YoungHouseLove says
Aw, I’m so glad Danielle!
xo
s
j says
love the yearbook idea. i have a couple of questions which probably have already been asked here. i’ve wanted to scrapbook my kids first year, sort of like a baby memory book combined with photos (since i never got around to it)except i don’t know how to create a scrapbook. this seems like the next best option for me. would a photobook allow me to add text and include milestones?
also, i don’t edit my photos. wish i knew how to with photoshop. does my publisher give you the option to edit as you’re attaching photos to the album?
thanks much and best of luck on all future endeavors!!
YoungHouseLove says
I think you can crop things and move them around in MyPublisher but you should edit the pics before you upload them. And yes, you can definitely add text and milestones to each page if you’d like :)
xo
s
Linds Makrygi says
Yay yay yay! I just received my copy of your book all the way out here in South Africa! We got married 3 weeks ago and are currently house hunting for our very own ”project”, so we can’t wait to page through it and start getting excited!
Just love this photo book post – I’ve been collecting photo’s of us for the past two years to start out a family album, but haven’t sat down and got it printed yet – thanks for the inspiration!
YoungHouseLove says
Aw thanks Linds! It’s amazing to hear that our book is all the way in South Africa! That’s amazing.
xo
s
Lindsey says
So cute! I have a sort of related question – how do you guys deal with storing all the digital copies of your photos? I imagine that between the blog and family photos you must take thousands per year. Do you keep the digital copies or delete them after a while?
YoungHouseLove says
We just keep one folder of “Family Pics 2013” and dump them all in there, but since it’s in iPhoto it automatically keeps them in chronological order and then when we build our photo book we just grab the ones we love most and keep them in order from the folder :)
xo
s