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Young House Love » Favorites » How We Make Our Annual Family Photo Book

| By John Petersik | March 7, 2013 | 375 Comments

How We Make Our Annual Family Photo Book

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:

Our Family Picture Tradition Making Space And Money Saving Photo Yearbooks Title Card

Yup, we’re currently experiencing a resurgence of 2012 love thanks to the recent arrival of the 2012 Petersik Family Yearbook.

MyPublisher Bound Photobook With A Year Worth Of Family Photos

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.

Previous Family Yearbook Albums From 2009 2010 2011 2012

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.

Screenshot Of MyPublisher Discount Deal Of Free Extra Pages Saving 80 Dollars

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.

Front Page of Family Yearbook With Bulleted List of Highlights From 2012

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!

Yearbook Family Album Spread Featuring Photos of Of Book Photoshoots

Yearbook Family Album Spread Featuring Photos Of Hawaii Trip

Yearbook Family Album Spread Featuring Photos Of Worm Birthday Party

Yearbook Family Album Spread Featuring Photos Of Building Deck

Yearbook Family Album Spread Featuring Photos Of Summer Vacation

Yearbook Family Album Spread Featuring Photos Of Preschool Starting

Yearbook Family Album Spread Featuring Photos Of Book Tour

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.

Yearbook Family Album Spread Featuring Photos Of Instagram Photos

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.

Stack Of Three Family Album Annual Yearbooks Printed With MyPublisher

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…

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John and Sherry Sitting On Woven ChairHey, we’re John & Sherry. We’ve fixed up 7 homes, written books, designed products, started a podcast, and then downsized & moved to the beach! Here you’ll find over 3,000 DIY projects & home updates. More about us…
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