preserving memories

[gingerB]

not talking medically -- talking pics

I want to start printing and displaying, storing, etc... our pics soon. I thought it'd be nice and helpful thing to gather a thread of resources, ideas, tips. Things such as your favorite place to print -- for family vs more professionally. Good brands/place to buy albums, memory books, scrapbooks, frames, photo boxes. Pictures of your projects involving photos, etc...

I'd love to start it off, but I'm one of those whose memories are all still stuck in a hard drive Too intimidated to get started...so help?

eta: oh and best sites for photo books!

 

[soocool]

My mom taught my sister and me to scrapbook a ton of years ago. This included photos with momentos from the events we recorded (i.e. photos from our day at the beach mayhave included a a little sea shell, ticket stubs from the rides we went on, the wrapper from a Cracker Jacks surprise, etc.). That's how we did things before computers. I myself have scanned all our photos (pre digital era) into our computer and have spent many hours editing the photos (my dad was great at cutting people's heads off).

I use 2 scrapbook programs (Printmaster and Scrapbook Deluxe) to make my scrapbook pages and back them up (along with my photos) to my external drive and keep in a safe deposit box to keep them protected.

In addition to a physical album, I have also made scrapbook dvd's (I use Adobe PhotoShop) to watch on tv or a computer. I set many of these to music or voice narrate. I find these really work well for vacation photos because I can use up all the photos we have taken rather than just choosing a select few for a scrapbook page.. I have given these as gifts to family in the past few years and I like the fact that it does not take up any storage room. My father who is in his 80s watches at least one everyday. He likes to relive and revisit the past often.

 

[dragonfly411]

I was given a little picture printer for Christmas last year that I use to print our pictures with. I mostly keep photo albums but I am going to be venturing into the world of scrapping. I also have kept many things as memories and include them. SO has a book I made for him with pictures of things to remind him of memories we have made together (like a picture of our fav restaurant in a certain place, a picture of a black and mild b/c we tried one together, picture of turkeys b/c we chased some on foot once at my family's old farm). It has candy wrappers with cute quotes, and dried rose petals from roses he gave me. Etc.

 

[jcrow]

great idea ginger! i used sutterfly to print wedding pics and like them but recently i used them again to print em's pictures and i've been very disappointed. their wallet size isn't the standard wallet size. and they come 4 up on a page so you have to cut them yourself. several times the pictures on the SAME page weren't even consistent in size. super frustrating when i designed something to fit the pic and it's never the same size. grr. even more frustrating is that i've had to reprint something because the color was off. very off. and this last month, my favorite pic turned out terrible with them. she looks like she has red hair and the white of her dress is blue. definitely different than the original pic. i mean i know that color looks different printed than on screen, but not *that* different.

i've heard excellent things about mpix and plan to use them in the future.

i've used mypublisher to print a photo book and it was ok. def. not professional as far as the weight of the paper goes, but i got what i was expecting. plus their software was easy to use.

i've also used leather craftsmen for my prof. wedding album. loved it. definitely quality. it's what the pros use. you also pay for it though. i'm anal [and design for a living] so i liked designing my own album. time consuming, but worth it for me.

i have TONS of pictures on my computer. before i got a new hard drive, i had something like 20,000. not all of em and it's years worth of pics. but still. i need to find a better solution for backing up. the services i've looked into only back up what's physically on your computer. if you delete something from your computer, it deletes it from their backup too. not what i want. i want somewhere to house pics off of my computer but still having access from my computer. i had a fancy dancy pro hard drive. a couple of weeks in and it crashed. got it replaced and it quickly crashed again. good thing i hadn't transferred everything and deleted. that would have sucked. so now, i'm looking for an other option because i'm scared to trust that again.

also, for em's good pics [i do one weekly, two monthly + misc.] i edit them in photoshop [for color, etc.] and put them on flickr. that way family can have access to pics of her too since they don't live nearby.

probably more info that you were looking for. haha.

 

[Mara]

add me into the camp of i'd love to do more but hardly have any time to be creative people...since i know there's a ton of us out there HA!

printing photos:
right now i use ritzpix, a local place, to print photos. they do 1 hour free and there is one near my mom's house so i just upload them, buy them, pay and she picks them up for me next time she is over there. i upload about once a month maybe, more like once every 2 months so i print like 100-200 pics at once (for family too). they have tues and wed specials of 6cents a photo so i try to print then to save a ton of money (regular days are like 12cents).

then i have a photo album i am making for him, this cream leather bound C&B album i had kicking around for years thinking 'what to do with this'...now i know. it holds like 500 photos! i try to print photos that always represent diff stages in his life. so like tummy time, sitting up, eating, etc along with all the requisite 'these are so cute' photos and him in diff outfits!

i tried shutterfly but i felt like their print quality was not as good as this local place. also since this place does one hour and they have specials and almost always have coupons i would prefer not to wait 4 days to get my photos. usually if i think about it, it's because a date is coming up where i'll see family or something and i want photos to give them.

frames:
i love target and marshalls for good deals. i have gotten most of our frames there. but our local shop (same where i get the pix printed) often has specialty frames that are sooo cute. like they had a brushed silver frame that said things like 'grandma and me' and 'daddy and me' so i got one for my mom and one for greg and put a photo of J in there with each of them for gifts. and i like getting little collage frames from target and putting updates pics in every few months for my grandma and my mom. at marshalls etc you can find a lot of 'random' frames at good prices. oh and if you have an aaron brothers near you they often have buy one get one for 1 cent deals or 50% off deals and they have a TON of frames, even large ones.

memory box:
then i have a memory box that i am filling for him. it's an ikea laminated cardboard box (in green), super simple and big, i got a set of two for $7.99 and they are like double shoebox size maybe. i put a bunch of his baby stuff in there, what he wore from the hospital, a few of his newborn outfits, newborn diaper, umbilical cord stump, birth announcement, a CD of his professional baby pics, baby socks, hospital bracelets, etc. it's almost like a time capsule, but i keep adding to it. i'll add a lock of his hair when we cut it etc. i imagine i'll fill a few of these and he may not even want all the stuff later but if he does it's there!

backup drive/photos/videos:
i also have a backup drive from seagate, the goflex or whatever. LOVE IT. it's plug and play, super easy to use and it's 500GB and was $80 with free prime ship on amazon. i bought it on a friday morning when i knew i had a slow wkd, it arrived the next morning and i spent the wkd backing up all my pix from 2 laptops for the last 6-7 years. since the videos of J take up a lot of space too, this is key. i plan to get one more for greg to use and it will also be the 'backup' of our backup.

online pix for family:
i use FB for family pics (tagging them) so far, putting them on a remote site like shutterfly was too much of a PITA again because now i use this local place--so i just send them pix whenever we have stuff that's printable. but mostly they see them online.

memory book:
and i have a memory book for him from etsy. i only write in it maybe once a month which sucks, i should do it more because there are so many little things that i am not remembering. but i can't find the time ugh.

that's as far as we have gotten with any of the preserving or commemorative stuff. i am just trying to cover the basics so i don't miss any huge things that i regret later. i like scrapbooking but it's expensive and takes time so i'm not that into it now, maybe later. i bought the handprint footprint mold thing and never did it and omg is it too late? i feel silly doing it at 7mo. but i guess i'll feel even sillier when he's 5 and he's like why don't i have molds of my feet (because i know kids think that right? HA!).

 

[jcrow]

mara, good idea about the box to put stuff in. we'll probably do the same. right now her stuff is in her night table drawer.

also, i have a blog for em that only family and a few friends know about. it's a super gushy-look-at-what-she's-doing-now type. but my family loves it. i think it's great too since they are so far away. i kinda use that as her baby book even though technically she has one.

 

[Mara]

yeah JC i wanted a box for a while and thought i might get something more 'commemorative' and/or engraved for him like from red envelope. but then pandora mentioned she got daisy's boxes at ikea and i thought great idea because i can get a few, they are standard/cute looking and come in diff colors and easily stored.

real quick for the new moms or about-to-be-moms who might be reading this...if you use FB for any type of birth announcements or to update while you are laboring/hospital bound etc. we did that and it was so great to hear/read all of the responses to J's birth. but i slacked off and did not print or save any of those pages like my wall, statuses etc. and FB doesn't seem to archive those. so i think i have lost all of the 50+ congrats we got on his birth as well as my updated statuses etc. i really wanted to go back and print those out but it didn't work. i do have a few of his newborn pix that i was able to go back and find/print along with comments but the status stuff was just fun and could have gone into his memory box too. just a note to have someone print this for you within the first few days after birth if you also do the FB update thing.

 

[soocool]

I have one printer dedicated to printing photos and it is very good on ink. But when I have tons to print I go to Ritz Camera. Sometimes I get photos printed at the Kodak Website (poster size prints)

 

[monarch64]

yeah JC i wanted a box for a while and thought i might get something more 'commemorative' and/or engraved for him like from red envelope. but then pandora mentioned she got daisy's boxes at ikea and i thought great idea because i can get a few, they are standard/cute looking and come in diff colors and easily stored.

real quick for the new moms or about-to-be-moms who might be reading this...if you use FB for any type of birth announcements or to update while you are laboring/hospital bound etc. we did that and it was so great to hear/read all of the responses to J's birth. but i slacked off and did not print or save any of those pages like my wall, statuses etc. and FB doesn't seem to archive those. so i think i have lost all of the 50+ congrats we got on his birth as well as my updated statuses etc. i really wanted to go back and print those out but it didn't work. i do have a few of his newborn pix that i was able to go back and find/print along with comments but the status stuff was just fun and could have gone into his memory box too. just a note to have someone print this for you within the first few days after birth if you also do the FB update thing.

Mara, I know it's been several months now since your J was born, but are you SURE you can't get back to the updates and comments? I just went back (out of curiosity) on mine almost two months and all of the comments were there from when I announced our engagement. I know you don't have a lot of time to fool around with it, but maybe one of your FB friends could help you out by going back and printing those things? It's worth a try?

 

[Pandora II]

- I use PS to record things and then collate all my posts every 6 months and edit them into a journal.

- DH set up an email account for Daisy and sent it to all the relatives. He sends her an email with updates on things that she does and odd bits and pieces. I email her for things like her first birthday and the relatives send random things. I manage the account but I've never opened any of the emails - they'll all be there waiting for her when she's old enough. I do admit I have a nasty feeling she might delete them all in a teenage temper tantrum though!

- A baby book with things like her scan photos, dates of when she did things and a lock of hair from when she was a couple of weeks old (she had this one really long bit of hair at the back of her neck which I chopped off to match the rest) and one from when I first cut her hair a few months ago - the colour difference is amazing!

- Big archive box from IKEA where I have her hospital bracelets, the first clothes she wore, a bunch of dried roses from the bouquets we were sent, all the cards, her first pair of shoes etc.

I also have another box where I keep my favourites of her clothes and ones that she might want for her possible future children - I knitted some 100% wool matinee jackets from my grandmother's old 1930's knitting patterns which are timeless and there are some of the baby clothes that my great-great aunts made and that Daisy was the 3rd generation to wear. I also keep things like hand-smocked dresses.

When she's a bit older I'll do scrapbooks with her for all our summer holidays - I have some from my childhood and love looking through them.

 

[Mara]

Thanks Monnie..funny after I posted this I actually spent some time going back today clicking that 'older posts' thing repeatedly and finally got to the posts..! It took me about an hour to go back the 7months. Then I managed to copy the actual url's of a few of the posts so I could save the pages specifically, but not all of them, don't know why. So I got like 1/2 of what I wanted to...but better than nothing I guess!!!

But still for anyone thinking of doing the 'track me while I'm laboring' thing and wanting to print that out, have a friend do it so you don't go DOH later like I did!!!

 

[gingerB]

mara - yay for getting the facebook posts back!! and THANKS for the ritzpics info. I found one near us and I'm hopeful they do as good a job for us!

pandora - i LOVE the email account idea. it's like an electronic journal. i'm going to try to convince hubbs to do it and at some point in his life print out the emails and bind them into a journal.

hmmm...seems like lots of ps'ers collect their ps posts. who knew their would be double benefits from posting on ps? i need to start doing that also.

jc - i had a similar experience with shutterfly. some pics turned out well, and others were oompa loompa quality -- colors were BAD. i have the same worries about backing up my pics. I have an external hard drive right now, but it seems finicky. let me know if you find anyhthing! the mpix place looks intriquing for when i need the higher quality stuff.

dragon - what a sweet memory book! i used to save things like that, but in a fit of de-clutter frenzy i threw most of it away =(

soooocool - scrap book programs? didn't know about these! i love the idea of digital scrap books. i assume you make them from these programs?

so i grew up using those magnetic page albums and really like how its a blank page and i have a little dreative contrl over how to arange the pics, but it was still fast and easy. i'm not a huge fan of the slip in albums as they seem too rigid. but scrapbooking and all it's hoopla intimidates me as i'm not SUPER creative...not to mention expensive and the time suckage! so i think i've finally decided on doing a hybrid. I bought simple black leather postbound albums and plan to do plain black or white backgrounds. i personally like the minimalistic look. i also got a few packages of the adhesive photo corners (as well as seperate adhesive) and a few simple labels so i can put notes on some of the pages -- kind of giving it a slight vintage-y feel (with the photo corners), but still a very clean look. and eliminates my sense of pressure from doing anything too creative -- lol. we'll see how it turns out.

i've already spent a butt load on supplies -- luckily michael's scrap book stuff is on sale and i got a ton of stuff for a decent price, but still. ouch.

i want to do some photo books too, but for somethings there's still that tactile sense of memory that you get from a prints album that's different from a printed page y'know?

 

[Mara]

oh good ginger...yeah i had our prof photos printed there since i bought the large files to print myself and they did a FABULOUS job, they came out wonderful and so much cheaper than having the photographer do them. i also tried snapfish but again colors were weird. i think sometimes it has to do with the digital camera and how it captures but other times i was thinking seriously why is his face PINK here but not online??

one thing about digital pics is for whatever reason i apparently have my camera setting on something weird so it doesn't make 'normal' sizes so ritz makes me either manually crop them or will do it 'automatically' for me. it takes me like 5 min to manually do it so i don't worry much about it but i should prob figure out the setting to make them whatever the regular sizing is.

 

[soocool]

Ginger,

As for the scrapbooking programs you can check out this: http://www.broderbund.com/p-137-printma ... m-181.aspx

They have different versions and you can do lots more than just greeting cards or scrapbooking. You can publish to the web, create CDs or DVDs, slideshows, etc. I have even made T-shirt designs on here and ironed them on. (you can get special paper for t-shirt transfers).
I have made calendars, business cards, brochures and DD has used it a lot for projects for school.

 

[monarch64]

Thanks Monnie..funny after I posted this I actually spent some time going back today clicking that 'older posts' thing repeatedly and finally got to the posts..! It took me about an hour to go back the 7months. Then I managed to copy the actual url's of a few of the posts so I could save the pages specifically, but not all of them, don't know why. So I got like 1/2 of what I wanted to...but better than nothing I guess!!!

But still for anyone thinking of doing the 'track me while I'm laboring' thing and wanting to print that out, have a friend do it so you don't go DOH later like I did!!!

Awesome, and sigh of relief for you here. Of course you always give great advice and it is obviously a PITA to get back to FB stuff. Glad you found some of yours.