My Blog Book, Volume 1

If you know me, you know I'm not a scrapbooker. (Though I'm trying, right Renae?) I just have never gotten into it, NOT because I don't enjoy it, but because I try to be too fancy and one page ends up taking me 2 hours. So...I've sort of let that hobby pass me by. Now, I will say that when I got pregnant I was SO FRICKIN excited that I actually started a scrapbook to document the journey! I completed 9 fancy pages!! (With pop dots, and eyelets and stickers and tear paper, etc.) And just when I had completed those pages I learned that I had had a miscarriage.. And just like that, my desire to scrapbok was once again, gone.

So you can imagine that when I learned I was pregnant again (with triplets, no less) I was not about to jump into something that takes so much time and energy and money at the risk of losing one or all of the babies and being left devastated once again. I just couldn't do it. What I can do, and what I enjoy doing is writing.

Conveniently, right about the time I learned I was pregnant with triplets, my friend Nicole had started blogging and I was intrigued! Now this was something I could get into. So...I started a blog of my own. And I just wrote about doctor's appointments and ultrasounds and things I thought maybe my out of town relatives might be interested to know about...and before I knew it, more and more people started reading it. And then those people told other people and suddenly our journey became your journey and writing about our adventures became that much more exciting.

Blogging is like writing a diary-for the public. :) Well, all along the way, people have said, "You need to print this out so you'll have it forever and your kids will know what you went through to get them." So, as a wonderfully unexpected gift, my scrappy scrapbookin' sister, mom and aunt started printing my blog page by page, and made me a beautiful keepsake "blog book" for my baby shower. But it took time. More than they probably told me.

Well, I had come across a program that you download onto your computer which then allows you to upload your posts and pictures one at at time creating a beautiful, hardbound blog book. Sounded pretty awesome to me! Except the part where I would have to select posts individually, and choose pictures to drag in, etc. Frankly, I just didn't have the time to do that.

But I kept blogging away until one day I saw a quick blurb about "blog 2 print"...so I googled it and came across the website Sharedbook.com. THIS WAS THE ANSWER TO MY BLOGGING PRAYERS!

I'll keep this short and sweet. If you want to print your blog into a hardbound, yearbook quality book, go to this website, choose which blog platform you use (blogspot, typepad or wordpress) and then type in the name of your blog. It searches the internet for your blog. When it finds it, you select the date range you want to include in your book, you choose whether to include comments people have written or not, you choose the cover design you like best, you choose photos for the front, back and dedication page, you write a dedication and then you select "Preview your book."

It will actually show you sort of in PDF manner, each page of your book. You can click page by page through the entire book if you so choose. Then you select Print if you're happy. If not, you go back and make changes.

The whole process could take you probably 20 minutes. (Mine took a little longer because apparently there is a limit of about 1800 photos per book, and I had a few more than was allowed...so I had to break my blog up into so far 3 separate books...)

But I ordered the first book to see if I liked it enough to order the next ones, and it arrived 3 weeks later! The first book is about 170 pages and it cost me $65.00. The next volume is twice as thick and thus twice as much. But here's the thing. Now having seen the book in person, and having it as a keepsake forever, I can tell you it is worth every penny. And, you can send others the link to your book and if they like they can purchase a PDF copy for like $7.95 or they can have their own hardbound book printed and mailed to them!

So here it is...my blog book, volume 1!

Just givin' you an idea how thick it is. (It could be more or less depending on what you choose to print.)

You write the dedication if you want (and can also include a picture)
It begins with a nice table of contents...mine is spread out on three pages.

And here is a sample of some pages and how it looks printed.

Closer look at an entry. If you blog using color text, it will not print the text in color, however it does leave bolded text bolded, which is kind of nice.

Then you choose a picture for the back cover!

And that my friends, is a blog book!