More blog book info!

I just got an email from Blog2Print saying that they just added new features. You can now delete individual posts from being in your book, they've upped the amount of photos from 1000, to 1500 (good news for me!), and they now have the "snapshot" option so that you can keep your captions and photos associated with their photos. I'm excited about this! ☺ Here is a coupon code for 15% off a blog book.
 Expires March 31st.

newb2p

http://www.blog2print.sharedbook.com/

ABC's Book

I made one of these for Aidan 

Just a little book for him to draw and color in. The idea is if they are old enough to draw pictures of things that start with the letter that is on the page. Like my Bug, Ball or Bee on the "B" page. If they aren't old enough, like Aidan, I draw stuff and then he can doodle.

I just took 15 pieces of paper (enough for the alpabet and a couple extra drawing pages) and I was just going to fold them in half and staple in the middle to make it a book, but my stapler and staples are wussy. So instead I had to punch holes in the paper 2-3 sheets at a time.

Just make sure you are consistent on where you are punching the holes. (example coming up)

Don't bother noticing how evenly spaced mine are and all that. ☺

Then I used ribbon to tie it all together...yarn or something would work too.

Then go through and write a capital letter and lower case letter (notice my holes! See, you gotta pay attention to where you are punching those holes!)

FYI: I used cheap construction paper and then tried to write the letters with a marker and as you can see, it bled through the paper, so I switched to a crayon.

First quilt/ blanket

I know, revel in the beauty...

I always believed that there was a rule about your first quilt needing to be ugly and I took that to heart! (I took it to heart so well that my next 3-4 blankets were hideous too)  I made this in high school and some of the squares were articles of clothing that meant something (i.e. I was having a hard time just getting rid of) and other peoples articles of clothing that didn't mean anything.

Check out the back! Nice.

I don't know, there were a couple of times I thought about getting rid of this blanket because it's so ugly but then I remember how warm it is. When I was going to school in Siberia (Err, I mean Logan) my roommates dubbed this blanket "the heater", Tara and Tiffany used it often. So now I hide it in the closet and consider leaving it in our vehicle in case we get stranded in the middle of nowhere during a snowstorm, at least we won't freeze to death.

And that is how to NOT make a quilt.

Blog Book Revisited

So a lot of people have been interested in the blog books. So far the two best sites (that I've seen) for doing blog books are http://www.blurb.com/ and http://www.blog2print.sharedbook.com/. I think price wise they are pretty much the same. I've used the blog2print site for both of my books, but that is because I'm LAZY. I've seen some books from blurb.com and they are awesome too.  Blurb is awesome if you want to actually go and format each page and picture and you can make the pictures however big you want, etc....much like a photobook. I take WAY too many pictures and don't have the time want to do that much effort. ☺ For me, at this time in my life, blog2print is the best option. I just do the upload, they do all the formatting, EVERYTHING. I pick the cover, pick photos for the back and front, titles, etc...decide if I want comments included or not, order.

The End.

 Right now that works for me. Someday though I would like to take the time and do a book from blurb. Someday.

Note that my books are 200+ pages. I can't remember if there is a limit on pages, but they do limit it to 1000 photos so I can only do about 4-5 months per book.  I'm not sure about blurb's policy on that.

Also, with blog2print, the words will not be in the same layout that they are on the blog, meaning that if I have pictures labeled on my blog, they won't be labeled in the book. I have to say that right now it doesn't bother me that it does that, but if it bothers you, then you'll probably want to do your book through blurb.

Here is the hardback book

Here is the softback

Personally, I prefer the hardback and it's worth paying the extra money. The front of the books

and the back

the intro page

the hardback also has the title on the spine, the softback does not

Looking back on cakes...

Ok, I have to say that writing this post made me feel REALLY old. Rosaleen and I started decorating cakes probably when I was 12 or 13. We were doing it through 4-H, but basically we were self teaching ourselves. Kath would come help us out on some of our projects.

Here is a cake I made for my brother during his obsession with Titanic, so I would say it was 1997? 98? Yes, that's supposed to be Titanic in water. ☺

When I was a senior in highschool we were fundraising like crazy for a cross country school trip that we were planning. I made most of my money doing bake sale type things...I made lots of pies and decorated cakes. I even took pictures of most of the cakes, but unfortunately my camera and my skillz were lacking and most of my photos look like the one above and the one below, so I only posted a couple.

I made this one of the 12 tribes for a feast weekend in 2001.

Caleb's b-day 2001

Gwendy's wedding 2001

Sharon and Chandra had birthday's the same week as Gwendy's wedding so I decorated their cakes using leftover flowers and frosting. ☺

Craig and Gretchen's Wedding...2004?

John and Nomi's wedding (2004) I screwed up big time, I was supposed to do squiggly white on the very top cake over the brown frosting and to this day I don't know why I forgot to do that. =P

Jenny and Bryan's wedding cake, 2004

In my defense of these horrible photos, most of these, if not all, were taken with a 35mm camera.

I made a lot of Janille's kids birthday cakes, but in true fashion, I never took pictures of them which is kind of bummer.

End Table

So before we were married I found this table thing that had been thrown out and had been outside for a few years so it was a little bit weathered, but I used it anyway.  It was starting too look worse, so we finally decided to do something with it in the Spring of 2008.

Don't be fooled by these pictures, I actually ended up doing most of the work. ☺

Almost finished

Done!

Moral of the story, almost 2 years later Aidan has chipped the top already so I'll probably have to redo atleast the top sometime. Durn kids. ☺ I'm still glad we did it though, it looks much better than before.

Lamp

I used to be a bit of junk collector....(Who me?)

 I found this vase somewhere, and took it moms house years ago. Well, a little while ago, mom had the audacity to try and get rid of it. (just kidding, mom) ☺ I saw it in her trash pile and took it back home with me where I turned it into a lamp.

Just added a lamp kit and lamp shade. Viola.

It was sitting on a storage box while I was working on our end table.