What Do You Do With All The Pictures on Your Phone?
Everyone has thousands of pictures on their phone, and most of us don’t know what to do with them. But eventually we are going to run out of storage, or we end up having to erase them or find them in the cloud (Does anyone know where that is?). Here is an idea that, if you can find the time, it will be the most precious gift you could ever give yourself.
FAMILY YEARBOOKS!
Most of us get a school yearbook every single year for our children, and if we are lucky, we will find a few pictures of our precious child in there, so why not take the time to create a family yearbook of everyone in your family every year? Interested? Read on….
First, find a website that allows you to make photo albums.
Shutterfly, Mixbooks, Snapfish, etc. Start uploading your pictures to the site in an organized fashion. You can put the website’s app on your phone to make it easy to upload your pictures regularly with the click on one button. Upload your pictures, and at the end of every month, put them in folders organized by month. At the end of the year, you will go into each folder, month by month and create a monthly page or two (or 10, depending on the number of pictures you want in the book). Each website gives you an option to make a photo album however you want to make it. You have the option to create your pages yourself and drag your photos onto page layouts that you create, or you have the option for the website to randomly place your pictures on the pages. You can be as creative or in control as you want, or if you are short on time, you can take advantage of the technology at hand. Most websites have photo albums that are titled “Yearbooks,” and these books have fun themes and stickers based on holidays and seasons, and you can easily go from January to December, capturing your family memories in a fun memorable way.
Something to pass down to future generations
The best part about this is you get to go down memory lane as you are making the books, and you are creating something that you can pass down for generations. Also, all of our pictures are securely saved to a website that also gives you option for making additional things with personalized photos on them (cards, mugs, blankets, etc). Gone are the days when we would get all of our pictures developed at the photo lab and store them in boxes by year. Or spending hours and hours making scrapbooks with these printed pictures. Now, you can make photo albums on your computer, with as much creativity as you want to use, and these books will last a lifetime.
Gift giving options
Another benefit of making these family yearbooks is that you can print as many as you would like and give them as gifts. Grandparents love getting pictures from their family; this is the perfect gift that they can enjoy anytime they want to go down memory lane. I have found that all these websites that offer photo albums run sales all of the time. You can make your yearbooks and then wait until a great sale is going on, preferably 50% off, and then order them at a great price!
I take it one year at a time, one yearbook at a time. I started making these yearbooks when my children were little, but it is never too late to start! Sometimes, I remind myself that instead of wasting time scrolling through social media, I can do something productive with my own memories instead of looking at other people’s memories. Some people may be at a point in their life where they might be looking for a hobby. Maybe it’s time to find a hobby that is enjoyable, fun, and that gives you something that will become a forever keepsake. It does take some time, and you will find yourself laughing and crying during this project, but I promise you, you won’t regret it!
My family and I joke all the time about what we would take if we ever had to leave for a hurricane, not knowing what we would come back to, and I say I would grab the kids and the yearbooks, and my husband says he would grab the dog!
As you can see, these yearbooks will become your very most treasured possession, after the kids and the dog of course…