The First Ever Moore Family Scrapbook

My mother is a scrapbook artist. She has systematically immortalized the history of our family in many beautiful scrapbooks. For many years she used Creative Memories products and scrapbooks and in the last handful of years she has embraced the wonders of Shutterfly.com. Are you familiar with the wonders of Shutterfly? I mean...goodness. It's fantastic. I'm such a fan. But more on that later; back to my mom's scrapbooks. They're treasures, and they're such a great way to share what your family has been up to at friend/family/holiday gatherings. I can remember many Thanksgivings where Mom would sit with my grandmother and show the latest scrapbook that told the story of our year.

I started thinking about putting together a scrapbook at the end of last year. I wanted to be able to share our family's happenings with people the way my mother had always been able to, and I figured I would appreciate keeping up with said scrapbooks each year rather than finding myself in a position where I had to catch up several years from now. My instinct was to use my [extremely extensive] Instagram photos rather than sift through other photos on my computer. I decided to go this route for a couple of reasons:

• I'm pretty terrible about using either of my cameras to take pictures, because - let's be painfully honest - my phone is always within arm's reach and that's way easier. 
• Most pictures that I take end up on Instagram anyway (again...painfully honest here). 
• Instagram serves as a kind of continuously updated scrapbook on its own, and all I would have to do is narrow down. 

As it turns out, all those reasons held up and that's the route I stuck with. I did, however, have to narrow down a lot. I think I have a problem, guys. I post entirely too many Instagram pictures.

But...as far as how I came up with the format and function of the actual book, I had a couple things that I considered. I wanted to come up with a style and format that I could duplicate for years to come, so all my yearly books could be displayed next to each other and have the same kind of feel/function/theme. I also wanted the book to end up being on the petite side, which meant that I really had to narrow down pictures, but more on that later. I also wanted very little (or no) words throughout the book, but rather for the photos to fill the pages and speak for themselves. So I got to work with those goals in mind and put together a book for 2012 and 2013 (I decided to go this route because I didn't get my iPhone - and therefore Instagram - until halfway through 2012). It took me several weeks but I got it done...but I just wasn't convinced that it was what I wanted. I wasn't really sure why, I just knew it wasn't right. So I left it alone for a while and forgot about it, knowing that I would come back to it eventually.

So when my favorite bloggers blew my mind with their own yearly scrapbook post, I did indeed go back to my own book. The big thing that I took away from the Young House Love scrapbook was that they had a page at the front of the book that listed all the highlights of the year. That really jumped out at me, and I decided my scrapbooks needed that feature too. Adding that page also made me feel better about leaving the rest of the book word-free like I'd planned. After adding that page, I sliced and diced photos like I was an insane person. I forgot to pay attention to how many pages ended up being cut, but I will say that I had completely maxed out on pages and edited down to a reasonable 50 pages. (In case you're unfamiliar with Shutterfly, that means that I also dropped my little project by many, many dollars.) Some ways that I accomplished this was by simply minimizing the amount of pictures that document each event (ex: I had originally included almost all 15 pictures taken at the Buffalo Trace Distillery when we visited in May, but ended up cutting it down to just one). The point, after all, is to document that we went there/did that/visited that person and not to share every single picture I felt the need to take during those times. The new streamlined version, after taking advantage of a couple different promo codes that dropped the price and eliminated shipping costs, this baby came in at a grand total of $30. So great, and so much better than the original effort that would have cost me approximately $130 (not kidding). The finished result came in the mail today and I can't stop freaking out about how much I love it. I'm most definitely going to be forcing it on everyone I can over the next several months I'm sure, so get ready friends. But here's a preview now.

I decided to keep the cover of the book simple and classic. The spine's color is showing up a little bit more gold than reality in this photo; it's actually just a beige. The book's title and dates also show up on the spine, which you can see below. 

(Yet another unabashed shout out to Young House Love.) 

The first page, like I mentioned, has the highlights of 2012-2013, stretching back to New Year's 2012 even though photos don't start until July of that year. How could I pass up an opportunity to at least document the beginning of our relationship and our engagement? 

Almost everything that's listed here is documented later in the book with photos, but there's plenty that happened that's in the photos and not listed here (you follow that sentence?). My point is that I like that you can read this list of our year(s) and then flip through the pages and see the photos that stood out from those trips and events. Here are a couple random examples of what the rest of the book looks like:

I'm extremely happy with how this little guy turned out, and I've already resisted the urge to start working on 2014's book. It was so much fun to go through the digital version on Shutterfly's website the night before I ordered it, and show the hubs what I had been working on. Some pictures made us laugh as he remembered moments he had forgotten (that bird in our living room, in the top right of the bottom picture, for example). Some pictures just show the fun year and a half we had together, visiting friends and family, working on projects around the house, and seeing our puppy grow. Some pictures discreetly documented the loss and pain we felt last summer after the miscarriage, which hold a special place in my heart. 

Really, at the end of the day, this is just a scrapbook. Nothing crazy and nothing revolutionary. But it's our first family scrapbook, and I'm excited about it. So humor me.