picaboo

Thanks to Picaboo for sponsoring this post. To learn more about Picaboo photo books, cards, calendars and other printed products visit http://www.picaboo.com?siteID=B_BR. I was selected for this sponsorship by the Clever Girls Collective, which endorses Blog With Integrity, as I do.

Throughout the last 5 years, I’ve collected thousands of images of my life with those I love. I have bridals, boudoirs, engagements, wedding, maternity, newborn pictures and many, many  shot with our old point and shoot. Add to that the images I’ve snapped with my new camera since Christmas and Leyna’s arrival, and we’ve got enough pictures to plaster the inside of our house from top to bottom, left to right.

And yet, I’d say .05% of them are printed or framed. They all live in my computer, on hard drives, flash drives, photo sharing accounts and old DVDs. This picture?

Not framed. This one?

Not printed in a photo book for Kendall to look back on in 20 years. This one?

Destined to only be seen when scrolling through my photo album on my Mac, locked away in a computer.

That’s why 2011 is the year of the frame and photo book in this house. I’m going to get these amazing images we’ve captured of our family blooming off of this damn computer and into the real world.

Enter Picaboo. One of the many things Picaboo does is allow you to create one-of-a-kind photo books, simply. The last time I created a photo book about 4 years ago, it took forever to get the look I was going for. I spent hours in PowerPoint arranging pictures in a layout I liked and then uploading them as a jpg. You can see why I haven’t been jumping on the photo book bandwagon since having babies, then. I was so intimidated by the amount of time I thought it would take.

With Picaboo, all I had to do was download their photo book design software and get to work. I was even able to work on it from the road without an internet connection. The software makes it super simple to select the pictures you want in your book from your photo library on your computer or from a disk or flash drive. Once you have the pictures uploaded, the real creative fun begins.

Now, you can still get a very persoalized book, laid out just the way you’d like with the “From Scratch” option. But, what I like best is that you don’t *have* to spend all that time personalizing to get a great looking book that’s anything but generic by using the “Auto Create” option. Using one of the many, many amazing templates, you can still make changes to make the layout work best for you and your pictures. And by using the “Story Flow” option within “Auto Create,” the program actually groups similar pictures together. So. Smart.

For this book, I decided to fill it with all those amazing images Jessica Marchetti Photography captured for us when Leyna was 5 days old. I chose The Madison in landscape format. I’m still tinkering with it just a bit, and plan to put the final touches on it tonight while I force my sister to watch the kids for me. I can’t wait to get it back and see this picture come to life outside of my computer screen.

Credit Jessica Marchetti Photography

So tell me, am I the only one who is a digital picture hoarder? Anyone else out there need an intervention by way of photo book? If you do, you’re in luck! There is a great coupon for 25% off 11×14 and 12×12 Classic Custom Books over at Picaboo, good through April30th with the code BIG25. Be sure to check in at Picaboo’s specials page often. That’s where they will always list their current discounts.

AND, once I get my photo book back, I’ll be doing a second post announcing a Picaboo giveaway. Stay tuned!

This is a sponsored post, but the opinions I’ve expressed here are solely my own and represent my honest viewpoint.