When I was young, one of my favorite things to do was flip through family albums (totally 80s huge three -ring binder laminated page monsters). I'd love to make family albums like these:
http://www.younghouselove.com/2014/02/the-year-that-was-2013/
But oh, it's hard. I'm trying to keep up with it on a semi monthly basis, but it's not easy. Do you do them? Where do you print them? Bonus points for pictures of the finished books!
grapefruit / 4819 posts
I'm trying! I am currently in September 2012 for our 'yearbook' but am at a stalemate as we don't have very good internet connect where we're staying now whilst we wait to get into our new house. It's driving me mad, I really want to get it done and punch out 2013 so I can get caught up! I find I tend to work in spurts - I could go a month or two without doing anything, and then knock out three months in one afternoon. I love going back and looking at them, as well as reading the narratives, so for me, it is totally worth doing, I just need to get back to a good internet connection so I can work on them some more!
I use Shutterfly - easy to use, loads of designs, great prices, and good quality. I also like that I can store all of my photos on their site for free with no cap on how many you can have on there!
ETA: I just looked at the YHL album, mine aren't like that - I write narratives in mine on nearly every page and include captions at times. Maybe that's why it's taking me so long! 
nectarine / 2242 posts
I just started doing this last year, after reading YHL's posts about them. We never print photos / make albums so I figured if I didn't make a yearbook we'd never be able to look back. My original plan was to start when we got married and catch up, but that was taking forever / holding me back, so instead I just did 2013.
The way I did it was to first just look at the calendar for 2013 and write down what we did each month, and then add the photos one month at a time. I made a cover page for each month with a list of what we did. Breaking it into chunks like that made it way easier to accomplish!
I printed mine at MyPublisher and waited for one of their sales, it came out really good!
squash / 13208 posts
I have a blog and I write about our activities and trips and then at the end of the year I print them out - more words than pictures but I love that the kids will have an entire record of their life
hostess / wonderful persimmon / 25556 posts
I do scrapbooks that are currently yearly but will probably go through multiple years in the future. I love doing it myself, I just need to find the time to sit down and work at it. I do a lot of journaling in the scrapbooks so we all remember what was going on at that time.
grapefruit / 4649 posts
I started with 2013 doing a simple scrapbook style. I followed the general plan of project life except I didn't keep up through the year very well. I am actually hoping to finish that album this week.
For 2014 I am doing a monthly version. I have kept a weekly agenda solely for the purpose of jotting down what has happened through the week (I typically update it weekly). I keep my photos in chronological order and print them every few months.
We are expecting our first any day now so I am excited that we will have a year of prebaby and a year of getting ready for/the arrival of baby.
pomegranate / 3231 posts
I have been thinking about doing this. I'm not sure when I will find the time.
I made an awesome album of our safari in 2012. I used Shutterfly. Their application is horribly slow and tedious, and it took forever. Well, it took most of a long weekend, and nowadays my weekends are tied up with the baby. But we are really glad to have the album.
pomegranate / 3809 posts
Yup! I LOVE photobooks. I do one for every vacation and a year book since I met DH in 2008. I've use shutterfly for most of them (free coupon codes). And then for some larger vacation ones, I've used picaboo and photobook america too. I love having the books, otherwise it's just photos on a hard drive I'd never flip through.
nectarine / 2641 posts
I use mixbook and it's super easy. I have to do this year's. I started when DS was born and did his first year, which extends to late November. So this year's will have December 2013+2014. When we have another, I'll keep the yearly theme but also do their first year separately. I hope.
bananas / 9899 posts
My plan is to do a photobook for each of my LOs documenting their first year of life. Then when we're done having kids and each kid has their one year album, I will start doing yearly family albums. This is the kind of thing you really need to do as you collect the photos, otherwise it quickly gets overwhelming!!
I'm currently working on DD's book and my goal is to keep it updated monthly. Then shortly after she's a year old I should have a complete book ready to print!
I always use Adoramapix for my books. Their quality is the best I've seen. I'm a picky graphic designer lol. I also love that they do lay flat pages, which means I have more flexibility on how I lay out my photos.
wonderful olive / 19353 posts
I made one last year, and hope to continue to do so yearly. We'll see!
When my uncle passed a couple months ago, my aunt brought out the old school photo albums for us to browse. There was something so much more meaningful and tangible about flipping through actual photo albums. I thought about just mass printing all our photos and doing that.
blogger / eggplant / 11551 posts
I've been working on this with renewed zeal! I am trying to do yearly photo books, but because I take so many pictures I need to divide it up into 2 books per year (Jan-June) then (Aug-Dec). I also try to do books separately for special events, and each child has their own photo book for their first year of life, and their monthly photos.
blogger / pomegranate / 3201 posts
I just started using chatbooks through instagram. The albums are small, but it's SO easy to set up and only $6 for a book with 60 images. I ordered 9 the other day (they had a sale to get two free with the code THANKS, not sure when that ends) and will continue ordering as I post more pictures.
olive / 67 posts
I do! I've just finished our 2013 book and I'm waiting on a good sale from Shutterfly to place my order.
I have to confess- I'm not the best at keeping up with this stuff. My yearbooks get done almost a year later and I started working on a wedding album with Artifact Uprising but stopped an hour in when my computer froze- that was a year ago..
bananas / 9357 posts
I started doing a family yearbook in 2012 the year my son was born. I barely finished 2013's book in August. Yikes. Haven't ordered it yet tho because don't have the money to spend on it. I should start 2014 now so I don't get so far behind. What I started doing this year is making a fav photos folder for each month. That way when I do start 2014's book, at least I have all the pics sorted and picked out. I use shutterfly btw.
persimmon / 1147 posts
I do yearly photo books with Adoramapix. I love their lay flat full page spreads and the quality is really good. I made our wedding album with it and have been doing yearly books since. It takes sooooooo long but I'm also a perfectionist and we have thousands of pics so it's always a lot to work with. I just finished 2013 and try to work on it an hour here and there.
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