Hellobee Boards

I make photo books quite frequently, and have made DD1 specific ones for each of her birthdays......Her first book started out as pictures from the hospital, worked our way through the months using about 5-10 of my favorite pictures from each month or so....Her second and third books start with the previous birthday party photos, and so on.......It is so easy to want to use tons and tons of pictures, but I always stick to the 20 pages that come with the deals I get. I just order prints of the other pictures that I love

Also- I use shutterfly.

ETA: Try to not use *every* picture that you like. Only your total favorites! It's not really hard, and I usually spend about 4 hours total on one book.

I'm trying to do the same thing right now - a baby's first year book and a separate yearbook for 2012 (hey, it's only August, it might be done before 2014 rolls around!). What I have found most helpful is to make a list of everything I want to include in my photo books and how many pages I want to devote to each event, BEFORE I start looking at individual pictures. Once I start looking at the pictures, it's all over and I start going way overboard.

So for example, what I've got done so far is:

Labour and Delivery - 2 pages (so I could write my birth story and include a couple of pictures from when I was in labour)

It's A Girl! - two pages of E's first moments, skin to skin, being weighed, and first cuddles with daddy

Going Home - two pages of time in hospital and heading home

The First Two Weeks - two pages, some random snaps of E at home and our first outings

Grandma Arrives - one page of when my mom flew in from the US to meet her first grandchild

Weekly photos, the first month - one page with her one week, two weeks, three weeks, and four weeks shots

Meeting the friends - two pages. Our Fourth of July BBQ where LO was introduced to all of our friends

Ok, so you get the idea. But once I've decided in my head that an event is worthy of noting in the photobook and have decided how many pages it can have, I am now limited to the number of photos I can use. It makes things a lot easier, that's for sure!

The other thing I do, even though it's massively time consuming, is I'm uploading ALL of our photos to shutterfly (I usually set the upload to go overnight) as shutterfly will never delete your pictures. We also have them backed up on two different hard drives, but this extra little bit of security makes me feel better. I also find it easier to select photos from my photo book when they're all on shutterfly and I only have to tick the boxes to 'add to photobook' although I guess it really doesn't make much difference.

I do think it's quite a time consuming project, not something that can just be done on the weekend, unless you literally devote all of your time to it. But then again, I guess it depends on how you want to do it. I like to write so I write lots of little updates and journal entries. I also have thousand of pictures that I am trying to sort through, so for me, if I get three or four pages done during LO's naps, I've done well for the day.

Sorry this is so long, I hope some of it was at least a tiny bit helpful!

@SugarplumsMom: Just order what you cant squeeze into the book as prints!

I love that you're doing a photo book!! We are photographers, and we often fall into the 'not getting our photos printed' cycle. We made a goal to do a photo book every year ... It really is a labor of love! First, I got through and select the photos I want to include in the book. This is before I pick the number of pages or anything ... I put them into a folder, then build the book in InDesign (but companies like Blurb (I really recommend them) have their own book templates you can use).

It often takes me a few weekends to work on it.

Here's the one we just made for our first year in Oregon:
http://theoregontale.com/our-oregon-adventure-volume-one/

@Vegmama: Wow, that is a gorgeous photo book! Did you do the layout of that one in InDesign? If you don't mind my asking, who printed it?

We (I) have been very old school with our albums, printing photos then sticking them with photo corners in soft leather books. But I would be tempted to switch to that type of photo book - I love the clean modern layout.

I totally started one this weekend!

I used Blurb, which a friend recommended, because a vast majority of our photos are iphone photos. I'm going to make a more conscious effort to take camera photos in the upcoming months.

I am breaking them down in Newborn-3M, 4-6M, 7-9M, and 10-12M.

I wish I would have thought about this earlier!

@Vegmama, I'd also like to know what layout you used! i really like it. Clean, simple...more than one photo/page.

@blackbird: @SugarplumsMom: @Beehive: I designed the book in InDesign (did the layout myself). We printed through Blurb ... I think it was over 200 pages or so. We had a 20% off coupon, and I believe we paid $150.00 total. Maybe a little less.