I printed our blog!

I quit scrapbooking once I started blogging. It wasn't a conscious decision, just something that sort of happened. I'm not saying that I'm done with scrapbooking. I was behind before, now I am just more behind...

Blogging is so easy and fun. It only takes a few minutes to post and it's fun to read comments from family and friends. I really wanted to print my blog into a book, but I wasn't sure where to do it and I thought it would cost a fortune. I was pleasantly surprised to find it quite affordable and the finished product is exactly what I had hoped it would be.

I LOVE it!

In case any of you are wondering about printing your blog, here's what I learned.

I used blurb. It wasn't the simplest or the quickest option, but after watching a quick webinar, I found it pretty easy and fun.. a little time consuming maybe. I finished it in less than one week, but yes, I did have to go through it page by page. It wasn't tedious, in fact I found that I wanted to spend any and all of my spare time on it. I liked that there were different page layouts and lots fonts to choose from. You could change the color of the text or background color on each page and you could even add little ornaments. I kept it pretty simple, but found that it was nice to have the options.


One thing I didn't like is that the comments were not included. I went through and had to cut and paste them myself. It seemed tedious at first, but like I said, I had to go through each page anyway, mostly spacing issues and sometimes I'd change the layout to fit the pictures better, then I'd either add the comments or leave them out, depending on the post. It wasn't a big deal.

My hardcover book ended up being 160 pages (2 years of blog entries) and it cost $52.95 Not too bad.

If you are looking for a really quick way to print your blog, as in 3 steps quick, shared books might be your best bet. You can choose the dates you want, and you can also choose if you want to include your comments. Recently they made a change that only allows you to have up to 200 comments per book. The downside is that once they pull all the info from your blog, it's pretty much the way it is. I didn't like that the pictures didn't always match up and sometimes there were spacing issues. Like only the date and one line of a post would be on the bottom of one page and then the rest was on the next. For some, maybe that's not a big deal, it bothered me. It was a little more expensive. When I first looked into it, my book (with comments) was nearly 200 pages and was going to cost me $92. Then, since I hadn't saved it and they changed the policy about comments, I was going to have to print two separate books and it would have cost more.

There.

Thanks to all of you who read our blog and have made this so fun for me. Too bad I don't have a great scrapbook, but I'm so glad to have such a neat blog book about all of our comings and goings over the last few years. I can't wait to print out another one once this year is over!