Since the beginning of the digital photo era, we spend more time taking pictures, capturing memories, but less time reminiscing those memories. Especially, in a family like ours where we take about 15-20 photos on a regular day and about 600-700 when we go on vacation, selecting photos, uploading and sharing them with remote family members is a big task. Selecting and uploading the originals for print is a major task, that can be daunting. Sometimes, when the kids are a sleep, we browse through old photo and video folders to see them when they were babies. Sometimes, we do that with children themselves. But I don’t want to spend a lot of time on front of computer, especially when kids ask a video to be replayed 100 times. I like to see them going through old photos. Seeing themselves when they were little. Remembering old places, old toys, visiting family members and friends etc.
So at the end of last year, I browsed through 4 years’ photo folders on our desktop, selected the ones to be printed, uploaded them to snapfish.com in full size. I have been using snapfish since ’98. Then I was sending my 35mm rolls, order 2 sets of prints. They would send me 2 sets of prints along with an online album to share with my family. Obviously, their business model changed since then. They phased out those old online albums, which I was able to download most to my computer.
Then I used major discounts and deals last Black Friday at snapfish.com to have about 1,750 photos and 3 photo books printed. 
It took me days to organize the photos in chronological order, as seen in the photos, from 2009 to 2012. I separated the ones I wanted to give to grandparents, uncles and friends. Then, I purchased 8 new photo albums (for 200 6×4 photos). Finally, this past memorial weekend, I put them all in the albums. I think the whole process took me about 9 months. It was such a great feeling to check that off from my to do list.
Photo albums are nice with good quality prints. I also like photo books. I had previously 3 photo books done for our trips to Paris, Canada and Istanbul.
Then, I created 3 different books:
- My kids’ friends: so that they remember old classmates, friends from old neighborhood etc.
- A look book from my daughter’s different clothes and costumes.
- A funny faces book: because my kids and my husband can never give me a straight-face pose.
You can select from a variety of covers and background images for inside pages. It is quite easy to setup a book for print at snapfish.com. Granted the photo quality is not as spectacular as their 6×4 prints, these serve as entertaining coffee table books.
Finally, just last week I decided to create a photo book for my son, chronicling my pregnancy, his birth and all his past birthdays. Her always asks me about my pregnancy, the time when he was in my belly, how he was born, what he did after he was born. He loves to hear that story. I am going to give this photo story book about his birth as a birthday present.
Starting ordering photo books for one year at a time since my daughter was born. It’s so nice to have them sitting on the coffee table to flip through easily.
I am determined to do it annually instead of waiting for 4 years as well.
I have made them for all the grandparents for Christmas since Connor was a year old. It is so tough to get the whole year in, but the snapfish codes help a lot!
It works as gifts for grandparents as well; you are right. It is hard, especially with digital photography it became very easy to take so many photos and hard to choose among them. That’s why I ended up with 1,750 photo prints 😮