This post is sponsored by Best Buy. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
Ok guys. I had the best intentions when I started this mom journey. I was going to savor every moment and make sure I documented EVERYTHING. Well, here we are 7 years later with 2 kids and a phone full of pictures, nothing more. I don’t know if it’s the cozy weather or my anticipation of the upcoming holidays but I finally decided to do something about it! I am getting organized and I’m finally ready to share memories for my kids to enjoy as they grow.
I think the reason it’s taken me so long to get around to making memory books for the kids is the fact that getting it together seemed overwhelming with a lot of red tape. The pressure to get baby-ready, and remember everything, and the hormones, and getting all the stuff together to make an actual book. It’s a lot! So many times during the baby years I told myself “you need to remember that for the book”! Well, it’s 7 years later and I’m just shooting for the highlights!
Now that we are several years into childhood, I couldn’t help but feel a little overwhelmed with the simple fact that I have all the pictures on my phone and needed to get them printed! It’s been years since I’ve been to an actual photo place and got pictures physically printed! With a little surfing around, I found the perfect solution from Best Buy. The Canon Ivy mini photo printer was everything I was looking for when it came to this memory book project. It’s very compact, connects to my phone via bluetooth, no having to refill ink, and the pictures are printed on adhesive photo paper. And just to sweeten the pot, this little rose gold photo printer is a part of this week’s top deals and currently on sale!
The printer comes with a super user-friendly app that allows you to make simple edits to photos (which I really found handy to lighten or darken photos before printing). The app also allows you to frame photos in cute little frames and add fun filters. I can totally see Camilla wanting to add these to pictures of her and her friends. For this project, I kept it simple with easy edits to color and light.
After I solved the problem of getting my photos off my phone and into my hands, I headed to a local craft store and picked out a 12×12 scrapbook, and scrapbook paper. It was fun thinking through all of the paper I might need to go with the pictures I printed. I also grabbed some washi tape so that I could write little comments next to the pictures. I thought this would be a nice way to keep the memories alive as the kids look back on their books when they get older. I am even going to have Cameron add some commentary to the books so the kids will hear from both he and I. I love the personal touch of our own handwriting in the books.
I still have a lot of catching up to do, but boy do I feel so much better now that I have streamlined the process. The ease of the printer, the app, and the adhesive photo paper makes a project that could have taken days, only take hours. I am so excited to keep adding to the kid’s books as the years go by. Most of all, I am proud that they will have these memories to look back on for a lifetime.
