My husband and I were taking one of our first weekend getaways we had in years! and of course a few minutes before the babysitters arrived to watch the kids my second-born climbed up into my lap burning with a fever. How does this relate to family albums?

 

We debated back and forth whether we should go or not. Our babysitters urged us to take the vacation! We needed a break! They were sisters and they assured us that they could handle it! 

 

As we drove away I will admit I had a tiny bit of mom guilt. And you might be shaking your head at me right  now, how could she leave him? 

 

Let me tell you how I could leave him! I had either had a baby inside of me or attached to me for 6 years! One low grade fever was not going to stop us from having a solid good night sleep and we were only going to be a few hours drive away plus it was 1 weekend! I will leave it at that, feel free to judge away! 

 

The babysitter was texting us updates. His fever got better with ibuprofen (win) and he was totally back to himself by 10 AM the next morning! They also sent me the most adorable picture of my three year old dragging all of our family albums off of the shelf and into bed! They said he sat for nearly an hour flipping through our family albums. 

 

He didn’t feel good. Mom and dad were gone. I’ll look at pictures of them. What a rational thinker I have! 

 

WHERE DO I START WHEN IT COMES TO CREATING A FAMILY ALBUM

 

These moments in your family’s life are priceless. But let me ask you a question, where are all the memories of your kids?  I’m guessing that if you were to pull out your phone right now you would find them all living on your phone memory! Maybe you’ve printed a few, maybe you’ve tried scrapbooks? 

 

The idea of family albums is intriguing to you but it also sounds like 17,000 hours of work! Where do you even start when it comes to creating a family album? I’ll tell you exactly where!

 

You start with today. No matter what today is it’s the perfect day to start getting your photos ready to put into a family yearbook. I want to introduce you to a system that will allow you to go from overwhelmed thousands of photos on your phone to a beautifully designed family yearbook. You can hold it in your hands. Your kids can flip through it, not thumb through it and scroll and scroll and scroll. but they can see in print their life. They will know exactly where that book is 15 years down the road and they will be able to share it with their family.

 

 Those adorable pictures of their naked bottom in the bathtub or that one time he got covered from head to toe in mud but somehow managed to keep his cowboy boots on. Or the first time she ate an avocado and it wound up in her belly button! Okay I’m not sure why all of my family memories involve nobody wearing clothes…! This is your life, these are your memories! These are worth preserving and sharing.

 

 Putting your photos into a family album allows you the chance to tell your story. It allows you the chance to share your story and everybody has a story to share but you just don’t know where to start.

 

Right now, after this podcast this is what you’re going to do. You are going to pull out your phone. You are going to select the very best pictures from today or from yesterday and then you were going to move them into an album on your phone with the title of the month and the year.

 

 That might take you 3 minutes, and I’m being lenient. Then tomorrow you are going to be doing the same process but from two days ago and from that day. Continue this process until you have one whole month of your very favorite pictures selected and into an album

 

Then you’re going to move that album off of your phone and onto your computer. I have a free editing preset that you can apply to all those pictures to make them stand out just a little bit more! To make sure that the shadows don’t distract from the memory. Grab that preset here.

 

• FREE RESOURCE – Lightroom Editing Preset

 

Now look at you you have an entire month of beautifully edited and organized photos. and it only took you two or three minutes a day! How did that happen? 

 

HOW DO I CREATE MY FAMILY PHOTO ALBUM

 

Now onto how I create my family photo album. Because we’ve already established that family albums are priceless, comforting, and a beautiful way to share your story, I don’t need to continue to stress the importance! And since you’ve already gone through the process of a bit of organization you have the album on your computer to drop into a design software online and click print.

 

 My mother-in-law loves to shop at Aldi’s! She says it’s so refreshing to only have one decision to make. There are about seventy two different bottles of ketchup at my grocery store! But she assured me that it Aldi’s there’s one maybe two choices to make!

 

 If you were to hop online right now and try and find an album company to print your photo album you would be overwhelmed. You would probably get lost in trying to find the one that’s the best bang for your buck, or one that has the easiest design software, and one that you can use a coupon for. You might even go off of an old recommendation from 2008… But let me go ahead and lay it all out for you! Let me give you one choice!

 

 Okay I tricked you! I have that one album company for you but I’m not going to tell you here and now. You have to keep reading!

 

 When you are creating your family photo album you are not putting every single picture from your phone in there. you are only putting the best of the best. The process of picking the best of the best it’s called culling. Remember I used to be a professional photographer for over 10 years.

 

 I would come home from a wedding with over 7000 photos. I did not give 7,000 photos back to that bride. I picked the very best of the best for her. And then I made her memories into a photo album that she could pass down to her kids. It was their first family heirloom.

 

 Keep that sort of mindset as you are going through your photos to put in your family album. 

 

THE BEST PHOTO ORGANIZATION

 

We have family that lives up near Lubbock. They have beautiful horses that they train. My oldest son adores going up to visit! However, the older he’s gotten the more my aunt has taught him what to do first. 

 

It started off with how to just get on the horse.  But then she taught him how to saddle the horse. Then she taught him what to do before you saddle the horse, you have to feed and groom the horse.

 

 If she had started off with the feeding and the grooming and the scooping out of you know what from his stall. I’m not sure he would have ever made it to his deep love for riding horses. She knew that it was easier to give him a glimpse into what fun it could be and the love he could have by giving him a finished product. But then to ensure his love would last she taught him all the responsibilities that went before it.

 

 It’s fine to see and to imagine what a family album could do for your family. The safety of keeping your memories organized, the ability to sit down at the end of the day and flip through your own photos with your kids. You know that in 20 years you’ll be able to safely look up those adorable little curly cues from today. You don’t want to miss any of this, you don’t want to lose it.

 

 So you know the beauty of the final product. But now I want to teach you the steps before that. That is photo organization. It’s more than just getting the pictures on your phone organized. It’s the legacy of prints. It’s the story of an album.  

 

The family albums are the finished product. But it’s the whole process of getting there. Now I know that if I were to just say everything right now it would feel like a fire hose being turned on in your face. But if you are going to make a beautiful finished product this year and next year and maybe even the year after then you have to have a simple plan and a process for getting all of your photos in a place where you can easily do that.

 

 Now before you start to feel overwhelmed and like you would have no idea where to start I want to tell you I have the exact place to start! And I also want to tell you that this is not going to take as long as you think. And because you value memories and you value your family story I know you are excited to start on this adventure.

 

 Let me be your guide for the best photo organization process you could come up with. Join me for a 30-minute Workshop where I go even deeper into photo organization. It’s actually way easier than you think. 

 

• PHOTO ORGANIZATION WORKSHOP – The 3 Reasons Why Organizing Your Photos is Actually Way Easier Than You Think!

 

Because I want you to know the process. Just like my Aunt wanted my son to know the process and the procedure for preparing the horse for riding so that my son can enjoy doing it on his own. I want to be the one that shows you and guides you through the process so that you can eventually start this system and do it without extra thought and with enjoyment!