Jeff and I started a family tradition back when Finn when was a babe. We decided that rather than giving Finn the standard baby book we would instead take lots of lots of photographs and publish them as a book documenting the first and second years of his life.

If you didn’t know there are a lot of online book making services to choose from but we’ve created all of our baby books using Blurb. There are a few good reasons we chose Blurb, for one they have a downloadable app call Booksmart that makes laying out and editing your books a breeze. You don’t need to be a designer to make a well organized and visually beautiful book. It’s so easy my mom could do it, and that’s saying a lot (sorry ma, but you know it’s true). Blurb also offer exceptional paper quality, granted you have to pay more for the premium stock paper but we’ve found that it’s well worth it.

We made a book for Finn documenting the first two years of his life. Each book starts out with a personal letter recounting the events of the previous year. They letters tend to get pretty sappy but we hope someday Finn (and Gus) can appreciate the sentiment.

Gus’ first year book just arrived in the mail yesterday and I couldn’t be more stoked about it. Gus is turning one in a few days and I’ve been busy putting together his book over the last couple of weeks. Photos on a camera or computer are one thing, but to see them blown up in real life is another. Real tangible photographs are especially nice these days. I’m horrible at having my digital photos actually printed, at least when we print a book we have something physical to have and hold. I really cherish these books and I hope someday the kids will too.