There’s a software product called Booksmart from www.blurb.com that allows you to create and print your own books.  Since moving here and blogging, I’ve created “yearbooks” to summarize each year’s experiences, based in large part on my blog entries.  The first year I used Shutterfly to print the books (two volumes covering 14 months) but the binding quality was so poor that pages started to come loose the first day I looked at them.

My cousin Alex suggested Booksmart, which she had used to create guest registration books for her wedding, putting portraits of her and her husband Bill on one side of the page and then having the facing page blank.  She was impressed with the quality and the costs were much lower than at Shutterfly and many other sites.

Since then I’ve used Booksmart to not only create yearbooks but also customized books for my nieces.  I can incorporate pictures, text and backgrounds into many different shapes and sizes of both hardcover and softcover books.  The software is easy to use and allows full manipulation of all layout templates, so you have complete control over the look.

My most recent book is titled “Ava’s Uncles Get Married”.  As you might guess, it is a twenty-page tome about our wedding this past summer written for my youngest niece, who will turn four this Spring.  I thought I’d share it with you here.  You’ve seen most of the pictures and read much of the story already if you’ve been following this blog for a while, so I apologize to any of you who feel this is just a rehash, but I am very proud of this book.  I think it is the type of thing that Ava will treasure.

While I’ve done a little scrap-booking in my life, I think this comes out looking a lot nicer.  If you’ve been thinking about doing something with your pictures and/or your blog entries, may I suggest you check out Booksmart at www.blurb.com?

Oh, and yes, I did used to be the high school yearbook editor.