Every year, for Oliver's birthday, I make him a book. For his first birthday, I wanted to make him a book of expressions because babies enjoy looking at faces. I took photos of Andrew being happy and me being mad and Oliver being sleepy.
I thought about just gluing photos to construction paper and putting the pages in a binder. Then, it occurred to me: I can just make a photo book on Shutterfly and turn it into a children's book for Oliver! It was so much easier and looked great. Plus, if you sign up for their emails, you can sometimes get big discounts, like 40% off photo books.
A page from his first birthday book:
For his second birthday, I decided to create a book of all his favorite things, along with the name of each underneath its picture to (hopefully) get him to start recognizing some simple words. I took photos of his favorite stuffed animal, Monkey, along with a photo of a set of keys, a car, pasta, Dad, and me. It's still one of his favorite books! Admittedly, the pages of that one are getting torn now. I appreciate the fact that I can reorder the book to have a new copy, as Shutterfly saves each project you make to your account.
A page from his second birthday book:
This year, I made him a book about baking cookies! Baking is basically Oliver's favorite thing ever. I took pictures of him using the mixer in addition to pictures of Andrew and me using the oven and cracking eggs and such. There's even a photo of Jo helping in the baking process! I know Oliver will love this. I kept the sentences super simple to (maybe) help him read.
I think these are such cute birthday gifts. They're so personal, and they're something he can have forever. I need to get busy making a birthday book for Jo! I think I might make a face book of people she'd recognize.
Here's the Shutterfly preview of Oliver's 3rd birthday book. I've noticed the preview takes a long time to load and sometimes times out. You can just click the link below the image to get a preview on the Shutterfly website:
You'll love Shutterfly's award-winning photo books. Try it today.
2 comments:
I'm not sure how I came across you're blog, but I added to my google reader and enjoy your ideas since I have similarly aged children. I made my son a book on paper and he just loves it. I didn't think to use Shutterly, great idea! -kimberly from iowa
Thank you for the compliment! My son loves his book, too. I like keeping up with the tradition of making him books--at least through his toddler years.
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