More Christmas Stuff

Am I scaring you yet?!
I haven't set up the tree or anything...yet. (that would freak my hubby out!) I'm waiting until the end of November/beginning of December for the decorating of the house.

But I wanted to share a neat little Christmas gift idea - coffee table style photo albums. (See the photo's above) It's kinda like digi-scrapping but easier. It's the cheating digi-scrapping way! Earlier this year, we went to California on vacation. I took a million photo's at Disneyland, at the Nascar Race, at the beach, etc. I knew that there was no possible way I would ever get them all scrapbooked in a timely manner that was pleasing to the eye. It looked very overwhelming. And then I discovered Photoworks. They are an on-line company that has all kinds and sizes of albums to choose from. Once you've chosen your album, you download your photo's into their templates, add your journalling et voila! Mission accomplished! I find it's a very easy program to navigate around in. But to be truthful, it is a bit more time consuming then what I'm letting on. (Because you play around with your photo's. Zoom in. change your templates, etc.)

I ended up with 2 albums from our California trip. One is completely devoted to Disneyland (it was our first time there and we had alot of photo's!) and the other album is of Nascar and our time spent in San Diego. I was a bit nervous of what the actual finished product would turn out like....but no worries - I was 110% happy with them. (Looking back, I wish that I had a digital camera when Max was a baby...no question about it - I would do all his baby photo's in these books. But there is no way I'm scanning in his negatives to do this. That's just way too big of a project!)

Right now I'm playing around with a few smaller album projects for Christmas presents. They have a nice 5x7 book that I'm working with. The albums pictured above are 8.5x11. The great thing is you can work on them and then save your work and come back at a later date (even months later). You can add photo's to the front and back covers and you can also add writing on the spine.

Here's a link: Photoworks

I noticed that lots of other companies are starting to offer this service - Shutterfly, Wal-mart, etc. I can only speak for Photoworks - the finished product is fantastic! And each week they offer a "deal of the week". Sometimes they offer 25% off photobooks - if you can have your book ready for that offer then you really snag a deal!

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And along a similar vein - here's something fun! Did you know you can personalize Kleenex Oval Tissue boxes? Check it out here: Kleenex

And with that I'm signing off to go and fold a mountain of laundry. We have company arriving tomorrow night. My friends Janice and Juanita are travelling here from Ontario and will be staying with us for about 4 days. So if it's a bit quiet on the blog....that's why!