Storing Your Family Photos and Creating Beautiful Baby Books

I absolutely love taking pictures and was determined to make a really special baby book for each of my children. I knew I wanted to remember every moment in my babies’ first year of life and I wanted to use pictures as the main element of telling the story. I carefully kept track of important milestones and memories of each child during the first year in a journal. Trying to keep up with everything that was going on in their busy baby lives was a bit daunting, but I soon became an expert at keeping track of all the most important aspects. I created a monthly template to help make recording this information really manageable. I was dedicated about writing down the information once a month. I also kept on top of keeping my photos organized by making sure to upload them to Shutterfly at least once a month. I ended up creating two-volume baby books for each of my children that I love and cherish!

Here are some tips about storing your baby’s photos and creating beautiful baby books as well as a few layouts from my own baby books for you to use as inspiration to create books for your babies!

Tips For Storing Your Baby’s Photos

• Download your pictures from your camera frequently (depending on how many pictures you take, this may be each time you use your camera or once a month).
• Have a system for saving your pictures so that you can find them easily when you are ready to make your photo book. (e.g. by event, by month, by year).
• Save your pictures on your computer AND an external hard drive. You don’t want to lose all your pictures if your computer breaks down!!

After my daughter’s first birthday party, I knew I had all the pictures that I needed and that it was time to start creating her perfect baby book! Here are some tips about how to create beautiful baby books for your babies!

 Tips for Creating Beautiful Photo Books

• Upload your pictures to Shutterfly, Snapfish, KODAK Gallery or other photo source on a monthly basis.
• Choose one photo site and stick with it.
• Organize your photos on this site as you do on your computer. This will make it easier to create your photo books.
• Scan your ultrasounds, save them as photo files and upload them to your photo source. Include them in your photo book.
• Include monthly pregnancy pictures or professional prenatal photos you took during your pregnancy.
• Include professional newborn photos.
• Create books chronologically.
• Use large photos and simple page layouts.

I did not have the world’s smoothest pregnancies, but the positive sides were that my daughter was born perfectly healthy AND that I had LOTS of ultrasounds. It seemed like the best way to begin the story of my daughter’s life was with the ultrasounds! I scanned the ultrasounds and saved them in my Shutterfly account so that I could include them in my photo book. I also loved that I these special first glimpses of my daughter would not get misplaced since they were scanned into this book! Here is what the ultrasounds look like in the layout of  the photo book.

After seeing what my little girl looked in the ultrasounds, I decided it was only fitting to see how my belly was affected by the baby’s growth. So, I included the prenatal pictures I took on my own every few weeks.

I don’t look my best in many of the photos above, but I did have the talented photographer Dana Colwell take prenatal photos for me which I liked much more, so I included those in my album!

To ensure that we remembered all the details of my daughter’s birth, before I inserted the photos, I summarized the notes that I took in my journal about the delivery, the visitors in the hospital, etc. (Download the template here: monthly template).

In addition to taking prenatal photos, Dana also took stunning newborn photos of our baby. I had many of the prints displayed in my house, but including them in the baby book ensured that I would always have these pictures of my little lady to admire at my fingertips.

I organized the pictures by moth and began each month by summarizing the notes that I took about our daughter’s milestones and memories during that month! I love looking back through her baby album now and being able to read about and see all the memories we shared!

I loved creating these photo books for my daughter’s first year of life and created similar photos books after the birth of my son. While making them took a great deal of time, I never regret a second that I spent on them. Having the details of their first years along with photos of their development is priceless!