Yearly Photo Albums?

Yearly is awesome. Even if you aren't creative, you can use stickers and such to spice it up a little. Make sure to put a blank piece of paper behind the photos if using a photo album that is older and has acidic adhesive. The acid can destroy your photos. If you can afford it, get one that is acid free. There are a lot of places that have background paper for albums that can match the occasion...Christmas, Birthday, etc. It adds a little element, but can add to the whole album more than you know. It also doesn't take long to put the background in. I use stickers, cute sayings the kids say, etc. They can be handwritten or printed out on the computer in interesting fonts.
Just some info for you...have fun and enjoy your memories while you put the albums together.
ps...feel free to message me if you would like any ideas. I am good for unique ideas that don't cost a mint. :-)

Here's what we did with my parents' photos and have starting doing with our own...
- Chronologically but "by person"
- Album for my mother birth to marriage
- Same for my father
- Album for "old family photos"
- Album for each child that is chronological (birth to marriage) with copies made of those pictures that need to be in all three albums.

I know it sounds strange, but when my great-grandmother passed away it was really hard to divide up the family photos. One of my aunts took them all and copied them. She then made an album for each sibling to have and we realized that it was a great idea for each child to have their own set of photos!

Good for you, for taking the photos. Just keep them anywhere you can, in waterproof containers, and continue to TAKE PHOTOS!
I am the mother of four, ages 10 to 25, and also work part time and do charity work. I have no patience for scrapbooking either.
You'll be surprised that one day these children grow up and make photo albums that are BEAUTIFUL, all by themselves.
Starting during the preteen years, I would buy albums for each child, and they loved sorting through the photographs, and composing albums. These then go into the family photo trunk/ coffee table, where they can be enjoyed by all.
Just keep giving them the material to work with, those moments never come back, and you will be happy you took pictures, even though you never organized them. It all works out in the end, and what is really important is that your family has happy days, not organized ones. I never regret that I didn't spend my time doing the albums, because I was not happy doing that, and I did other things for my family, instead. May the good Lord Bless you and yours,
L. P.M.

The advantage of the suggestions below (shutterfly, kodakgallery, etc....) is you can make a copy for another family member or if you lose one it can be replaced. They also have sales every now and then so you can make a photo book and then wait for the sale. I've also used Snapfish and Photoworks. To be honest, I go with who has the best deal going on and haven't seen a vast difference in quality. Check out the options though as the predesigned books vary from company to company. I digital scrapbook and load pages up as photos, so pretty much end up ignoring the predesigned pages so can't give much input on those and ease of use. Have Fun!

Thanks for posting this-not because I am looking for ideas, but because just last night I told my husband I felt terrible because I have not put one picture of our second child in an album IN A YEAR. I have them, but they are still in the envelopes. Thanks for keeping it real. I feel better, lol
One idea I can offer is taking random pics (even 'bad' ones) and keeping them separate in a hatbox or whatever in the play area. My daughter used to sit for ages looking at them, talking about them, making a mess, etc. Good luck!

I have always just put them chronologically. They are lucky if they even get in an album...I am currently about 5 years behind!! :)

I think that the other suggestions are good, but if you feel overwhelmed, just start with and album and go chronologically, moving to the next album when you run out of space. The albums don't have to have themes or events, unless you really want to separate out a special occasion (wedding, etc.)

One option is to do it by year. A good way of making a nice album without having to buy lots of scrapbooking material, and without having to have too much of a creative mind, is to create an album/ photobook using snapfish, shutterfly, etc. That way you can group photos together on one page easily, write captions to provide a better record of what's happening in the photo, and use backgrounds on the pages to make it look a lot nicer than just shoving the pictures into an album. You can usually get good deals (e.g. 25% off or even free!) on the photobooks, especially if you are a new subscriber, or become a facebook fan, etc. I've created three photobooks so far, and I've gotten them all free (not including shipping)!

OR, if you really think even that's too much work, and you think this is how is going to be for years to come, another option is to create different albums for special (but recurring) occasions that you add to as each year passes - e.g. a birthday album, a Christmas album, a summer / family vacations album, etc. For the other everyday kind of photos, I would just choose a few to print out and frame, or better yet, get a digital frame that you can just upload all the photos onto.

I do all my albums on Shutterfly as a photo book. I give my daughter a yearly album on her birthday; we call it her "birthday book." She absolutely loves it and also enjoys reading her life story often at bedtime -- she just picks a year. I've also recently started taking pics of her most special artwork and I'll start including those pics in her birthday book, too. Kills two birds w/ one stone :) I like the photo books better because I think ultimately they will last longer than printed out photos. Plus you can narrate the pics, choose different page graphics, etc. -- much like scrap-booking (which I don't have the time or inclination for!)

I do shutterfly as well. I make a yearly book for the family even though it's mostly about the kids, my husband and I and my dogs do make an appearance once in awhile. I have a digital camera so I organize everything on the computer by year and then create subfolders, like Halloween, school, Christmas, etc.. within that year so I don't have thousands of pictures under 2010. For every day pictures they just go under 2010. Good luck!

The best way to organize albums is chronologically. I find it best to buy many of the same type of album so they can all be stored (put on a shelf) neatly.

Are these photos in a digital format? If yes, I would not spend the time and money to print out most of them. Choose only a few of your favorites, you can store them on a flash drive and view them on your computer at any time.

It's also a good idea to write a note on the back of the photo, or next to the photo. Ten years from now you may not remember the particular event or others in the pics.

this is the "problem" with so much technology...we are no longer forced to drop off rolls of film and stick the photos into albums! I am in the same boat...all of our photos are stored on the computer and not one has made it into an album. I am going to try and make it my focus next year, to start some kind of photo books for family and kids.

I use Shutterfly to store all our pics. I find the website to be easy and quick, and can make lots of gifts with the photos as well. Good luck!

Lynsey

I do this annually, making photo books, via Costco or www.kodakgallery.com

I simply upload my digital photos online, to the place I am making the photo books.
Easy.

On my computer, I have all our photos downloaded on it.
It is categorized by date and then I make a note/title for it per event, if need be. Then that way, "I" know what photos are in that folder category.

Or, you just print them out... and then, with the photos, you hand make an album.

all the best,
Susan

First get a flash drive and make sure you save the files somewhere other than your hard drive - you don't want to lose them if your system crashes. i have a firend who burns them to CD - but I've been told that CD deteriorate with age - not sure about flash drives.

ALl of my odler hard photos are in those photo boxes you can buy at the craft stor or WalMart / Target. My kids are 11 & 14 and maybe when the youngest one goes to college I'll have time to get them in albums.

I work with a girl who is obsessvie / compulisve and manages every year to make up an album with an online service. Costco, Kodak, WalMart, CVS all have lovely hard cover albums that you can create. If you get a coupone or a good deal you can make the albums for about $50. I've made them for others (50th anniversary, wedding, etc.) but never get around to doing so for myself. I do always make a calendar for us that I give to my husband for Christmas and it's in our kitchen. We get to see last year as this year goes by. Costco has a huge one with heavy glossy stock - large photos - for about $20. you can choose the layouts from 6 pics per month to one large one - different background, etc.

Have fun!

I don't know if your photos are digital, but if they are, a great thing is to do a Shutterfly book. I do a book once a year. I usually make it in January or February (I wait for a sale on shutterfly) and use the photos from the previous calendar year. I do the book chronologically and use photos that highlight the events of the year including pages for "winter days", valentines day, birthday parties, family vacations, summer camp, first day of school, fall soccer, halloweeen, thanksgiving, winter vacation..... It comes out great. I make one for the grandparents too and save it to give out on mother's day and father's day....

you can have photo albums created at shutterfly.com
you can choose which photo goes where and even type in stuff that you want. like dates, or events.

We have tons of pictures of LO too, but I just never get around to putting them in an album! What we finally did do was create a photobook with picaboo (there are other sites that do them too, but my husband thought this was best). You just download the program and upload the pictures you want ... you choose format, if you want text, where the pictures are ,etc. and they will print the book for you. That way you don't have go through the step of printing all the pictures and the book is a LOT thinner than an album with the same number of photos would be.
Btw, I would organize them roughly chronologically.

Yes, I would do it by calendar year and chornologically through the year. From this point on I would suggest stopping the printing out of the pictures and go to the photo sites as others have suggested. I LOVE both Snapfish and Shutterfly to make books, plus they always have deals and specials. Snapfish has a program you can put on your computer for free that uploads to their site every time you plug your camera in...this is a life saver! It puts the pics on both your computer's hard drive and on their site so you can access them either way...it is seriously awesome! This way you never lose track of what pics you have uploaded or whatever. The book options are so easy, there's no need for you to be creative b/c they'll be creative for you! I would just get some basic photo albums for the pictures you already have, just the ones where you slide each photo into their own slot. Most of those have little spots to make notes if you wish beside the pics! Good luck, it's a big job!

Put them iin photo boxes by year until you get to them. The past few
years I have been putting my pictures on DVD. Takes up less room
and then I can have the prints that I only want printed.

Updated

Put them iin photo boxes by year until you get to them. The past few
years I have been putting my pictures on DVD. Takes up less room
and then I can have the prints that I only want printed.

I haven't had time yet to do it but I'm looking at the Costco books for pictures. Before that I was just putting the pictures in date order until we got a digital camera. For a short time after getting our first digital camera I'd print up a batch at Costco every couple months and again put them in by date order but I quickly found I stopped doing that to. After the first of the year I'm going to start doing photo albums through Costco.

I always put mine by the event. Like the first book was her birth (of course) then went to first valentines day, first st pats day Etc. I just put them in order by the date and then wrote on the cover what was in the book with dates. I also use the albums that have a space to write next to each photo, like who is in the picture, where it was and the dates. It takes time to do but when we want to look at certain pictures we don't have to go searching through every album. Also with her albums I wrote on the top inside corner book 1, book 2 etc. This way all the events are in order as they happened. I also don't get every picture developed cause if I did I would be on book 26 by now and she is only 2yrs 8 months! I just pick out my most favorite pictures to have printed. Then I put all the pictures on 2 discs. One to keep out and one I put in a fire safe strong box. God forbid we have a fire. This way I still have my pictures on disc and I won't loose any of my pictures. Just a thought. It is very time consuming but once you get all your pictures in order and get them into books then you can keep up with it after that. I prefer the books rather then boxes cause they are protected better. You won't have fingerprints all over them. And eventually they get stuck together and get damaged. Good Luck!

I do a January - December album. Like you, I don't feel that I'm really creative, but I love having these memories for my kids. I did do baby albums for both my girls (1st year) and otherwise I just do one year at a time. They'll have to share when they grow up, yes, but it's better than none at all. As for how - I LOVE LOVE LOVE my creative memories "Storybook" software. There are a bunch of online sites that you can use to drop your photos into books (so much easier to me than printing the pics and getting them into albums) but you don't have much control in how many pictures, how much room to write, etc. The CM software has plenty of templates to drop pictures into but then you can move around and add as much as you want - or you can start from scratch on your pages and really make it your own (I like to start with a template and change it up). The printed books seemed kind of expensive to me at first, but when I considered the cost of a traditional scrapbook, printing the photos, background paper, embelishments, tape, etc (not to mention all the tools you need to create the different looks) the books are actually cheaper. Anyway, whatever you decide, good luck! It's a lot of fun - especially if you find some friends to do it with.