After spending the month of November buying a house, remodeling, moving, photographing families and sending out photos for other people’s Christmas presents… it was time for me to think about my own Christmas presents.

But I was feeling unmotivated, broke and out of time (we only had 18 days in our new home before our annual Christmas pilgrimage to Carbondale, Illinois.)

But there is no place under my Grandfather’s Christmas tree for excuses.

My Grandfather purchased and wrapped 100 gifts this year, so I had to get my act together quickly.

Luckily my family likes my photos, so often times prints become my default gift. But this year I wanted to be more creative.

And then it occurred to me… my mom gave me a baby book after Harper was born, which she very sweetly (and repetitively) encouraged me to use, reminding me that these days go so fast and that if I don’t write these memories down I will forget.

But the baby book, although super cute and exactly the one I chose, was not inspiring me. Every time I sat down to work on it I would get stuck on family history I didn’t know or on an irrelevant question that I didn’t care about.

And the thought of making one more scrapbook (I was a scrapbooking fool in high school, before scrapbooking was a verb) that would fall apart in 10 years… did not appeal to me.

So I decided to make my own baby book that I would give to our parents and to Arann. Several 4:30am nights and 240 pages later, here it is…

 

http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/invited/3167637/da0665459db77ed5cf1ff47b5a47d0d53f054431?ce=blurb_ew&utm_source=widget

 

Watching my mom and Arann open their copies and flip through the pages on Christmas was the best present ever.