BLURB

I have spent the last 3 weeks making my first blog book.  This is a big deal for me because I am nervous of doing new things on the computer.  Kristin has been encouraging me.  'Miss'-she-can-do-just-about-anything-my cousin.  She is a good encourager!  Whenever I had any questions on what to do next she called or texted me back right away.  She likes to use Blurb, so that is what I have been using.  I've learned since I started that there are probably some easier programs that I could have chosen.  Ones that just slurp the blog all in just the way you write it and place your pictures.  Blurb does a little of that, but gives you a lot of freedom for text and picture page layouts.

I guess I don't know any different now.  I can say I have learned a LOT.  I haven't sent it to print yet because I still have some things to tweak but when I look at it in preview mode it makes me really excited to get it done.  I didn't start keeping a blog until fall of 2007, so that is what I'm working on.  You can see my personal progression in using a computer, adding pictures finally after weeks of text only, and then my progression in arranging it all in the blog book.  I got much more comfortable and bolder with my picture layouts towards the end of the book.

We had taco dinner at Lisa's tonight.  It was delicious as usual.  She made 80 tacos!  Kristin looked at my book in preview and gave me lots of pointers and things to tweak.  I would have never thought of those things on my own. 

I liked:  how many different layouts there are.  My book is pretty consistent with using large blocked text layouts.  I tried columns and they are nice, but I wanted it to be the same throughout this time.  Captions.  You can add captions to the pictures.  That was cool. The program tells you where your mistakes are. I needed that. Picture layouts.  I could make one whole page the picture or pictures or collages and the one next to it the text.

I didn't like:  that it does take a little bit of time.  It did go much faster after I figured out a lot of things and I'll probably take the same approach with my 2008 book adding some new techniques.  By the time I get to 2011's book, maybe I'll be able to feel confident in changing the page colors and all those other cool things.

I do want to ask you out there:  what are some other programs that you have used to print your blog into a book?  How did you like them?  Was the price reasonable?  Did they offer coupons? Easy, Medium, Hard?