My purpose in starting Scary Mommy was to create a baby book of sorts for my kids. I am not the type of mother who jots down first words, steps or foods, and my memory cannot be counted on to remember anything. I have to force myself to print pictures, and despite loving crafts I’ve never jumped on the scrapbooking bandwagon. A blog seemed like a fun way to track our days together, the good the bad and the ugly. And it has been.
As 2008 drew to a close, I began working feverishly to transform my blog from the past year into book form. It was an enormous pain in the ass, as the site I picked (blurb.com) wasn’t compatible with blogger at the time. It took forever, as I had to manually import every single picture and entry. But for 50 bucks, I have a copy of my blog in hardcover. I hand designed each page– some have only text, some only photos and most a mix of both. You can use any fonts available on your computer and totally customize everything. I can’t give them a totally glowing review; there is no way to ever speak to an actual person, the binding on my first book was defective and needed to be replaced, and the system crashes pretty frequently. But, it was worth it, and I love it. And it’s giving me renewed reason to keep writing in 2009.
{ 120 comments… read them below or add one }
Wow, I had no idea such a product was available…I love this! Your book looks gorgeous — a perfect keepsake. This is going on my own wish list for sure. Thanks for the link!
WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Looks fabulous!
Bean!!! That looks wonderful. I’m so glad you did that. It is really something precious to hold on to. And selfishly, I like that a few entries mention me.
that is so cute…i can’t wait to look at it the next time i come over :-)
That is very cool!
Thats such a great idea! do you know of any companies that do this?
This is great…how big was your book? $50 seems a great price for such an amazing keepsake.
That looks awesome! Blogs are great, but it is neat for the kids to have an actual book to look at.
Thanks!!
It was Standard Landscape 10×8 inches, 182 pages and $56.95. There are a bunch of options to choose from.
blurb.com
:)
OH MY GOSH………..
I need. I want.
It’s stunning!
Damn it. That is seriously so amazing, but I think I’m going to have to stop throwing the “F” bomb out of most of my posts if I want to save it for my kiddies…unless I do it as a wedding present for them??? Oh, but then I’d have to edit out things about my husbands’ and my ex spouses. Lots of work. ;)
Ok that is pretty flippin’ cool! I am so going to look into this. Thank you so much for sharing, I love this idea.
It’s not compatible with Blogger? What a pain! The end result looks absolutely gorgeous though. Can you include comments? Those are my favorite part of my blog.
Look at your cute search box down there!
:-)
That’s fabulous! I keep trying to figure out a way to keep my blog. I may have to do that as well….
That looks great!! I’ve been looking for a way to print my blog for my blog-versary, but serioulsy, there are too many companies doing it these days and not enough reviews!! So, THANK YOU, Scary Mommy! Loved the review!
That is REALLY pretty… I’m so jealous!
That really is a great idea – I wonder if there are companies that do the same and *are* compatible with blogger – I just don’t think I have the same drive that you do!
I have heard of this but didn’t know anyone who had it done. My blogoversary is coming up, this might be something I should do. Thanks!
I’m pretty sure there are sites where you can import your blogger blog directly. I underestimated what a pain it would be, but this way I could really proof and customize each page. I’m SO glad to be done with it though!
What a great idea! And it’s beautiful…almost better for having worked so hard?
love it jill! I did one of those through iphoto for each of my inlaws for holiday presents. It’s amazing! Love them!
Wow! That looks fantastic!! Congratulations on finishing the projects and on blogging for a whole year! We hope you’ll keep at it for a long time because we luuuuurve ya :-)
What a GREAT idea! I have to look into this myself :)
That’s really gorgeous :) What a fab thing to have!
That is soooo cool! I love it. I will definitley look into this.
That’s great!!! Looks like it turned out well! If my blog was more than just my random babbeling I’d do this!
Beautiful! I so want to do this. Tomorrow is my blogiversary. I think it’s time to choose a site and begin making a book. Thanks for sharing this!
How wonderful!!! *note to do it at some point in the near future*
omg, that’s awesome!
What a wonderful idea!! That is something I could actually do too!!
Thanks for sharing!!
I just came across your blog and I LOVE this idea…however, I am hoping to find an easier way to do it. But, that is the story of my life.
Thanks for sharing!
Mrs. Nurse Boy
That looks awesome!
It looks fabulous…….I attempted this once but it was so time consuming that I threw in the towel. How many hours do you think you spent designing it?
It came out beautifully! I’m glad it was worth your while :-)
I am so glad you did this. My reasons are the same for starting the blog and I want to have each year in book form as well.
Yours looks beautiful. Super cool.
That is so incredibly AWESOME!! A friend of mine keeps telling me how great it is, but seeing this reminds me that I need to do this.
Oh my gosh! I love it! For only $50! That is a steal! I am glad you shared this : ). You are just full of good ideas.
Scrapbooking gives me nightmares. It looks lovely but it just takes SO much time. Who can do that? Blogging is better : ).
What a wonderful treasure for your lil ones!!! AWESOME! $50 thats a steal…
Wow – how unbelievably awesome! What a gift for your children. I love too that in this format they will get your sense of humor!
that is arfing cool! i will definitely keep it in mind, as my husband is constantly talking about getting the blog printed somehow. import friendly would be nice, did you mention it to blurb.com?
This is totally awesome!
I would love to do this!
HOW??
Wow.
This is SUCH an amazing idea. It looks FANTASTIC!
Congrats on a job well done! Enjoy.
That’s an awesome idea. I have a site where I may do a cookbook with all the recipes I have posted.
Amazing. Hhow much do you charge??
Can’t wait to see it…
Please bring it when you come visit!
How neat!
I love it.. you did an excellent job, from what I can tell from these pictures! :O)
What a brilliant idea, am off to do some research of my own now, I need a blog book, oooh!!
And I saw this and thought of you on tuesday!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/jan/20/barack-obama-cross-stitch
xxxx
I think I owe you a Thank you before I even check this place out. Thanks so much for sharing, looks like something I will be doing.
I have been thinking of printing my Blogger out as I go, kind of a hard copy for future generations to read my crazy life.
Feisty
That is so awesome and a great idea! Thank you for sharing….I am glad I am one of your followers.
What a perfect idea! Thank you so much for sharing this as I wanted, so badly, to do something similiar with my food blog and when we finally buy our first home.
I have to say that one pic of the Abe Lincoln I was laughing really hard…very funny and cute.
Holy crap! Who are you?? That is insane! A labor of love is right but oh the reward is brilliant!
I’ve been actually wondering if they have something like this out there…I’ll have to check it out. But God knows I’ll never get my ass in gear to actually do it…
Good for you!!
Dammit! I should never should have written those mean things about my crackhead hobag sister that dumped her kids on me. And cussed so much. That would have been a great gift for the family.
For you though, that is an incredible idea! I am so impressed! It looks great.
That’s crazy!
You’ve got a book! How cool is that?!
That’s awesome!
I must have one!
Thank you for sharing this!
Now I know what I’m going to work on over my summer vacation. That is so freakin cool. I want one!! Thank you for sharing!! Your book looks amazing. What a great memento.
That is so awesome!
I really need to get busy on my Memory Mixer win…
xoxo
That is SO cool! I love that idea!
I love it!! It looks gorgeous from where I stand! (sit)
I really want to do this!!
Now, that is really cool! :-> A bloggy book?!
Thanks for visiting me on my big, bloggy day!
That’s really cool!!
Way fucking cool.
Love it! It turned out great!
One question, since you’re a Mac user, how come you didn’t use Apple?
That is SO COOL. I recently made my 1st photobook online, and now I’m thinking about what I could do with some of my blog entries about my boy… Wow!
Hey you! There is an award for you over at The Fort, go check it out!
Tim
That is really beautiful. Can I pick up a copy on Amazon?
What a great idea. But I beg it did take a long time.
I’ve been looking for just such a thing! I knew it was possible, but haven’t reaearched it yet. I plan on getting a copy for each of my kids. I also want to do the same with the family tree – with photos and stories – that’s we’re doing on Ancestry.com. Some things are worth the price. I’ll check out blurb.com. Your book is wonderful!
Very cool! I’m going to have to check it out…
wow, I’m so jealous…maybe I’ll do that too…your book looks great! By the way, I’m now following..
AWESOME idea – your kids are going to love this one day.
That is an amazing idea! I just may have to copy it if I can figure out how to do it!
that looks amazing. I had looked into this, but I doubt the kids want to remember my head photoshopped on someone elses body.
WOW! I’d love to do this too…I know I would be obsessed while in the process though. Wish there was an easier site than blurb to get it done.
What a great idea!
I’ve thought about doing this too.. the site I looked at was going to charge almost $200! I might have to start hinting around for a birthday present…
OMG – I LOVE THIS!!!!!!!!!!!
Thanks so much!!!!!
I have heard of other bloggers doing this, but haven’t seen the results. It looks awesome!
Ok – I usually hate to do this – but I’m copying! Well, I’m going to try to get myself one of these nifty books of MY blog!! So glad I came over here!
Your blog is great BTW!
I am so happy I happened on your blog this week. I LOVE this idea. I’m going to link your post to my blog right now so my friends can see this and how to do it! Super neat!
OMG…I love it! I want one!
I didn’t even realize you could do that. What a great idea.
I stumbled across your blog today, so I recognize that I’m commenting a year later… but I wanted to say that the book looks like something your kids will be able to treasure. What a wonderful gift.
I started doing that, but got sidetracked about halfway through. One of these days, I’ll buckle down and finish it.
Yours looks gorgy, btw!
Cara´s last blog ..Quattro
Wow that is absolutly amazing. What a fantastic idea. How amazing would it be to do one for each year and save until the children are older.
Snafflesmummy´s last blog ..Seals by the Seaside
That’s very cool! I’ll have to remember this…haven’t blogged enough yet to create the book, but I love the idea!
Amy (@amyjod)´s last blog ..Stain or badge of honor: the choice is yours
That’s pretty much what I’ve been planning to do with my family blog. Are they compatible with Blogger yet? I think there are a couple of others out there that are.
moonduster (Becky)´s last blog ..Captain Mac A. Roni "The Greatest Treasure" Review by Bella & Gabby
Lovely! Thanks for posting this. I’ve been eyeballing blurb for awhile and I might give it a go in January. I’m always super paranoid of my little server melting into a million pieces or something. I’d love to be able to hold my little blog in my hands. :)
Sara´s last blog ..Wordless Wednesday
That’s awesome. But I’m too lazy, so I think I’ll ask my husband to do it for me for Christmas.
amber´s last blog ..Random Tuesday Thoughts.
So cool!!!! Thanks Jill for the 411.
JenniferG´s last blog ..Balancing Career And Home Life… Hard Choices.
LOVE this. I’ve been wanting to do this for a while…Thanks for tweeting this!
Melisa´s last blog ..The Time I Saw Red: A Cautionary Tale
I did the same thing. I was using wordpress to track and blog about my pregnancy and after bea was born I turned it into a book with blurb. Though it was compatible with wordpress I am OCD and did each entry and photo by hand.
I love it. It’s special for bea and “Becoming Beatrice” will be hers forever, even though I don’t keep the blog anymore. Great idea!
Erica´s last blog ..Now accepting gifts
I LOVE this. I print off posts and stick them in the kids baby books but it’s a pain and looks horrible. What a fantastic idea! Thanks…
This is incredible.
I am shamelessly stealing this idea.
I’m seeing copies for each set of grandparents – wait, it knows not to import private or password protected posts, right? Can I pick categories to avoid – like anything relating to the technical side of blogging?
Anyways, I was saying… copies for each set of grandparents every year as Christmas gifts.
WannabeMomErin´s last blog ..Blog Design – credit where credit is due.
I wanted to do this but the pub co I was talking to really wanted to bone me on the price! Thanks for the hook up! Now the last year in blogs won’t go into the abyss!
That’s a great idea – thanks for sharing!
When did I become my Mom´s last blog ..Did I ever tell you…
Gads… that looks amazing (but a LOT of work). Did you have to have your blog images already uploaded in high res? Cause I have a GAZILLION images all there in low res, and it makes my head spin thinking about re-uploading the lot…
My first visit to you – great blog!
:-)
BB (from the land of Oz)
Bush Babe´s last blog ..Fa La La La La!
Wow, this is AWESOME! I am tempted to redo “My Funny Dad, Harry” using this and maybe now I will do more books. I love this idea and checked out the site. Your book looks GREAT–better than mine which I self-published through Outskirts Press! I’m SO glad you were ahead of me in the SITS comments today!
I must share about this with my blog readers in my Friday “Things I Learned This Week” post with a link back here at http://www.zemeks.blogspot.com.
Happy SITS Saturday Sharefest!
Karen, author of “My Funny Dad, Harry”´s last blog ..Aunt Dorothy Was Right!
That is soooo awesome! Thank you so much for sharing this! I just started my blog but I am sure in the future this will come in handy. Have a great day!
This has got to be about the coolest idea ever! I may just have to do it someday!
That is awesome, I heard of another site where you can put your blog in a book, that will be a good way of keeping them indexed by year. Thanks, Happy SITS Saturday!
It’s so easy to get cuaght up in wanting followers, seeing how many hits your site gets, etc. Since I am new-er to blogging and what my blog to expand, it’s something I worry about and think of. But you are right. Why did I even start a blog? I knew nothing about page ranks or hits when I started. It was all for fun. Thanks for the reminder.
By the way, that was an awesome idea to turnyour blog into a book. I may look into that myself….what a greatg way to remember the year.
I’ve recently used Blurb.com and was pleased with the results, so maybe they’ve worked out some of the kinks. I started my blog just as a way to keep in touch with my family and fell in love. Until just a couple of months ago, it was simply communication with family and friends, but now my followers have expanded and my blog has changed slightly.
I just spent last night going through my past posts and enjoying the memories each one brought up. I never thought to have it bound as a book, but what a great idea! I have fallen off of the scrapbooking bandwagon; I still have three or four unfinished scrapbooks, that I will eventually finish, but my husband and I did an electronic scrapbook for our wedding that we had bound and I’ll never go back to the old way of scrapbooking. Not when it’s ten times easier and costs the same to have a hard-bound scrapbook!
Stopped by from SITS and glad I found your site :)
Shawntel´s last blog ..2010 Resolution #4 – and That’s It, No More
Wow, I need to do this. I have some non-techie family members who always say that wish they could read my blog in a book form. I’ll keep this in mind for sure.
Amber´s last blog ..I Suppose I’ll Attempt Resolutions
this is a great idea! i have some mommy friends who blog that would absolutely love this.
i love the abe pic comparison, so cute!
happy sits saturday sharefest!
Kallay´s last blog ..Twenty Ten: The Year of the Pen (Or, Things I Intend to Accomplish)
I LOVE this idea. I have often considered writing a blog purely about my kidlets and this idea has sold me. I would love to compile all my entries into a book (as I too have blank baby books that have never been filled in!)
Suzy´s last blog ..My "Real Job" part deux
Help! Started my blog hoping to make a little book as well and STILL can’t find an easy way to import so it’s not all manual. Any ideas?
Cindy S´s last blog ..Disney Nuggets Part Four – "A Million Little Shoes"
I know there are sites that allow that, but I don’t think Blurb does easily. Have you tried searching for “making a blog into a book?” There are lots of choices out there!
Wow. That is beautiful and amazing!
Stacey´s last blog ..500 Days of Snoozing
I arrived here via the NYT article and congratulate you. I hope you are having as much fun writing as I had reading. My kids are grown and on their own but I still have boxes full of momentoes, writings and pix waiting to be scapbooked (so 20th century), which I will eventually get to – HA! HA! However, you’ve now inspired me to update and create a blog book for each of them. Very cool! Thanks!
I’ve had an etiquette website for about six years and would be interested to read anything you’ve blogged about teaching children manners. I liked the piece on twitteretiquette and blogetiquette, but I couldn’t figure out how to search for blogs on, say, table manners, or, say, teaching please and thank-you because I would like to read what you have to say. If you have time to follow-up, I would appreciate hearing from you or following you on twitter when you blog about manners and etiquette. Thank you. Didi@NewportManners.com
awesome, I will take a look into it..
the interface of Blurb is somehow interesting.
thanks for sharing.
Linn´s last blog ..Back to the Blog
I love that idea, it may have been a pay in the ass to do but Im sure you are now so pleased you stuck with it and it looks so professionally done. Great idea. We take a trillion photo’s every year of the kids achievement and then go stick the disk in a box for ‘keepsake’ how stupid is that!
Mama B´s last blog ..Flea market fever takes over with gusto in Dubai!
I had been wondering about doing this. I was kind of thinking about adding to it one week or month at a time so by the time I was done with the year, it would not take that long. have only been doing this about 2 months but have been loving it.
Susie @newdaynewlesson´s last blog ..When You Are Authentic & Open, Others Will Open Up To You
Oh Lord! I guess since I am AngryworkingMom and I am pissed off most of the time it may scar my kids! I mean..I am supposed to be cheery damn it!
angryworkingmom´s last blog ..You know what I hate…?
I know this is an older post of yours but I just recently stumbled across you on twitter, which inevitably led me to your blog that I’ve spent the past few days exploring. I had no idea this type of service was available & am so grateful to find your post about it. What an awesome idea!!! I am so going to do this with mine for each year because I started my own blog for just the same reasons that you began yours & I’d be devastated to one day lose it all mysteriously into cyberspace or something. Having a hardcover book to back it up & always have would be wonderful, especially to one day share with the kiddos.
Thanks!
Jody
Jody @ Laslink´s last blog ..Rollercoaster Turned Nightmare
I would love to do something like this.. I had know idea that was possible. thank you for sharing!
Blessings to you and yours,
Jeanie
aka Soccer Mom in Giggle Town
I have done this annually for my Mom, she adores them and yes, it is a big pain in the butt. I try to keep up with the book every month or so and I keep every photo I put into my blog in a special folder on my desk top to pull them from. It is worth it, they come out absolutely beautiful!
Whoops, spelled my website wrong. (again)
Lizzie´s last blog ..Another EReader Review- My Nook
Wow, this was really helpful. Part of my blogging is for this purpose completely, although I started branching out with reviews and other things, I wanted to have a record to give my daughter about the 1st year of her life.
Thanks for all the great info. I am in love with your blog after reading your post “This is where I alienate people”, I’m with you mama.
Kim´s last blog ..We all have an Inner Mean Girl
I like your book! It is a great keepsake. If they ever made a book out of my blog it might have to have a plain brown cover and be sold in the back room of a Red Barn Adult Bookstore quite frankly.
Jersey Girl Gets Real´s last blog ..Blog award