Published! Sort of

I get my photos printed through Shutterfly, which is an excellent service. The prints always turn out great, I don't have to wait forever, and they're reasonably priced. They also send me really nice freebie offers that I use to make photo gifts like mugs, calendars and tote bags. All I pay is shipping on the freebies, so when they offered me a small hardcover book for free I decided to give that a test try.

The web site helps you put everything together with their online maker software. While it looks complicated I was able to learn how to use it fairly fast, so that should be a ringing endorsement.

My photo book arrived today:

I'd like to do one for Oliver, but I don't have enough pics of the little guy yet. Really, everything is so exciting and new with the baby I forget to take pictures. So for this book I used my quilting work as a theme. As you can see the quality is excellent:

Beautiful colors, too:

Very happy with the whole thing. I might start making my own books of the kids and my photography from years past.

I think to get the freebie offers all you have to do is register an account with them. Anyway, if you're in the market for prints or photo gifts, I highly recommend Shutterfly.

Comments

nightsmusic said…

I like that! And what a good idea. And after all this time, I've finally joined them. If nothing else, I can get a couple pics of the dogs to hang on the walls ;)

October 26, 2019 at 11:37 AM

Maria Zannini said…

I made one of these books filled with Greg's baby and toddler pictures. It's nice to have a series of memories bound in one book. Definitely do one for Oliver.

October 26, 2019 at 11:56 AM

Downsizing

This was my fabric stash once I sorted everything -- 22 full bins. I spent a day taking out and boxing up what I could part with, with the goal of trying to reduce it by half, so I'd have 11 bins. I was very strict with myself, and removed everything that for one reason or another I was sure I wouldn't be able to use. This is what I ended up with -- 12 bins of fabric that I'm keeping. It's not quite half, but close enough. Half of what I took out went to a local quilter friend, a school and Goodwill. These four tightly-packed bins will be going to the local quilting guild once I make arrangements with them for a drop-off place. I am relieved and a little sad and now determined to control my impulses to thrift more fabric. I don't want to do this again, so until I use up six bins, I can't for any reason bring any new fabric into the house.

In Progress

I promised myself I would show you the good, bad and ugly of my cleaning this year. This is what it looks like when you dump thirty years' worth of stashed fabric on the floor -- and oy, what a pain in the butt to pick up again! This is what it looks like after it's been sorted, folded and placed in containers, which took me about a week. Now the hard part is to downsize my stash by at least half, I think (that's my goal, anyway.) I've already e-mailed the president of the local quilting guild, a local friend who is a quilter, and a public school art teacher I know to see if I can donate some of the excess to them. The rest will go to Goodwill. Already I've reduced my vintage textiles from two bins to one, and my scraps from three bins to one. It's probably the hardest clean-out I've done, which is why I saved it until last. I know I have too much fabric, more than I can use in my lifetime -- but at the same time, I love it. So I have to

Other Stashes

Along with clearing out the spare bedroom and tidying my office and our guest bedroom, I decided to reorganize some of my stashes. This is all the yarn I have on hand, sorted by color. It looks like a lot, but lately I've been using up a minimum of half a bin every month, so this is approximately a year's supply. All of my solid color cotton perle thread. I go through a lot of this every year, too. I need a container in which I can fit all of it together, but I haven't found the right one yet. I won't show you all of my fabric -- I'm still reorganizing this stash -- but I went through everything and donated two bins of fabric I won't need to the local quilter's guild.

Valerean

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