Coralee Dixon, rookie mom and creator of Shortcake Photo Book, emailed me with an offer to create a personalized photo book so easy that I wouldn’t need to do anything at all. For a few weeks, I was too frazzled to respond to her message so that gives you some sense of my frame of mind. Baby books and year-end videos fall into the big bucket of Wonderful Ideas I Don’t Have Time For.
After a few more weeks with Coralee’s offer starred in my inbox, I finally responded that I would be excited to try to make a gorgeous keepsake book if I didn’t have to do anything at all. She told me that if I logged in, connected my social media accounts, and identified my favorite book styles, the rest could be slurped up from what I’ve already posted on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. At this point I thought it might actually be easy enough for me, but it was worth the test drive of her Shortcake design team to find out.
I picked a gender-neutral theme and template, but she has approximately a gazillion styles to choose from with including many scrapbooky designs. I put it out of my mind and she did the rest of the work putting together my book as a Family Yearbook for 2015.
I reviewed the book before it went to print using a password-protected photobucket. I wondered, “What was I thinking Instagramming so much last summer?” worrying that I was over-representing a few events (four pictures of Holden getting a haircut? zero pictures of us arriving at a family reunion?) and I sought Coralee’s reassurance that my perfectly messy life was going to look great in print. I ultimately clicked ORDER with no changes.
The finished product arrived on my front porch a week later. And it is every bit as charming, messy, and special as our real life. My children love to see themselves in a printed book.
I love that the details, like dates and captions — and even social media comments from friends and family! – are placed so perfectly, in a way I could never achieve on my own.
The pricing reflects that the design team does all the work. Gulp. This is a good option for people with more money than time.
The hours that I did not spend on photo selection, stressing about which three photos of Sawyer’s preschool class party are the most representative of the 23 photos I took that day, are a joy to me.
They say “Done is better than perfect,” and in the case of photo books, I think that’s true. But in this case, I think I got both!
Visit the Shortcake website to see all the options.
Disclosure: I was sent a Shortcake photo book in exchange for my honest review.
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