A Year of Instagrams

I do not know what possessed me, but I spent the evening of December 31, 2013 putting together a book of all my Instagram photos from 2013. I guess I just realized I'd like a hard copy of those photos. They are certainly not the best quality, but I really do love them.

I used  Blurb to make by book. They offer an option to put together an "instant" Instagram book using their online book software. It's really cool, actually...it automatically pulls all your photos from Instagram and puts them in the book for you. Very quick and easy. For me, there was only one (ok, two) problems. 1) That kind of book only allows you to have 240 pages and I wanted one page for every photo - I had more than 240 photos for the year. And 2) there are not a lot of customization options with this type of "insta-book." 

So, I opted to use the tried and true Book Smart software that Blurb offers. You download it onto your computer and put your book together and then upload it to Blurb to purchase. Lots of customization options for control freaks like me.

I chose the 7x7 square because I just wanted something small. It's really a perfect size for Instagram photos since it's small and square. There's also a 12x12 square available. 

I also used a nifty program online called Instaport to download all of my Instagram photos to a zipped folder on my computer. It's a great way to backup your Instagram photos too. You can select which photos to include in the download by selecting a date range, hashtag, or a couple of other options. 

Once the folder of photos was on my computer (and unzipped), I just uploaded them to the Book Smart software and had it "autofill" my book with one photo per page. I made a template for my book that I used for every single page. That's it below, and it's super easy to make.



Just take one of the one-photo layouts and tweak it a little bit to be formatted how you would like. I made mine with a square photo taking up the majority of each page. I made a right and left version of this template to account for the binding that takes up part of each page.

On the top of the page, I made a text box for the date and location (if applicable) of the photo. On the bottom of the page, I made another text box for the caption I originally posted on Instagram along with my photo. Including those two text fields were important to me since they provide a timeline and reference point for each photo (and they were a big reason why I chose to use Book Smart for this book).

So in a matter of minutes, I had my book populated with all of my photos. But adding the dates, locations and captions/hashtags took a little bit more time. There is no way to pull that from Instagram into Book Smart automatically. But, I just brought up my Instagram profile online and used it to put in all that info. I was able to copy and paste my comment at the bottom, which made it go much faster. 

Even though adding the text took some time, I really love how my pages turned out. Now there's context for the photos, yet the layout is still really clean and simple.

For the cover, I just made a simple template in Photoshop and included some of my favorite Instagrams from the year. All it took was a few hours and my book was ready to order. Hooray for (almost) instant gratification...just like Instagram! I'm excited to have this little book along with our big family year books (that I will one day get caught up on). 

Blog-less

I think it's pretty obvious that I have not been updating my blog for the past few months now. It's not for lack of photos, that's for sure (although I confess, I am always bad at taking photos in January...post-fall burnout). And it's not because I don't want to post or that I don't have things to blog about. Nope. Our new house and all of the time-sucking activities surrounding it have completely thrown me off my game. More than usual. But, I will eventually be posting about our Christmas and the whole month of December. I'll just be back-dating the posts so they are still in proper order (can't help it). So, if you care about such things and are not on a feed-reader, feel free to scroll down (and keep going) as I fill in those posts. This season of life has been equal parts excitement and exhaustion. We are staring down the light at the end of the tunnel right now, so I feel a resurgence in my blog activity coming on.

2014 Book List

Sparkly Green Earrings by Melanie Shankle (6)

Allegiant by Veronica Roth (7)

Pastrix by Nadia Bolz-Weber (8)

Rena's Promise by Rena Kornreich Gelissen and Heather Dune Macadam (9)

The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom (8)

War Brides by Helen Bryan (7)

And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini (7)

Notes from a Blue Bike by Tsh Oxenreider (7)

Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky (8)

The Art of Hearing Heartbeats by Jan-Philipp Sendker

Merry Christmas | 2013

Trains at Northpark | 2013

This year, my mom and I took Logan to see the Trains at NorthPark like we usually do every Christmas time. Ethan was in school and we decided it was fine to go without him this time since he isn't as big of a fan of trains as Logan. He was so excited to be the center of attention with a special outing just for him!

He wore his train shirt especially for the occasion. He loves this shirt.

Showing us his ticket right before we went inside the exhibit...

Logan absolutely loved all of the trains. This year was so much fun because he was a little older and was soaking it all up. We walked around the displays several times...he was never ready to leave!

It is so fun do do something with your kids that they really love...and this was one of those times. We ALL loved it.

We did not expect to see this huge gingerbread town display in the mall, but Logan was instantly drawn to it.

And just like the trains, I could hardly pull him away from it. He just kept looking at it all and pointing out things.

It was actually really cool. There were all sorts of buildings and everything was really intricate. I think this was done as part of a fundraiser for a charity, but I don't remember the details. Only that it was fun to look at. And it made me hungry for sweets (which is not hard to do).

Christmas Lights | 2013

This year we loaded up our car again and went out after dark to look at Christmas lights. Just like last year, we went around 6:30pm and managed to beat the rush to the neighborhood where we go.

Before we left, I made the boys stand in front of the Christmas tree (at my mom's house, where we are living for the time being). This photo is SO not perfect. If we'd had more time, I would have done it differently. But, it's still sweet.

(Photographer's note: I edited these photos exactly 0%. I did that because that's what I wanted to do. Or not do, to be more precise.)

The boys are still at the age where they like to look at the ornaments and they love to see their favorites.

They actually hugged for me! They hug all the time, I just don't normally catch it on camera.

After those few quick (rushed) photos, we piled in the car and took off to see the lights. This year, I did take a few photos of the lights, but I really wanted to focus more on the boys and getting some of them enjoying the displays. I'm glad I did.

There were snacks, of course. And we rolled down the windows so the boys could see more clearly. And obviously, we threw caution to the wind and let them go unbuckled.

They are still in awe at the lights. I am too. I love it and I hope they enjoy it for a few more years, at least.

Since we had the windows rolled down, everyone who passed our car on the sidewalk got a loud greeting from the boys.

We really had a good time looking at lights again this year. Such a fun tradition.

Moving Out

December 9 was moving day for us. It was supposed to be Friday, the 6th, but let's just remember that Friday was the day that the huge ice storm hit our area making moving pretty much impossible. I have lived in Dallas my whole life and I've never seen ice like this. Huge trees snapped in half because of the weight of the ice on their leaves and branches. The roads were covered in inches of very solid ice. Parking lots...death traps. Nasty stuff.

What I'd love to be doing during an icy weekend is sitting in front of the fire, cuddling the boys, watching movies, making hot chocolate, and reading books. That's what makes ice storms even remotely bearable. Moving and stressing about getting all your stuff into storage during an ice storm is not on my list of things I'd like to be doing.

Sunday afternoon, Casey and I scraped the very thick ice from the walkway leading up to our house and Monday morning, the moving truck arrived. This is the first time we have hired movers. Suffice it to say, I'm never moving without movers again. (Actually, I'm not moving again...ever, so never mind.)

And yes, the faded "Christmas Trees" words on the side did give me pause. After all, these guys are loading our entire house into a truck and then putting it in storage for us...you want them to be legit. Turns out, they did fine.

When I was packing, I used the dining room as a staging area. This was about 1/2 way into the move. Lots of boxes...and random stuff. It's the random stuff that doesn't fit in anything that annoys me. Ironing board. Pool noodles. Bean bags.

And here's the living room with the furniture all wrapped up. The couch wasn't wrapped because we were selling it to a friend who picked it up later that day. The house is starting to look really weird, but you don't really have time to stop and notice because of all the activity going on. I didn't even take many photos that day....literally less than 10 total.

Toward the end of the day, when the crew was unloading the second (and last) load into the storage unit, my mom brought the boys over to the house to day goodbye. They were so excited to see how different it looked.

They went up to their empty rooms and said goodbye, then we took one last family photo in our house. Which we now refer to as "the old house." Goodbye house. I pretty much raised my babies here. We moved in when Ethan was exactly 1 year old. Logan came home from the hospital to this house. And we had wonderful, sweet, exhausting, and very memorable years with our little boys here. I will always love it.

Time to start a new chapter. Beginning with waiting for our new house to be finished.

Gingerbread Houses | 2013

Just after Thanksgiving, we started packing up our house to move. About 2 days before we were scheduled to move our stuff into storage (more on that later), we got settled into my parents house. This year, we are living with Mimi and Pop during the entire Christmas season. And first on the things to do was make our annual gingerbread houses to add to the decorations.

We spread out on the kitchen island and got out the kits I bought at Target. As much as I love baking, the fun of this particular project is all in the decorating (in my opinion). I want to bake things that I'm actually going to get to eat!

Ethan working away on his house...

As always, carefully choosing and placing his candy pieces.

Looks like Logan is being pretty careful and precise too. I love his look of concentration here...

And here we are with the finished products. Very pleased with his creation.

Logan decided to be silly and try to eat his house. Crazy kid!