eager little mind

I’ve got a question for the moms out there. What does your child’s baby book look like? Did you get yours from Hallmark or Babies R Us? Maybe you created your own scrapbook? And I think I’ve asked this question before, so my apologies if you’ve already told me. I couldn’t find it in my archives.

I ask because I freaking hate Daphne’s baby book. I hate it, and I haven’t updated it. And I hate that I hate it and haven’t updated it. I always enjoyed looking through my baby book. It had cool early 70’s graphics:

The traditional naked baby on a blanket picture. Hey naked baby Jenny!

And without it, I wouldn’t know that my mom fed me green beans at 5 weeks old with my pediatrician’s blessing. Um, WHAT!?!?!?!

I bought Daphne’s baby book when I was roughly 24 or 25 weeks along. Gender neutral, since Daphne didn’t want to reveal her lady parts to the ultrasound tech until 28 weeks. I hate the standard format, with pages and lines that I will leave blank. Like the All About My Siblings page.

I want a custom book. With only the pictures and info that I choose. But here’s where it gets obnoxious (or more accurately, where I get obnoxious!)… I’m not a scrapbooker, certainly not with paper. I might be able to do digital, but I’m not thrilled with the idea of creating complicated layouts. I’ve considered using a photo book service, like Shutterfly or Photoworks, but I have yet to find a consumer photo book lab that comes back with decent color. My last Shutterfly freebie photo book looked terrible since they automatically “color correct” (and I didn’t see an option to turn it off). I would need to print it myself using one of our pro labs (WHCC or MpixPro), that way I would be completely sure of the finished color, since my monitor is calibrated to their specs.

My current plan is to either find a WHCC album template, or create my own using digital scrapbooking papers and elements. Then spend a small fortune getting it printed, but at least it would be a really quality piece. Then I’m going to have a custom image box (the boxes from MpixPro have a place in the lid for a CD) made, and fill it with every picture we like of Daphne from her first two years. And we’ll do a new box every 2 years or so. I like the idea of having the hard copy images, as well as a convenient place to store the digital files on CD, all in one.

Any other ideas I should consider? Do you have a favorite digital scrapbooking site? The only one I’m familiar with is Two Peas in a Bucket. Any pro photographer album resources? Oh how I wish I was rich enough to outsource this to an amazing graphic designer.

This project, and a twin quilt for Daphne’s big girl room are my major projects for 2010. So stayed tuned for my progress.