Family Yearbooks!

I totally get MVP of the family for this one. I went through our 43,287 photos (estimate) from 2011-2013, selected the best of the best, divided them into folders named by the years 2011, 2012, and 2013, and made the completed years of 2011 and 2012 into photo books! I'm no scrapbooker, and printing all these out and handwriting cute little captions would have taken me forever and have the added bonus of driving me bat shit crazy, so I opted for making the photo books online through My Publisher.

 I used Elsa's birth announcement for the cover of our 2011 Yearbook since that was kind of the most major event in our lives for 2011, and a picture from Elsa's first birthday party for 2012.

I've used My Publisher before and overall I'm pretty happy with it. Here are my pros and cons for the service:

Pros:
1) The photo books I've ordered so far have all come out really great. The photos are super clear (even my kinda grainy Instagram/Hipstamatic ones), the covers are nice and thick, and the book options are totally worth upgrading for (I'll describe the ones I opted for below).

2) The printing and shipping process is very quick. I made mine last weekend (Saturday and Sunday) and both arrived today (Monday), just one week later.

3) The book making software is easy to use. I don't like any of their "themes" because they look too "scrapbooky" to me and they tilt pictures and add stupid captions etc, so I always choose the simple path with a clean white or black background. You can choose how many pictures you want in each page (and it pre-specifies how those pictures are laid out on the page to make them fit- super handy) and can add captions if you want them. It's a software that you download to your computer, so you make the books offline, and then when you are done, you click purchase and it connects you to the My Publisher website where it uploads your book and you pay for it.

4) They ALWAYS have coupon codes available for discounts. They do an "extra pages free" promotion often (I just googled "My Publisher extra pages free coupon code" and found one on a blog called PhotoBookGirl) which ended up saving me over $80 for each book. The prices are set for each 20 page book, and any pages over that are 99 cents each without that added discount so it totally adds up. With the options I chose, each roughly 100 page yearbook ended up costing around $60 which includes the cost of the FedEx shipping.

Cons:
1) My Publisher is merging with Shutterfly (and I guess Tiny Prints since they merged with Shutterfly too? Shutterfly is taking over the world!!) so hopefully these kinks will get worked out with the new management, but I had SUCH problems on two separate occasions with the software connecting to the server AFTER it took my credit card payment. The way it works is that you pay and then it uploads the finished book for finalizing, so as it uploads, the percentage complete ticks upwards to 100%. Both times, the server connection failed on me around 97% complete so the book didn't go to printing but the payment was showing up as a pending transaction on my credit card statement. ARGH!

Long story short- I called customer service and the guy acknowledged they were having problems with that and they were working on it. He said the transactions would not go through if there was no book uploaded to print and if there wasn't a confirmation code emailed to me and he was right. I was never charged for those pending transactions, I tried again and the connection eventually worked thus making these books, and he gave me a bonus coupon for my hassle. After I asked for one.

2) There are too many damn options with book themes. It's overwhelming. There may be some good themes in here, but I looked through a bunch and thought most were kind of cheesy. All the embellishments just take away from the photos in my opinion.

3) This is both a con and a pro. When you are done building your book and click to purchase, you are taken through a number of upgrade options for your book. You can get super gloss printing, premium papers, lay-flat pages, etc for extra money. If you select those options along the way, that's what you pay. If you do NOT select those options along the way, before it lets you pay for the book with no options, a pop-up screen says "HEY! Want these options for 50% off!?" And you say, yeah duh, I obviously do. And you get the discount. So wait until the end. You can always back track and get more options before clicking on the final purchase button. They also give you an option at the end to tack on an extra copy of your book for 50% off (or more), so keep that in mind too.

One of my favorite options that is totally worth the upgrade amount is the option for "lay-flat" pages. See how you can have the book open on the first page (above) and the first page doesn't flip back over? That's because of the lay flat. It's premium. I think they first offer it to you for $20/book but at the end they'll give it to you for $10. Definitely worth it.

Another option I really like is the "super gloss printing". It makes the pages almost laminated, so water wipes off, the pictures are shiny and clearer, yet the page is still thin like a photo book. It makes a big difference. We're going to have these books forever hopefully, so anything that will make them more resistant to tearing or age is worth it. Again, $10/book usually, $5 if you wait to the end. Special bonus, if you choose both lay flat and super gloss at the end, they're both yours for $12. That's what I opted for. DISCOUNTS!

 

These are the backs of the books, where you can also put a picture. The one on the left is kind of dark, and the one on the right is kind of washed out with a flash (Elsa and I look like vampires, and we haven't bitten Jeff yet), but those were both issues with the original pictures, and were not due to the printing. The pictures all came out true to how they looked on my computer screen.

All these pictures are to show you the different photo layouts you can choose from. You can put 1-12 pictures on each page.

You can also write something for the book spine, so I chose to just put the year for quick reference when we have 38 of them lined up.

Now that I have a system in place, all I have to do is select my favorite photos each time I upload pictures into my iPhoto and copy them into the year's folder so when the year is up and coupon codes for great deals are available, I can order them up into a new yearbook. Want to take bets to see how many years I keep this going? Don't bet against me, I will crush you!!

Fantastic Paint Jobs by Fantastic Dads

Jeff got a shout out on Apartment Therapy today for the Bird print hanging in Elsa's room! Jodi sent me the link for it which I would have totally missed because I don't follow AT on my reader anymore since they post like 87 posts a day and it overwhelms me. Too bad because they have great content too! OBV.

Jeff just started selling a smaller size of this print in his store, a limited edition of 50 for only $35 each! The prints are a really great quality too (much better than this blurry jpeg of the painting I pulled off his website!), and on lovely thick paper. Available in his store!

Boy stuff

The sewing sweat shop is back in business! After realizing none of the bibs and burp cloths that I had slaved over were for boys and not even gender neutral, I dug up this birdcage fabric I had squirreled away from an Urban Outfitters curtain panel on clearance and my vintage OP turquoise velour to make six and six. I think I have enough left over to make a hooded towel and washcloth set too but I need to test out the velour first to see how absorbent it is. I'm loving the combo though.

23 months

 Karen and her camera came over yesterday and she documented my *almost* 23 month old baby as she tore around the house with "Hen". I made the mistake of telling Elsa early that morning that Henry was coming over to play, and she kept running to the window and begging to party with Hen. Ever since Shalom's birthday party last weekend, Elsa wants to "pardy" with everyone.

I love these pictures and I'm so happy to have such a talented friend who enjoys snapping them and more importantly, sharing them quickly with us! Maybe I'll hire her for Elsa's 2nd birthday party...

Maui Wowee

I know I've been a bad blogger, so this is me back on the wagon. I'm going to try to update the blog with the important stuff that's been going on lately (like Black Thunder coming in to our lives!) so next up are some pictures from our recent family vacation to Maui! We went again with my parents, Jeff's mommy Sue, our family friend Diane, and the Parola's, but THIS time we had Jeff's sister Jen and little Miss Elsa in tow! The last time we were in Hawaii I guess technically Elsa was too, but she was just a fetus then and didn't get to play in the kiddie pools so it didn't count. We stayed at the Marriott in Ka'anapali at Sue's timeshare and had a week long very relaxing and fun little vacation. I've shared these pics already on Facebook and Instagram (you can follow me @livmcmillan), but for those of you not following along there, I'll post some highlights here.

The flights were surprisingly not bad with Elsa! I was scared shitless, not gonna lie. I had my mom-bag packed to the seams with Color Wonder pens and coloring books, stickers, snacks, books, and the all-important iPad in the hopes that would keep her entertained for at least 20 minutes. The iPad seriously made the trip for us. She was pretty zoned out in front of it watching Yo Gabba Gabba and Word World for most of the trips. She napped briefly and looked out the window some, and got a kick out of our 1/2 square foot leg room space. 

I may be biased but I'm fairly positive that Elsa's swimsuits were the cutest in the whole resort. There were a bunch of pale kids in rash guard suits so the competition wasn't too fierce, but her suits would have been popular regardless.

I'm kind of surprised that this is the same resort that wouldn't let me down the 10 foot water slide when I was five months pregnant, yet they'll let a two-year old boil in a 105 degree hot tub. Especially with this guy:

"IN YOUR FACE GRAMPA!"

Cookies for Elsa, beer for Mommy.

As awesome as Hawaii and resort-life is, Jeff and I are now itching to do road trip/camping vacations. There is so much of America that we want to see and show Elsa, and now we have Black Thunder to take us there. We dream of alternating America and Rest-of-the-World vacations, and taking turns deciding where we'll get to go. Maybe an annual American vacation with international travel every five years or something like that. Either way, I should probably set-up that vacation savings account now...

Black Thunder

We got new wheels! Specifically a pimped out 2010 Honda CR-V EX-L SUV, Esq that I've just named Black Thunder. She's pretty amazing. We decided with Elsa's second birthday coming up next month, it was time she had her own car. I have the Mazda, Jeff has the Prius, so Elsa gets this one. 

Psych! Elsa driving is ridiculous. She's constantly texting and would be a very dangerous driver. The CR-V is actually replacing Dirty Snowflake, our once beloved Prius. Dirty Snowflake's lease was up this month however, and we weren't willing to commit to purchasing her so we started looking elsewhere. Since the Mazda is on the smaller side, we wanted something more mid-range in size, you know, because Elsa has three strollers and all. Plus we drive up to San Jose a lot and it was comical how stuffed the Mazda was last time. The CR-V was kind of meant for us. It looks like a normal car, not all jacked up or long or wide, yet it feels really spacious inside. This baby has room to spare!

Check out all that trunk space! That divider obviously can fold up and the seats have like 13 configurations so IKEA trips will be no probelmo in this puppy.

I haven't even gotten to the best part of the car story yet. WE WON IT! Well kind of. We still had to pay for it, but it was like 7-9 THOUSAND dollars cheaper than what I'm seeing exact matches to this car sell for at some local dealerships. So how did we get such a rad deal? My bro Jan works at Honduh!! This car was in one of their "In-fleet internal sales drawings" where associates (Jan) can put an application in to buy the discounted car and then a drawing happens where everyone crosses their fingers and one winning application is drawn. We don't know how many people threw in for this car but the only thing that matters is that we won it! We were so happy, because it really is an awesome car. Check out the cockpit!

She's all hooked up with Bluetooth, a navigation system and DVD player, a USB port (not really sure what we're supposed to do with that... maybe our iPhones can drive the car?), seat warmers and a nice little sound system. It's the nicest car we've ever owned, and think we might even keep her until Miss Elsa gets her learner's permit.

 Thanks for the hook-up Jan!!!

Garden updates!

It's so gorgeous and summery out right now that a garden update post seems appropriate. We wanted to re-plant our back raised bed with something and decided to plant the whole thing with 6 varieties of chili peppers! We've got habaneros, jalapeños, Caribbean reds, two varieties of cayenne peppers, and some asian chili peppers going on right now. It is one spicy box.

I always have better luck growing plants from seeds to seedlings in this mini soil pots than straight in the ground, so we did that and then two weeks later plopped them into the bed. 

All except our Caribbean Reds are going strong. We'll see if we can coax them back to life. I hope so because I can't for the life of me find the seed packets ANYWHERE! I think Elsa threw them away.

We ran out of room in the back bed for our 18 seedlings, so the three jalapeños got moved to the beds by Linus, joining our four lemon cucumber plants. Can't wait for those suckers to get going.

And speaking of Linus... look how healthy he is! We picked all of his ripe lemons but new green ones are in there. He's so much bushier now, and his branches are starting to grow up and not just out. I'm hoping he gets taller though. No offense Bradford and Donnie- we love you as neighbors but a tall tree would look really nice here.

For comparison, this was Linus from a few months ago:

 And this was Linus when he was a baby!

Our bougainvillea is also looking much better and is even flowering!

For comparison, this is how he was looking right before my dad came to visit and helped straighten him out:

Much better. Our potted succulents are also thriving and propagating (when Elsa isn't pulling them up).

 Trying to escape into the alley. Not a good idea without shoes, Baby.

Speaking of thriving succulents, our Christmas gift from two years ago from Mandy and Seth is looking amazing! It was touch and go for it for awhile because it was unhappy indoors and the cats kept eating it, but after we moved it to the dining table outside, it totally thrived. I love all the variations in colors and textures. Makes me happy.

Our front yard is looking pretty great too, and the neighbors just tidied up our rose bushes and put down pretty rocks around them because they have to look at them too and we didn't have time to do much with them. Maybe if you're lucky I'll do a follow-up post with pictures of the front. We'll see.