The Blog Book

Here's a little story about me and blogging:

Although I've taken many breaks from this blog over the years, I've been pretty faithful to it since I started blogging in 2006 (patting myself on the back right now).  I began blogging to simply connect with family and friends that were far away.  I wanted the grandparents, especially, to be able to see what goes on at our house from day to day.  It quickly developed into more of a journal and a place to record life.  Once upon a time I thought I would scrapbook life, but that isn't practical.  It hasn't happened.  Once upon another time I thought I might do digital scrapbooking.  That isn't practical (for me).  It' hasn't happened.  I don't even print pics to put into photo albums.  I'm great at taking pics (thousands and thousands of them), but then I do nothing tangible with them.  In light of all that and having the desire to scrapbook, journal, and organize pics into albums I searched for another option.  I've seen advertisements for turning your blog into a book, but was a little leery of that.  I just wasn't sure how it happens or if it was cost effective, or how it looked.  So, we did a little test and now I'm here to blog about my blog book.  I used Blog2Print.  This company allows you to choose the color and design of the cover and then puts your blog into print.  I chose to do the first year of my blog as a test.  It is very small.  It wasn't a whole year and I was just getting started.  There aren't even titles to my posts and the pictures are small.  I am very pleased with the book though.  I'm anxious to print each year of my blog now!  I'm going to whittle away at it slowly (using birthday and Christmas money) to print each year of The Stamper Story.  Seeing my blog "published" in book form to hold and have on the bookshelf in our living room was such an encouraging thing for me.  It has done much to focus my attempts and attention at memory making to ONE thing, this blog.  It has liberated me from piles of paper and embellishments and all the stuff from my scrapbooking days.  It has focused my intention on what and when to blog also.  From now on I won't be stuck in the following thought pattern:  To blog or not to blog.  To post or not to post.  My house isn't clean, that room isn't "finished", I don't know how to word what I want to say, I'm not a writer, this isn't a funny story, nothing truly interesting is going on...  I will simply record life as it happens and as I hope to remember it.  This might become incredibly boring at times, but I'm thankful for a renewed desire to keep blogging/ journaling.  Some days I might just post pictures.  Sometimes, just words.  I will try not to care who is or is not reading and how they may perceive me.  I'm very thankful for those of you who keep up with the Stampers via bloggy world though.  As God moves us to another country in the [near] future it will be so good to have this spot to communicate life to you.  I've taken a few pics of the book and will share them here.  If you have any questions, I'll answer them in the comments.  

There is a picture on the front and back cover.  I chose the option of using pics from my first post as the cover.  In the future I'd choose something different.

front:

back:

table of contents:

last page:

~The End~