Between my digital SLR, my iPhone, and my little point-and-shoot camera, I returned home from our family vacation to Chincoteague in July with 698 photos. I downloaded them to my laptop, backed them up to an external drive… and then ignored them for a couple months.
In September, I dedicated time to finally doing some things that I kept saying I would do “someday.” So I finally posted an album of vacation photos on Facebook, even though it had been a couple months since I vacuumed the sand out of the mini-van. And I finally removed the packaging from a gallery frame my mother-in-law gave us a couple years ago (!!!), printed seven of our vacation photos at CVS, and displayed them on the wall in our hallway.
Then, in late September, Elise Blaha wrote about a book of photos she got printed at Blurb — and she included a discount code for her readers to get $19.95 off a Blurb book within the next three days. I’ve been making an effort to get more of our photos out of my computer and into formats that my family can actually see and enjoy, and I couldn’t resist the generous discount on a Blurb book.
So I created a 100-page softcover book with 123 of my favorite vacation photos… and I love it. It’s so fun to be able to easily look through our vacation photos and remember all of the good times we had that week.
The book is seven inches square, and I chose to use only square photos that all bleed off the page.
On a few pages, I created a grid of four photos. When we started our vacation, I told Tim that I wanted to be sure to have some photos of myself. So I occasionally handed him the camera — and when I got a hole-in-one on the miniature golf course, I got a little excited… and totally forgot that Tim had the camera at that moment. But it was important for me to include some pictures of myself in the book, so the mini-golf pictures made the cut.
Thanks to the generous discount code, this nice thick book of vacation photos only cost about $16 — and half of that was for shipping. A hardcover book would be more durable, of course, but it also would have cost more.
I love my little 100-page book, and I won’t be surprised if I make a book of vacation photos every year. I can already imagine a whole series of books lined up on the shelf.
What do you do with photos from your vacations? Do you print some for framing? Make them into a book? Or just leave them on the computer like I usually do…?
Hi! I'm Rachel, and I'm so glad you're here. I make creative projects and intentional choices to create a life I love -- and I hope to inspire you to do the same! 
hi! I always make my holiday photos into a book, I love keeping them! I usually use my own Mac, and it’s quite expensive so I guess yor 100 pages may have cost a fortune… Your family pics look so cute
Hi Anna! That’s a neat idea to make a book of holiday photos. The cost for my book was super reasonable — especially since I had a code for a huge discount!
This is really lovely, Rach. I also like to make a photo book of our family holidays, as well as documenting them in our Project Life album. Such a joy to look back at photos like these with the children…
Ronnie xo
I’m making a book for each year….starting with last year and including our vacation photos in it. I’m going to try Mypublisher for this first one since I saw a friend’s wedding book that she made with it, but I’ll have to check out Blurb if I’m not satisified. I think I’ve only printed a few vacation photos!
I just recently heard of MyPublisher for the first time. I’ll be interested in hearing what you think of it.
Your book looks beautiful and well done. What type of paper did you use for this book? standard, matte or pearl? txs
Hi Diana — the paper I used was “premium lustre.” Maybe they’ve changed the options a bit?