Thursday, December 4, 2008

Thank you, Snapfish. Thank you.

For nearly five years, I have been carrying around the heavy, guilty burden of failing my family as our family historian. Thousands of photos uploaded to Snapfish online albums: wedding and honeymoon, baby pictures, holidays, and priceless candids hidden away in the recess of cyberspace. Not a single print ordered, not a single photo album underway.

Oh Felix Culpa!

Right now, for three days--December 3, 4, and 5, 2008--Snapfish is offering free shipping on all prints. Snapfish print prices are dirt cheap, but shipping costs generally are where they get you. Unless you take advantage of this once-in-a-blue-moon offer! Online coupon code: HOLPRINTS08. My horrifying procrastination has been rewarded. I saved my family $40 last night. How will I ever learn to be a better homemaker if Snapfish keeps enabling me this way?

Last night I placed an order for 799 photos, and I'll be pulling another all-nighter tonight, sorting through online albums to take advantage of this special offer and to get our family photo chronicles up to speed FINALLY. If you're awake tonight at 3am sorting photos, email me.

10 comments:

Right Said Red said...

lol.

now what will you DO with all those prints?

Juris Mater said...

Yeah. I got three lovely, large heirloom albums recently for super-cheap at Borders during a clearance sale they were having on their Paperchase products. Getting the photos into those albums, however, may take another half-decade. Has anyone else figured out how to acquire some self-discipline or goal-setting-ability in this area?

Catherine said...

Thanks for the tip! I haven't ordered a print picture for many months after I missed Snapfish's last big sale in July. I put photos in albums while nursing and sitting at a desk (baby resting on my crossed leg--same way I type at the computer!).

B-Mama said...

I always make a goal of updating our albums through the previous child when the next child is born. Not to mention, its a great nesting activity in the final weeks of a pregnancy!

FYI, Costco sells a great 2 for 1 deal on nice, leather albums. I was thrilled to find them recently--you'll find that space fills up fast and its impossible to match albums after several updating ventures!!

Kudos to you, JM, for tackling such an ambitious project during the holidays. Hey, sounds like a great procrastination tool!

AWOL Mommy said...

So weird, I was up doing this on Shutterfly last night as well because their free shipping offer ended on the 3rd! Bizarre.

OK, so this site has been a serious enabler for me forever as well because I don't even bother with single prints, but rather put together the photobooks. I use my oldest child's birthday as my bookend, and just put one together for each year. They are awesome. The only sad aspect of this development was that my Creative Memories Diva of a mother took one look at the first photobook I made (they take me about 2 hours if all of my pics are uploaded) and swore off scrapbooking forever. I feel personally guilty for the shelves of unused stickers and colored paper in their garage.

Mary Alice said...

I was a total creative memories girl until the twins came along -- two baby books in one year was more than I could handle! I have been looking at Snapfish albums, though.

We used to have a tradition of putting all of our digital photos onto a backup CD on New Year's Eve every year (proves that we are losers sitting at home...), now I back up to Picasa and we also have an external hard drive, but I am going to try to make sure that I am doing that once a year as well.

B, that is very ambitious nesting, think I can get three babies worth of albums plus about four years of family albums done in the next few days?

Actually, my best scrapbooking experience was my casual wedding album, I did one of snapshots from engagement parties, showers, wedding and our honeymoon at a day long creative memories workshop. I think I could do each baby album in a day if I decided to spend a whole Saturday and just actually do it.

Juris Mater said...

I cannot BELIEVE how fast my kids are growing up. I should look through these photos once every couple weeks to remind me to savor every single second. These pictures of Bella when she was Angelina's current age give me a lump in my throat. Time flies!

AWOL, these photo books sound very very interesting... can you add captions? Maybe I'll switch to this approach next time (2013).

texas mommy said...

I was thinking of posting on "baby books". I have an assortment of stuff, like first locks of hair, labeled in plastic baggies and don't know what to do with them! I think making baby books would be fun, but am overwhelmed by the idea. But maybe, like MA said, if I just sat down to do it, it would go pretty quickly.

Also, after almost losing all our pics from the first year of Dash's life (along with the work I was doing for a think tank) during a freak roof collapse/flooding event at a Panera, I am totally anal about backing up our pictures once a month. Every month I burn a CD and upload to online storage. We also have an external hard drive.

AWOL Mommy said...

JM, Yes, captions, comments, whole pages for typed journaling if you so desire. They are wonderful.
Tex, I am the least organized amongst us, but I have a baby book together for the latest baby for two reasons: 1)it is a totally intimidating format - small and fun looking seems to make it easier for me to maintain than something with an off white cover and handmade paper. That would never happen and 2) I keep it with my cookbooks. I know you are a big baker yourself, so this would definitely work for you. I just have it sitting there amongst all the cookbooks I use with some frequency and while I am waiting for onions to sauté or cookies to ding, I fill in a page about some milestone he just hit or some funny thing he recently did. Then, when Shutterfly free shipping rolls around, I order 5 or 6 photos of him at various ages and glue them in there next to pertinent stuff I have written. I guess this is just an alternative approach to the knock it all out in one day method.

B-Mama said...

AWOL, brilliant suggestion keeping your baby books by the cookbooks! I always have idle time while in the kitchen making dinner... I buy the simple Carter's keepsake books and put everything in them. It is the same format each time around, so no child is getting more than the other. I'm always late adding in pics, but they're around, so I know I'll get them in there sooner or later!