Hiya, mamas! I’m popping in today to share a project that I think I’ve been working on for almost an entire year. Maybe longer! Photo albums. It’s crazy how far behind you can fall with these. Of course they aren’t *necessary* but it makes me sad that I have so many thousands of photos of my kids and our family and they all live in a totally unorganized digital universe that no one will ever see. When Forrest, my middle, was about two I made our first official family photo book that covered part of 2012 and all of 2013. I was so excited to have a plan to at least print a small selection of photos from each year. 2014 was going to be a breeze!

It’s now 2018 and Forrest will be 6 next month. A small miracle happened last week. These four books documenting 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017 arrived at my doorstep, printed expertly by Artifact Uprising. You guys, it was a big day. It took four years to print another book and I have spent so long working on this project! So many hours of extra childcare on the weekends. It feels like a legitimately amazing accomplishment. And seriously the very best Mother’s Day gift to myself I could possible receive. I am here to tell you that this can be done, and I have worked out a whole system for making this way more manageable going forward.

This is a thing for moms, right? Never having time to do the photo albums? It seems like every mom I know struggles with it.

First, I should mention that I truly LOVE the Artifact Uprising editor. It is so snappy and easy to use and they have so many nice page layouts and the book formatting is super flexible. I could go on and on!

I chose their hardcover photo books with a full photo cover and I am so happy with how they turned out. But here, quickly let me show you what my hard drive situation is like and explain why I set it up like this.

Kay, here’s how I *used* to prep my files for an album. Who custom names each file??! And see how they are all just a jumble? There are hundreds of photos in the 2014 book folder. When you load these into the editor as a group you have to sort through them on the fly as you create your album. If you like to print your books in chronological order, this is a nightmare! Because naturally “apple-1.jpg” is from our trip to the apple orchard in October, but it’s going to load in first.

Now, the logical way to organize my final files… BY MONTH! So when I save out final photos they are sorted into their appropriate month. Then when it’s time to create a book for the year, I start with the “1″ folder since that is all of my January photos. Here, let me show you in the AU Editor:

The photos on the left under My Images are only from January 2017. Once they’ve all been placed, they will all be grey with check marks (except maybe a few that I decide not to use). Then I can load in February and only those new photos will show up as unused/ready to place. Does this help? I’m sure there are a thousand ways to do this but now that I’ve spent probably over 100 hours working on the photos and books I feel like this is a pretty good system.

The final product is so lovely too. Truly it feels like a really special family memento. Even iPhone photos print really nicely as full page prints, like the one above I took the morning Louella was born. My older boys have looked through each of the books at least five times already! They love talking about trips we took and seeing each birthday pass or even just a really fun day at the beach. And I can’t tell you how relieved I feel to actually have these fleeting moments with my children as tiny humans properly documented in real life.

I’ve also looked through all of the books at least fives times!

You know I’m already working on 2018! You can actually keep an open project in your Artifact Uprising account throughout the year so you can add to it as the months pass. Can you imagine being that caught up?! I would probably throw myself a small party. I can’t say I’m there yet, but maybe for 2019.

It’s such a big project, OMG. But seriously I think now that I have this system down next year’s book is going to be a snap. If you’re motivated to get started (or finish!) your own with Artifact Uprising, you can use the code CAKELET15 to print your own personal Mother’s Day gift (or one for your mom) at 15% OFF through Wednesday May 9th. Happy early Mother’s Day, everyone!

xx, Kristina

PS. My dress is the Prem Dress from Doen and I’m obsessed with it! I have it in two different patterns. And huge thank you to awesome photographers and our Festoon LA studio-mates, Nicki Sebastian and Marisa Vitale who graciously snapped the photos of me during their workday while I was putting this post together.