Gift Idea: A Reflection Book

^{Who would like this gift? Nice gift for a partner.}

^{What are you giving? A book reviewing the past year together.}

^{When? This is NOT a last minute gift. It’s gonna take some time, I’m not going to lie. But it’s completely worth it when your partner insists on taking it to your New Year’s party and showing it off to ALL his friends.}

^{Where? I worked with Blurb and was happy with my service. They do quality work, although I was surprised by the size of the book. They clearly stated the dimensions, I should have realized it was going to be small. Blurb didn’t ship the book to me by Christmas, so I got it for free!}

^{Why is it a great gift? It’s a forever kind of book. One that your grandchildren will look through and laugh at your funny clothes.}

<sup>My experience? It was hard work but I was so very proud to be able to present it to my husband. I title the book "Home is Wherever I'm With You: Reflection on a Year Together" because Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zero's Home  was our Introduction song at our Wedding. 

 I began the project by looking through my planner and Facebook and writing down 4-5 things that happened during every month.

Each month would begin with the words "January or March or July means...." and then I would think of ways to sum up what we did that month. For example, in April I made several test cakes for my friends' wedding. We ate a lot of carrot cake that month. So, I wrote "Carrot Cake Over-load" and then matched it with a photo of our wedding cake (see photo above).

Another example is in May. I wrote "May means....Mother's Day Success" and I paired it with a beautiful photo of our mothers hugging.</sup>

<sup>I tried matching photos to the different things we did each month but that became too time intensive (too many different cameras, etc..). I scraped that idea. Instead. I took all our wedding photos (I was in the middle of making wedding photo albums for family) and found relevant photos for each page. If you were married in the last few years, I'd definitely recommend this route.

I spent about 10 hours on this project. If you are more organized than I am and have all your photos on a site like Flickr or Picassa than it will probably take less time.</sup>