ABC Baby Book

I like to do digital scrap booking when I have time, which is hardly ever.  Before I had kids, I had grand dreams of making very detailed and beautiful scrapbooks and journals for each of my children.  I thought I would have every smile and step recorded.  Then I entered the real world of parenthood, and yeah, that just didn't happen.  My oldest is only 4 and I have no clue when he first rolled over!  But I do have this need inside of me to have something to remind me of my sweet babies.  That's when I thought of doing just a small (8x8) baby book for them. Originally I was just going to do the first year of life but that didn't happen, so I decided to do the first two years.  Even though I didn't plan it that way I like it because to me they're still babies until then anyway.

I knew I would need a theme of some sort to keep me on track, so I decided to do an ABC book. For each letter of the alphabet I put together a simple page of pictures pertaining to that letter.  For example, M is for mommy and the page just has pictures of me and that sweet baby. 

I used my own program called FotoFusion but you could do it in Photoshop or any other program that has digital layouts. You could also easily do it through any online company (such as Shutterfly, Snapfish or even at Costco) that does digital scrap booking.  They have layouts already for you to use so all you have to do is drop the pictures in and add a little text.

To make sure I got it done I kept it very simple with hardly any special embellishments or extras.  I used the same papers over and over which also made it go faster and made it look themed.

Most of the time I just do one page per letter but there where some I had too many pics I loved so I did a double page layout.  If you do this make sure you do the math and make sure all your doubles will go together.  (I've made this mistake)  I also really wanted my kids to be able to see what their family was like when they were just a baby so I included a lot of family pictures. 

Whenever I tell people about this idea they always want to know what I did for every letter and how I came up with so many ideas.  So here is what I did and a couple of other suggestions that would be fun.

A- Aunts
B- Blessing Day, Baby (use favorite pics), Boy, Bubbles
C- Cousins, Cuddle
D- Daddy
E- Eat
F- Family
G- Grandparents
H- Holidays
I- Ice Cream (I admit I gave my baby ice cream just for the sake of the book)
J- Jesus,
K- Kids, Kite, Kitten
L- Lake, Love, Likes
M- Mommy
N- Name, Newborn
O- Outside
P- Paisley (our dog), Party, Play
Q- Quilt
R- Reading (I like to include a pic of their favorite books at the time)
S - Siblings, Sunglasses
T- Toys
U- Uncles
V- Vacation
W- Water (great for those bathtub pics)
X- Xylophone, or you could use a word like Extra
Y- Yellow, yawn
Z- Zoo

Another thing to think about when you're choosing your theme for each letter is that you want this book to be personal and really reflect your baby.  For example, I make sure to include pics of some of my baby's favorite things.  So when we look at it when they're older I can tell them that was their favorite toy, blanket, food, book, etc.

For the most part I just used pictures I already had, but for a few pages I took pictures specifically for that page.  The most important thing is to get all of your favorite photos of your cutie in there.   It's quite a project that takes more time than I usually spend on such things, but I feel it was well worth it. 

My kids absolutely LOVE their books and I've found they come in handy when those cuties are driving me crazy!  Sometimes I need a reminder of all the good times. Good luck and have fun!