Life with Leahy: pictures

Showing posts with label pictures. Show all posts

Saturday, October 19, 2013

Fall Family Pictures

We had our family pictures taken today.

Here is a little sneak peak at our family fun (in the cold, wind and drizzle!)

Thursday, August 15, 2013

Photo Shoot Time

I had a fun morning today shooting my own lovely little ladies!

Mckenna will be 4 next week and Norah turned 15 months today!! CRAZY!!

Here is a sneak peak at our shoot.... I have LOTS more to share!!!

Isn't this one great!!!

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

Photo Books & A Giveaway from Shutterfly!

One of Mckenna's favorite things to do at night is to "read" her photo albums. She will say, "I'm going to read you a story" and will proceed to say, "Once upon a time you were my Mommy and I was your baby". The albums she has in her room are all from when she was born and the first few early weeks of her life. I don't print a lot of pictures unless they are getting framed. As she has done this more and more, I had begun to think of ALL of the pictures I have and how I want her to be able to look through them all. This blog serves as my "scrapbook" of Mckenna and Norah, however Mckenna's love of pictures (wonder where she got that from) makes me want to give her more!

I have decided to start small and create photo books from special events. Birthday's, vacations, summer vacation... that type of thing. I have created a few Shutterfly photo books in the past, so I turned to their website to begin this project. Since I do not upload pictures to a website like Shutterfly often, I often feel overwhelmed with the idea of doing so.

Did you know that Shutterfly has a new Express Uploader??
I didn't either... so I downloaded it (super easy) and got to work.

I have started creating books for the girls' birthday's. I had a coupon offer from Shutterfly for 40% off photo books, so I had a reason to do it... and a timeline! I first spent one day uploading all of the pics from Mckenna's first three birthdays.... and when I say ALL of the pics we are talking 400-500 PER birthday. I have issues, yes, I realize that!

I found it easier to just upload all of the pictures from the event rather than sort through and then upload. I just don't have the time to stand around picking and choosing. I wanted them all on Shutterfly when I got creating. But that is what worked for me.

So Shutterfly has some awesome choices when it comes to selecting your albums... you can choose size, type of cover and even if you want them to create the whole thing for you! They make it easy!

For Mckenna's birthday albums I chose 8x11 books with hard color cover.

I then chose a template, selected some pictures and let Shutterfly do its magic!
They created custom pages to fit all of my pictures.
If I wanted, it would have been that easy.... but of course I am picky (difficult).
But I like that they let me be difficult! I was able to go in and move some pictures around, choose new pictures to add and then add text to the book.
The templates I chose even had various "clip art" style graphics I could add or take out. Loved it!

So... in the end I was SOO happy with the books I created! I was able to create books from Mckenna's 1st and 2nd birthday's and with my coupon for 40% off and FREE shipping, I got both books for under $47.00!! Super excited to create her 3rd birthday when I do Norah's 1st!!

Below you can view the album I created for Mckenna's 1st Birthday Luau!!

I hope you like what you see because the AMAZING people at Shutterfly have offered to give one of my lucky readers a

FREE 8x8 photo book

with

FREE shipping!!!

YEA!! So check out my album and then enter to win the FREE Shutterfly album!!

Don't forget to visit Shutterfly on ALL of their social media sites:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Saturday, March 16, 2013

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!

We are a WEE bit Irish around these parts!

We will be celebrating the day at a princess ballet!

Have a great one!

For the record, Mckenna would not cooperate for pictures by herself, which is why she doesn't have any! Stinker!

Monday, March 11, 2013

Mock Scrapbooks

For the longest time I have been trying to decide what to do with all of the formal pictures that I have of Mckenna and Norah after I am "done" with them. By done I mean, they are no longer being displayed around the house in frames. I have had them in boxes, but they were all unorganized and it bothered me that I was spending lots of money on prints and then throwing them in a box.

So back in January I decided that I was going to "scrapbook" just the bigger pictures... 8x10's and 5x7's, so they were preserved, kept nice and had a home. Well, come March and I was still procrastinating on this project because I just dreaded doing it.

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE scrapbooks and have made several back in my college days. However, they take so much time... time I just don't want to put towards them. So, I turned to my trusty Facebook friends to help me out. My friend Carrie gave me such a great idea that I hopped right on it!

I created these "Mock" Scrapbooks and I LOVE THEM!!!

They were easy, cheap and FAST!
Perfect!!

Here was Carrie's idea... she created photo albums out of binders, page protectors and card stock. She slid the pictures in the page protectors (no adhesive) and used the card stock to give it a more finished look. For the 5x7's she used the little sticky corner mounts to hold the pictures in place.

THAT'S IT!!

So here's what I did:

I found two cute 3 ring binders

Picked up some Acid Free Sheet Protectors (they cost a little bit more but will preserve better in the long run.) Also, some white card stock. You could use any color, but I will tell you why I chose white!

Yes, that's Norah's little hand "helping" me out!

Trusty little corner mounts

So here are all my pictures... in bins, separated by kid...

I suggest organizing the pictures in chronological order before starting if you want the binder to go in chronological order. It just makes it easier.

I started by filling some of the sheet protectors with the card stock and loading them into the binder.

Next I just started sliding the pictures into the sheet protectors. My pictures were already organized, so it went super fast!

That's my sweet Mckenna as a 1 day old little peanut!

These are the corner mounts out of the package. All you do is stick the triangle into the corner of the picture and its sticky on the back.

Here's the corner mount on the picture... they make them in different colors. I just chose clear... well, really the clear was just the cheapest and I didn't care what color they were!

This is a 5x7 picture mounted with the corner mounts.

After stopping to add the little corner mounts, I decided to try things a little different. I started sliding the pictures I wanted to go on the page into the sleeve and then came back to mounting.

This saved a lot of time. While, I haven't finished adding all the mounts, I did get all the pictures added to the album, which to me was more important. I figure I can sit on the couch watching TV and add mounts slowly but surely!

This is Mckenna's book... from birth to Christmas. She needs a new binder. Oops! And these were just mostly professional pictures or 8x10 pictures of pictures I have taken. Yikes!

I am so happy I finally have this accomplished! Such a great feeling and another thing to scratch off the list!

Here is what I love about this project:

1. It was cheap.

2. It was quick.
3. It was easy.
4. It required NO glue... my pictures are not stuck in place (the corner mounts don't have glue touching the pictures)

5. I can easily remove my pictures and put them back in without disrupting anything. This is great because I can change my mind and put them back in a frame, or put them into another display or album and won't chance ripping them!

6. Everything in this project can be reused. Since I didn't use an adhesive, the paper, page protectors and binders can all be reused in the future, if I wanted. I chose white paper for this fact. I love to have and use white card stock, so I just bought something I can use for multiple purposes. This would also be great if I ever did get these pictures into a real scrapbook. But honestly, I don't think I will. I love this option and its so much more cost/time efficient!

Oh and I don't mind the terrible pictures. I was taking them in our Den at night. The lighting is terrible... and taking them on my iPhone didn't help!