Simply Col

I still have trouble truly explaining  (even to myself) the why of why I blog.   I think the motivation has shifted back and forth over various explanations over the four or more years that I have been doing this.   But one reason that is always prominent is the journaling aspect.    And for whatever reason, sometimes I just feel a release to put down into words what is happening in my life and my head.    Why I choose to do this in such a public format… I can not honestly say… yet, it is what it is … and I have few qualms about it all.

On a more personal note…  I really like the idea that one day, maybe one of my grandkids may stumble upon something I have written and give it a read.   Hopefully I will still be around to hear their comments.. but if I am not, I really do wish that through reading my words, they come to better know and understand a part of me that perhaps they may not have realized otherwise. If nothing else… hopefully, they will come to understand how their lives and the lives of their parents are my everything.

The idea of somehow transforming my blog into a more permanent medium has always flitted about in the back of my ‘thought closet’. 

And then I came across  blurb.com. 

Turn your blog into a book their web site exclaims.  

“What  a marvelous idea”, I thought.

I read more and decide to give it a go.

I downloaded their BookSmart software and, following their instructions, I slurped my blog on to my hard drive.  

Truthfully, this didn’t happen with out a few  annoyances,  the fact that my blog is redirected to my own domain name being the biggest one.   But a visit to my wordpress.com dashboard and a quick change in the url status fixed that.. and just as the software promised.. my entire blog made its way to my hard drive..  all four years worth.

As you may imagine, four years worth of words and photos and comments adds up to a lot of material… approximately  350 pages.  Being that more pages equals more cost, I decided to forgo the comments and many of the pictures simply to decrease the page count.

Then I went through each individual page  using the provided page templates, added photos where  I wished too, and  slowly formatted the book. 

Admittedly the software that they provide is slow and clunky… but in the end it got the job done. 

With much anticipation and quite a bit of trepidation, I uploaded the book to the printers at blurb.com and now I wait. 

I uploaded the completed project on June 9.   According to the provided tracking page I should expect the actual book to arrive sometime around the 16th of June.  

My finished book (years 2006 to 2008) consists of 212 pages.   The book size that I chose is 8×10.   With shipping, the cost out of my pocket will be approximately $95.   A fair chuck of change, I suppose, but I am ordering only one book, choosing the image wrap cover and I am really hoping my family sees it as a kind of keep sake.

My plan now is to, if possible, do this on a yearly basis.   By doing one year at a time, the page count will be much less and hopefully so will the price.   I am thinking that I will probably add more photo layouts to my next endeavor.

Any how… I am quite excited about all of this and thought I would pass it along as I thought some of you might be interested in doing this yourselves.

Here is how my book will look.

Here is where you may check out a preview.