Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Big Book of Baby B

Back in January, I revealed that last year we had a bit of a secret blog going on behind the Bowdenisms scenes. Sure we shared some pregnancy updates here (like our maternity photoshoot, baby shower recaps, and our Wishes for Baby) but that was just the tip of the iceberg. For over nine months, I kept a pregnancy journal, full of photos, memories, fears and joys. Each week Dustin took my "belly pic", and I typed a note to our baby-in-progress. And every month I filled in a template with pregnancy stats, like weight gain, cravings, and little fetus milestones. But in addition to that, I tried to write whenever I could about all the day to day details of Baby Bowden. By the time Piper made her grand entrance into the world, I had hundreds of entries, and a hard drive full of pics, just waiting to be assembled into a scrapbook.

But who has time for that once there is a baby around?

That my friends, is where technology gets involved. Because not only had I been typing and snapping away, I had also been funneling all those memories right into an online photobook on Blurb, before she was born (the same service we use to print our yearly blog books). That way, once Piper actually arrived, I just had to add her birth story, and hit print. (and trust me, with a newborn in the house, even getting that amount done was no small task, so I'm immensely grateful I got so much done ahead of time, or poor Piper would have a big stack of nothin'.) When all was said and done, we ended up with 118 pages of Baby Bowden goodness, in a professional looking, hardcover bound book.

I absolutely adore how it turned out. Dustin may have teased me a few times about how overboard I go with documenting memories (or how overboard I go with everything...) but I'm not the least bit sorry for even one minute that I spent putting this together. I only hope our little bug treasures it one-tenth as much as I do...you know, once she can read.




And now...it's on to the next one! Ugh...Piper's baby book is in progress, but something tells me corralling the thousands (or hundreds of thousands??) of photos from her first year is going to make this pregnancy book look like a cake walk. How do you moms do it? I worry I'm going to give up and start throwing things in a shoebox. Or more likely a digital shoebox called Facebook. Stay tuned I guess...

If you want to see more, check out some snippets of our book here.

5 comments :

  1. Clearly, I want to see the whole book, read every word, gush over every picture!!! I love it!!!

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  2. Does everything your hands touch turn to perfect? That book is amazing and you have your blog in book form too? Did I know this? Why do I seem so shocked?

    Baby B's book is hands down the finest specimen of a pregnancy journal/scrapbook I've ever seen. Blurb should have paid you to publish it so they could use it to reign people in. People like me who would be deluded just long enough to make one of their own, forgetting that their pictures are all in shoe boxes and they'd never be able to pull off one that nice.

    Well done, Bowdens. When you two are involved in something, beauty is always the end result!

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  3. (hi courtney! I know I don't comment a lot, but I promise, when I get in bed at night, your blog is one of my favorite nighttime reads!) I looooove love love your pregnancy book courtney!! Wow, I want to sit & look through it/read it too. Gorgeous. You are absolutely amazing at everything you create, so true. I definitely share your concerns & fears of photos going into a shoebox (cringe!!) Or just having fb/virtual books. I have started making a photobook for the kids for each year for their birthday. It starts with the party pics from the year before & then continues with all my fav photos from the year (yeah, it's a thick book & takes forever but it's my labor of love to them :)) somewhere in there I write a "letter" to them, much like a blog post. I'm sure yours will be amazing!!
    P.s: piper is SO SO SO unbelieveably cute, it's insane. So sweet, I love her w/o even knowing her (& yet I feel like I do!) :)

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  4. you girls are so sweet! (I find myself always saying that in the comments. But really! You are!)

    happy- i print out a book each year of our blog. blurb makes it so easy though b/c they "slurp" your site into a book automatically. I don't exactly read them, but it's nice to have and makes me feel better about the words I'm throwing out into the internet abyss.

    renee- i love the letters you write to your kids each year. I always read them and think how special they're going to think they are someday. I can't even imagine how many photos you have of your kiddos!

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  5. I always visit your blog ,nothing to say but this time I have to say you have a very cute girl ergo baby carrier. Life is so beautiful when you own her.

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