For years, I've been wanting to have keepsake blog books made. In my early blogging days, I was printing off all my posts and putting them in plastic pages in big binders; but two years in, that became way too hard to keep up with, and if I'd continued with that, by now I'd have an entire bookshelf filled with binders! But the idea of hard copies has always appealed to me, especially in recent years. For one thing, that would keep my blog--all those archived posts filled with memories!--safe from disappearing. (I always imagine the Internet just shutting my site down, and never being able to figure out what happened to it. That would probably never happen, but I have an active imagination!) The other reason I love the idea of having actual books to look at is that ever since I got my first digital camera more than 15 years ago, I stopped making old-school photo albums. I miss photo albums! And I thought blog books could become our family scrapbooks/photo albums.
Well, I finally did I it! After receiving a modest, unexpected inheritance from my mom’s estate (not a lot, mind you; but enough to make me feel like I could splurge just a little), I recently had hardcover blog books printed up, with my favorite posts from each year since I started String of Pearls in 2011. I used a site called PixxiBook, and I have been so pleased with the books I've received so far, eleven volumes altogether: Best of 2011, 2012, 2013 (which had to be split into two volumes, so prolific was I that year!), 2014, 2015, 2016-2017, 2018, 2019, 2020-2021, and 2022-2023. I already have most of the next volume, Best of 2024-2025, ready to go, as soon as we get through the Christmas season and I can add the last few posts of the year to it.
I think the common way to use this site is to plug in your blog address, and then PixxiBook turns the entirety of your blog archives into one book--but only if it would be less than 300 pages long. If there are a lot of posts (for me, that was 1,600+ over the course of my blogging life), they divide them into a set of numbered volumes that are no more than 300 pages each, deciding on where to separate them without your input. The layouts for the pages are also automated, which takes away all the design guesswork for the blogger. When you're getting your books ready for print, you can remove any posts that you don't want included, and I definitely had to do that or I would have had so many books and this project would have been ridiculously expensive! And I definitely wanted my volumes to be divided specifically by year; so I worked the system and figured out how to make my blog posts fit into books separated that way.
And I must say, these books really are so beautiful! They are big, 8-and-1/2 x 11" (that is the only size offered), and I had no control over the sizes or placement of the pictures that accompanied each post. Some of the decisions they made about which pictures would fill up whole pages and which would be kept rather tiny are not decisions I would have made; but as the site explains, the automation takes all the burden of designing each page off the blogger, and I have to say that the end products are just lovely. (By the way, I'm not being paid to promote this company or anything. I just thought other bloggers might be interested in checking it out.)
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| A collage cover is automatically created for you. |
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| The pages are thick--I think the quality is top-notch. |
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| The color photos look amazing. |
Okay, then, enough about that and on to the topic of holiday happenings in the Pearl family this joyous Advent season. I am basically going to do a lead-up-to-Chrismas photo dump today, so that these pics will get into my latest PixxiBook volume.
Included are some pictures from a sweet girls'-day-out a few weeks ago, for "A Christmas Carol Tea" at a local tea house, with my daughter-in-law Braveheart and her two girls.
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And then there's a photo my daughter-in-law Ginger, wife of son #2, texted me recently of her hubby and their five boys in front of the tree...which gives me a distinct feeling of deja-vu, not only because we had five boys as well; but also because the littlest guy is wearing one of the red corduroy rompers I made for his dad and his dad's older brother to wear at Christmas back in 1985, along with its matching 40-year-old store-bought plaid shirt. (Ginger loves to dress her boys in the few vintage hand-me-downs I was able to pass on to her.)
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About a week ago, we got to watch some Christmas shows at the Catholic school about an hour south of us where eight of our grandchildren are students (one in 5th grade; one in 4th; three in 2nd--including the triplets and their cousin; and two in kindergarten--a pair of little girl cousins who are BFF's). We got a picture with son #3, his in-laws, and his two youngest on the night his oldest two kids had their show.
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| Papa and Grammy sporting their Ugly Christmas Sweaters! |
We also got a picture with his two oldest after their Christmas show--with both of their sets of grandparents! #blessed
 In the group shot of the Pearl gang, taken after the younger ones had their night to shine on the gymnasium stage, only the little guy on the far left is not yet a student at the Catholic school his siblings and cousins attend. But it won't be long before he joins them. |
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Last night, son #3 and his wife hosted their second annual family Christmas party, a munchies-and-desserts affair that is so much fun for kids and adults alike. We brought our gifts to the families of son #3 and son #4 (who live very close to one another), because even though the plan is for them all to come over after Christmas morning Mass tomorrow, for a little luncheon party, I wanted to make sure they had them. You know, in case (I hate to even say it!) anyone gets sick and we don't all end up getting together. The kids were begging to be able to open their gifts from Papa and Grammy early, and we decided to let them. So they all got their personalized Rosaries. And the girls got their capes made with velvet fabric from my late mother-in-law's attic (which I blogged about earlier in the month, in this post). It was so adorable the way the girls reacted to those capes! They loved them and all wanted to wear them right away. I was touched by their reaction, I tell you. And did they ever look adorable in them! (I made eight more of these capes, one for each of my 13 granddaughters. Someday maybe I can get a picture of them all wearing them together!)
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| I later found out that the two girls on the left put their capes back on, over their jammies, after showering last night; and the cutie pie second from the right brought her cape to bed with her. |
We had lots of laughs, which is par for the course at Pearl get-togethers. I was particularly tickled by a hilarious (and never-ending) exchange these two brothers had going on the family text stream, with the three brothers who weren't there at the party. Son #3 started it when he posted this:
This is one of their favorite conversations to have: the debate over which one is Mom's favorite child. (This is why they all got ornaments like this in 2009.) They all claim to hold the title. (Actually, they all do! I always tell them it's a 5-way tie!) But the texts and memes were flying back and forth for quite a while, and I couldn't stop laughing. At one point son #4 said, "It's cute watching you guys compete for second place. Sad, but cute." And son #2, who always insists he's my favorite, said, "When you know, you know." I have the funniest boys. They have given their father and me a lifetime of happiness, and I can't even imagine life without any one of them. And I do love this humorous debate they like to have, because I know if they actually believed I had a favorite, it wouldn't be the source of amusement and laughter that it is.
And I think that's a good place to end this, as I ponder the many blessings I've been given. I adore my sons! And tomorrow, God's only begotten Son comes into the world to save us all, because God loves his children so much--all of us exactly the same, without a favorite!
God bless us, every one! Merry Christmas!
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