Let’s take a quick inventory of things KIDS LOVE:

• candy
• games & activities
• candy
• stickers
• stories
• candy
• photos

If you’re looking for a sweet gift this Valentine’s Day, check out Snap Stories. Better for your body than candy, and good for your heart in every way :-)

For $12 you can gift someone with a story that really sticks!

A fun activity designed to trap printed photos INSIDE the pages of a whimsical, yet sturdy, book.  It’s peel and press fun that results in a keepsake.  Cool, huh?  We’re offering FREE SHIPPING on all orders from now through midnight Tuesday, February 14th, the pinnacle of loveliness.  Plus we’ve added gift wrap as standard on all orders, no charge.

Now that sounds easy-peasy, super-sweet-that-can’t-be-beat, doesn’t it?

Use the code PHOTOLOVE.

Happy Snapping,

Oh boy!  Photo-scouting for 11 Favorite Smiles of 2011 challenge crystalized the reality that my e-photos are a royal mess.  I have guilt to resolve, photos to tag, and loads of photos to delete!

DETAILS…

Join THE TEAM & I will email this icon, to place wherever you need a reminder.People I know are guilt-ridden for:

• not taking enough photos
• not editing photos
• not printing photos
• not organizing photos 

If one of these is a source of frustration for you, join THE TEAM by emailing me (emma -at- snapstories -dot- com).

Make a commitment and check in, via email, everytime you work to implement your goal.

We will share a Google document that will list our stated photo goal & incremental progress.  We can learn from each other, and monitor our own (and collective) progress.  I can promise that this will be an intimate group, because Snap Stories & my voice/audience still has a small reach… That said, feel free to invite anyone you know who has voiced self-critique in managing their family’s photos.

Join any time during 2012, for each month you are actively participating and keeping up with your goal, your name will be added to a drawing for a FREE SNAP STORY!  Anyone can join at any time, and if you check in with progress two times that month, you’ll be entered for that month.  Of course, the bigger payoff will be resolving the guilt!

Below I’m listing some tips I’ve distilled from scouting around.

Shoot More.

Some of my absolute favorite photos are the ‘randoms’ taken on Any Day, USA (verses the birthday shots, the the photos with Santa, or the everyone-look-and-say-cheese shots).  Plus, I feel more at ease peeking around the corner to snap my kids playing together, rather than trying to light the birthday cake, sing Happy Birthday AND get the right photo!  Often, it’s the everyday moments that hold the real emotions you want to remember.

Keep Less.

It’s SO EASY to take digital photos.  The hard part is figuring out which ones are worth keeping.  To me, it almost feels disrespectful to DELETE even a digital photo that has my cute kiddos’ mug smiling back at me.  I have to remind myself, “you have six great shots in that sequence.  You don’t need all six!  Pick your favorite and delete the rest.”  It’s true, seeing just that one moment (verses all similar six ones) will do the emotional job of ‘bringing me back to that time & place.’

Print More.

What would bring more photo joy to your life?  A few snapshots on the coffee table, or the dash board of your car?  Maybe tucking a photo into your child’s lunchbox once in a while?  Or your spouses suitcase when they go on a business trip?  It takes just a few clicks to print from your phone or computer (or you could invest in an instant-print camera).

Organize All.

Better to start where you are, rather than at the beginning.  When you get (or make) a little time, you can go back to other years.  (It can be too daunting to go back and organize the photos from when your child was born, rather than today, when they’re 4 years old.)  Create a folder for each year & month.  Each download should be a new file, within the appropriate month folder, titled by theme (playdate with Williams, Tia’s visit, Joey’s 5th b-day, snowman+, etc.).

 Save each month to a CD.  Put the CD in a safe place or CD album WITH a printed out contact page of the photos on that CD.

eleven  

It’s the number of the year, but it’s more than that (to me).  It’s a magical little number, standing tall and clearly waiting to dance with itself….

Here at Snap Stories, we did something fun around this time last year.  In 2010, I came up with 10 INSTANT, THOUGHT-FULL GIFT IDEAS and shared one each day, in countdown fashion.  Like so:

• 10.  Calling Gifting All Crafters (take handmade to a new level)
• 9.  This (over)board book rocks! (a buoyant gift for water-lovers)
• 8.  Photo Fun for Everyone (especially budding photo-journalists)
• 7.  Girls Travel in Groups (celebrate your circle of friends)
• 6.  Grand with a Capital “G” (for grandparents)
• 5.  Project:  Snow Day (perfect, instant, at-home project for school-age kids)
• 4.  Brag Book (for grandparents, parents, or baby!)
• 3.  The Wanna-be Explorer (adventure photos to the rescue)
• 2.  Right for Tween (photo peek from be’tween the pages)
• 1.  Hands-on Teacher Gift (earn bonus points, for sure)

The countdown was a hit!  But we can do better.  I’m sure I can get more creative and sappy (er, snappy) than that!  Without further rambling, here’s how you can join me in rounding out this lovely, oddly odd year.

I want to challenge you to scout through some of your personal photos & find your ELEVEN FAVORITE SMILES OF 2011.

It’s pretty simple, either upload the album to the Snap Stories fan page on Facebook, or send me (emma -at- snapstories -dot- com) a link to the “Eleven Smiles for 2011” album whereever you store your photos (picasa, Shutterfly, Snapfish, Walgreen’s, etc.).  The deadline is January 11, 2012.  5 people will win a One Big Adventure Snap Story.  One person (the Snap Smiling-est King or Queen of 2011) will win ELEVEN books, plus one to grow extra-happy on.

I can’t wait!  What a way to wrap up a year….in smiles.

Family & friends, turkey & cranberry, sharing & giving, remembering & making:  yum, yum, double yum!

In that vein, I’m also a sucker for printed photos.  Nope, NOT the photos trapped on your phone or home computer, the other (near obsolete) version of photos that in days past adorn the refrigerator with mismatched magnets, dog-earred and curly, but present and touch-able.

In the spirit of giving, I wanted to share a few ideas to jumpstart your family’s nostalgia.  By the way, if you are inundated with offers from Shutterfly, TinyPrints, Snapfish, and the like, don’t worry—this isn’t like that.  These ideas are much easier than composing a photo card or getting caught up in the sea of fabulous design options…  These ideas work with any ol’ snapshot, and they can happen without much thought or time spent selecting photos.  I call it Instant Nostalgia.  Wanna give it a whirl?

1. Print out* 20 or 30 photos that you like.  Don’t deliberate over “are these the best?” or anything like that, just do it.  Put the stack of photos on the coffee table (within kid-reach of course) and let the conversations begin, or lay them on the seats at the holiday table (a fun surprise as everyone is sitting down), or use them as “bread crumbs” when your kids wake up Thanksgiving morning, leading to a note at the kitchen table that says “HAPPY THANKSGIVING—-I’m so thankful for YOU!”  *(just take your phone to Walgreen’s or Target with a USB connector cable; it’s that easy.)
2. Again, using images from your phone, pick out 10 fun photos.  Get double prints of these images.  Use the photos as a simple, instant game of memory (also called concentration) by turning all the photos over (back side facing up) and try to find the set of matching photos.  Nothing fancy, literally, just the photos.
3. Printed photos these days cost about a dime, so (unless they are really old & irreplaceable) they are, well, completely replaceable.  So go hog wild! Cut them, tape them, write on them, spray them with perfume(!) and otherwise simply enjoy them.  I like to cut out people in photos & tape the cut outs on all sorts of things and even in snack bags as an added (sugar-free) surprise….even sprinkled around the kids’ holiday table!
4. Of course you could layer Snap Stories into the fun.  Most families have a box of random printed photos.  Pull out that dusty box and add a few Snap Stories to the mix.  Sit together as a family and snap together stories of family adventures, old baby pics, or birthday keepsakes.  You could also buy an (old school!) three-ring photo album and stick the photos into an album…don’t worry about chronology, just do it!  A baby step is better than no step—-it’s the perfect family activity for young & old to tackle together.
5. Or, if you’re hosting and looking for something to keep the kids busy while the adults catch-up, have the big kids (8+) help the little kids (4+) make a Snap Story to give to the grandparents when the pumpkin pie & whip cream is served.  Surley your family has photos from a summer trip, or celebrating a special birthday, or of a new baby in the family.  The act of making the book will bring everyone into the experience, even if they aren’t front & center in the photos.  (This is a serious esteem booster PLUS family-bonding opportunity!)

Wishing you a Snappy (& Happy) Thanksgiving holiday,

Looking for more, see a few of my ideas from the past:

Bring Photos to Your Holiday Table

Photo Fun for Everyone

Also, you can now pick up Snap Stories in the Whole Body department at Whole Foods in Town & Country, as well as I Am What I Am in St. Charles.  For a list of all Missouri retailers, click here.

It’s exhausting to be at home, parenting solo, while my husband travels; and I know it’s hard for him to be away from his family.  He even told me he didn’t want to call and hear our voices because he missed us all so much.  He said, “You have no idea how many times I watched the videos and looked through the summer photos on my phone.”

Similarly, on the home front we looked at an above-average number of photos featuring “daddy playing with the girls.”  No surprise, we have Snap Stories on hand to jog our memories, too.  (And daddy has a My Baby Face for each his girls as babies.  He keeps in his suitcase and sets up like a frame on the night stand at hotels.)

In fact while he was gone, we had an evening activity of making a One Big Adventure storybook for friends we visited this summer.  It was one of those ‘deeper’ activities that I get a kick out of because the kids loved it, I loved it, and —BONUS!—we have a fabulous thank you gift to give to a dear family who I know will love it, too (AND I can cross sending the thank you card off my list)!

It made me feel good to know that during the time we were missing daddy, we were making something for Grant, who’s daddy also travels a lot.  Lilah, 4-years-old, acknowledged that by saying “Grant can keep this with him on his cot at nap time if he wants.”  Her sentiment was so sweet, and although Grant doesn’t go to day care like Lilah and her sister do, I know he will keep the book close by.  He can take comfort in glimpses of his dad and mom during the day (—-not to mention his two new coastal playmates:  Lovely Lilah and Crazy Cali).

Take a look at what we made in 20 minutes:

should say “my mouth ached from screaming!”

Pretty cute, huh?  I hope it’s a story Grant (and his parents!) will want to visit over and over for years to come…

Happy Trails & keep some family photos in your suit or brief case, as you never know when your fancy phone may fall in a margarita…. and zap!  (yes, it’s happened :)

How ironic is this:  I’m sitting in a cafe typing out the title of my blog post —poised to tackle the nostalgia-inspired photo trend for smart phones (hello instagram, ShakeItPhoto, & Hipstamatic)— when a friend of mine walks by the window with her 2 year old son.

We’re chatting, then I say “Oh, I almost forgot!  I have the cutest photo of Anderson from the other night at Katie’s.  I’ve been meaning to email it to you, but here, check it out.”  I opened iPhoto and quickly found the photos.  She smiled at the sight of her adorable son (who wouldn’t?), then said:

Patrick and I were just saying that we need to take and print more photos.  We recently lost a friend to cancer and he put together a photo-look back at his life.  It was so amazing.  One thing it really made us both think was that we need to print more photos.  In fact I went on Craigslist last night to see if I could find a Polaroid but since they aren’t making Polaroids & Polaroid film anymore, it’s all extremely expensive…”

I said, “I hear you.  And if you did get to the point of taking & printing the photos, what would you do with them?  Put them in an album? Store them in a box or drawer somewhere?”

She said with a smile, “Well, I would make Snap Stories…” which was the perfect tongue-in-cheek response.  Yes, that’s exactly the space Snap Stories fills, but the current four Snap Stories titles are not (by any stretch) the answer to the “photo-situation” we face here in Phone Land.

An App For That…

I don’t have a complete answer to the problem.  But if I can raise the capital, I’m going to take a bite out of the problem with a simple phone application (aptly called the Snap App).  I believe the problem to printing photos —and therefore enjoying them for years to come— starts with editing.  Optimized memory space, allow us to snap and store photos till we’re blue in the fingers.  So, I have conceived an app to help with the editing part (printing your favorite photos is then just a click away).  Who (besides James Bond) would have thought phone=photo?  Yet, today it does.

Still, all the apps in the world won’t take us back to the time and place of flipping through albums with printed photos, or walking into a friend’s kitchen and seeing a refrigerator door covered with snapshots, or tucking photos into a thank you card, or opening a novel and seeing a snapshot that was used as a bookmark…

Funny candid photo from AccidentalMysteries.comI realize folks aren’t just attracted to the emotions of time-worn photos, they are attracted to the look.  I think it was a brilliant juxtaposition to make high resolution, immediate-gratification digital photos look like old, grainy, chemically-developed aged prints!  I think we’ve become a little numb to how great photos look, such that the lower quality, “mysterious” images are more interesting.  It’s this fascination that my friend John clicked into years ago, and catalogs online at Accidental Mysteries.

Here’s where I shed a tear.  Why? Because there is a magic in holding something.  In passing it, literally, to someone else and seeing their reaction.  That hand-off is a connection, a “touch” between people.  There is also a sense of cause and effect in seeing the edges curl over time.  In the bigger sense, what I see in the loss of printed photos is the lost of tangible things as they are replaced with digital ones. My husband and I were talking about this the other day.  Without missing a beat, he hilariously said something to the effect of soon there will be an app for touching each other.

I’ll end my jaunt down memory lane with a look forward:  we don’t know what we’ve got till it’s gone.  Please, let’s not let printed photos be a thing of the past…

Happy Snapping,

My friend Suzanne snapped this Hipstamatic of me at a trade show in April.PS.  If you’re interested in being a part of the new Snap App, let me know!

I have three photo tips for all your trips.

1)  Get the grown-ups in on the action.  My camera is always pointed at my kids.  Once in awhile (note to self) I need to get in a photo, so that looking back, I feel like part of the action, too.  When the kids are old enough (4+) they can handle pointing & shooting a camera, and they like to be included in the snap-happy fun.  Or, better yet, go ahead and ‘bother’ a stranger to get your whole family together.  THESE ARE THE PHOTOS you’ll appreciate.

2)  That leads perfectly into my next tip.  When you see someone in the moment of taking photos of their family or friends, offer to take a photo of all of them.  (Especially if you see them trying to do that straight-arm-out-I-can-get-all-our-faces-in-if-we-squish-really-close-together shot!)  I can’t tell you HOW GRATEFUL people are for the offer.  Just imagine if it was you, and you really didn’t want to ‘bother’ someone to take your picture.  The smiles of appreciation I’ve received when I make this offer still surprises me.  I mean, it’s literally two minutes of my time & it’s no effort at all. 

3) Take some photos, then take a break.  It’s great to have photos (clearly), but the point of your vacation is to claim pure moments of happiness.  For this you have to engage in the moment and “live it the first time” WITHOUT trying to capture it for future enjoyment.  Find the balance between having your camera handy and having your hands free to hug your kids, walk hand-in-hand with your honey, and wave adios to your worries.

Wishing you safe & happy summer fun!

Kindly,

For the most part, it is what it is.  Just like Halloween, and Valentine’s day there is an abundance of candy and it’s just a natural part of the fanfare.  That said, I’m hoping to creatively curb the candy in the kids’ baskets this year.

Not surprisingly, I turn to the magical powers of photos to add a bit of interest to the ordinary.  I cut bodies out of 4x6 snapshots to see if they fit in the eggs.  They did and, I have to say, I love it!  I used “jumbo” size eggs from Walgreen’s (6/$1).

Oh, the other goodie I’m going to tuck in the eggs is miniature molded farm animals.  How funny (to me) that an egg can “hatch” a horse or a pig!  I crack myself up sometimes.  I’m sure my kids won’t catch the irony, but they do like those little stand-up animals.

Last year, though, hands down, my sister delivered the Easter gift the kids loved the most:  a motorized bubble wand & soap.

I personally love candy—and am clearly addicted to chocolate—but I don’t love my kids gobbling an endless load of it all at once.  And I don’t love them crying several times a day about when they can gobble up some more.  I hope the injection of imaginative toys into the Easter mix this year will keep the magic of the season alive without over-sugaring it (and, more importantly, keep my kids distracted long enough that I can swipe the best chocolate from their baskets)!

Happy Spring,

I really like celebrating birthdays.  Even more than other holidays because birthdays are really, truly, honestly all about the birthday girl/boy.  I do wish our families birthdays were more spread out, but what can you do?  They come in waves.

February 14th was Lilah’s 4th birthday.  We celebrated with a few friends and the help of a small entity called Amtrak.  A friend of ours took some stunning photos throughout the day (jpollackphoto.com).  I ended up making TWO Snap Stories for Lilah this past weekend.  Click through and check them out.  Lilah was thrilled when she saw the books with “her photos” in them!

My birthday is February 21st.  This year I spent it solo in San Diego.  I welcomed in 37 with a glass of wine watching the sunset from the same vantage I watched it when I lived in San Diego right after college.  The view was delicious, delightful, and completely dive-in-able!

My mother-in-law’s birthday is March 5th.  This year, I essentially forgot it completely.  I remembered the Monday before and reminded myself to get a gift & card in the mail, and then promptly forgot about it until my husband handed me the phone to share my own birthday wishes with her.

Guess what she asked for as a gift (if I had enough time, she added).  She wanted a My Baby Face Snap Story of Cali.  Since I had given her a baby book with Lilah’s photos, now she wanted one of Cali.  I had to chuckle because I was becoming sensitive that she may be sick of hearing about Snap Stories.  Needless to say, I was very touched that she requested (another) one, and I can’t wait to make it for her.  Cali makes the funniest faces & really loves life!  (Check out the current Photo of the Moment page.)

Yesterday was my sister’s birthday.  This is another example where I was really wary of over-using Snap Stories.  Anyway, I had a great photo of the two of us (thanks again J. Pollack Photo) and I was just going to frame it.  Then I started thinking about the fact that she’s prepping her house for market, that personal photos are a no-no, that  then she’d have to dust the frame, etc. etc. All the signs were pointing to the Go Go Girlfriends Snap Story.  What can I say, they simultaneously serve as a frame, a book, a card and a keepsake.  (Plus, no pressure to display them.)  Click the image to see the whole book.

One of my favorite photos ever was taken 34 years ago, of the two of us.  No way was I putting that photo directly in a Snap Story (the other photos from college, road trips, etc. sure I could part with those).  But this photo I scanned, printed a copy, and snapped that into the back cover.  Putting my original safely back on the wall.

Yep, that’s my baby sister, 34 years ago wearing a bonnet(!!).  And that’s her proud older sister, taking the responsibility of a baby and a pet very seriously, it seems.

Birthdays are a great excuse to revel in everyday, ordinary family photos. Enjoy,

Myles, entranced with his ‘Baby Face’ Snap Story.Have you ever heard of photo therapy? (I don’t mean phototherapy.  I mean photo therapy, two words.)  I’m not sure it honestly exists —let’s just say it’s not in Wikipedia— but it should.  It’s that great feeling of walking down memory lane through the power of a photo.

Printed photos are great for this, but digital ones can do the trick, too.  Last week, I was sitting in bed with my laptop at the end of a long day and I wanted nothing more than to lose myself in the memory-fog of photos.  I’m prone to do that (often).  I have iPhoto on my laptop and I can easily browse through months of photos.  Almost instantly I was lost:  I went from depleted to renewed.  I chuckled to myself that it was photo therapy, just like some gals joke that shopping is “retail therapy.”

(If you’re coming to this post from Cupcake Project, Welcome!  Stay tuned!  Details on the give-away are just around the corner…)

I started to think about it more and it all made sense.  You may be different, but I don’t take a photo of something unless I want to remember it, preserve it, re-live it.  I don’t pick up my Canon PowerShot or switch my phone to camera mode if I’m irritated or sad.  Therefore, my photos are mostly of good times with friends, great moments with my kids, and generally documenting occasions that are worth re-creating.  This is why I can hole-up with my photos after a long day of kid craziness and too many emails still unanswered, and know in my heart that my kids are happy and my life is much more than half-full with goodness.

When I want to see the “half-full-ness” on my own face, I can just look at the above photo my four-year-old took.  Since 90% of the time I’m taking the photos, I welcome any (blurry, eye-less, toothy) indication that I was actually a part of the action.

That said, I was more than thrilled when my friend Jonathan Pollack —clearly a very talented photographer—sent me this photo.  This is proof-positive that not only was I genuinely happy the day he snapped this shot, but I don’t have teeth on my chin as my daughter’s recent pic suggests!  Snapshots are the stuff of the everyday, and that is priceless (to me).  But great professional photos go deeper to tell a story and capture the emotional essence of a moment.

Photos make us feel good

That’s precisely why I created the Snap Stories series.  Now it’s a snap to enjoy everyday photos in the convenience of a light-weight, but sturdy storybook.  Since the books hold 10 photos, they’re like a frame, but 9 times better!

How about you, are photos one of your feel-good therapies?  If so, leave a comment below and you’ll be entered in a Snap Stories’ give-away.  Let me know 1) what you use to take photos, and 2) which title in the series you’d like (check out the four titles right here), and how to reach you, should you be picked.  My daughter will randomly pick one winner for every 15 comment entries.  We’ll do this on March 1, 2011.  Leave a comment and you’ll qualify for a FREE Snap Story, even if you live in Cancun or Mongolia! One final note, IF you win and you happen to also be a Facebook fan of Snap Stories, you’ll get a free book PLUS a special (sticky) surprise, so come join the fun on FB.  OK, that’s all the fine print.  Mostly, I’m just excited to hear from you.  Good luck…

**March 1st Update**  TWO WINNERS HAVE BEEN CHOSEN.  With the help of Dora the Explorer counting cards (and some fancy math skills), Lilah and I picked the numbers:  3 and 28.  (3 was on the most cards; 28 was all the cards added together.  The Dora cards selected either had something to do with cupcakes or the Snap Stories’ logo, in case you’re wondering how we narrowed into those four cards.)  Thanks for playing :)

Snap-happily,