Blog Book continued

I got lots of comments asking about the blog book I made, so I"ll just quickly answer your questions here.

What program did you use?
I used the website blurb.com. I did a lot of research to find which website I wanted to use to make my book. I discovered there are not a lot of options out there in cyberspace to make a blog book. But, for me personally, this is the one I liked the most. It will have you download a program to your computer called Book Smart and then you upload your blog into the program. From there, you can edit each post as you want. The program is not the most user friendly in the world, but I got the hang out of after I did several posts. So, if you decide you want to make one with this program, I'd be happy to give you some tips that I wish I would have known when I started.

How did you make it?
You upload your blog into the program and it immediately puts your blog posts into the book in the order you published them with the text and pictures. From there, you can edit the book to how you want it to look. After you are finished, you upload it to the blurb website again and print it from there. There is a demo on blurb.com that was very helpful- FYI.

What do you mean by you "formatted each post"?
When you upload your blog posts into the program, every post looks the same with text on one side and all of the pictures on the other side (small and hard to see). So...you have to go through each page and choose the format that works best for each post. There are several standard formats or you can create your own. This is what ended up taking so much time. I didn't like it about the program, but like I said before, it was the only program I found that even had an option to edit the posts and was the best for what I wanted.
(If you want to make a quick blog book, the website blog2print.com would be the one for you. I almost used that one! You just upload your book and push print basically. I didn't like the way it formatted, but I know several people that are happy with theirs from that website, so you could look into that as well.)

How much did it cost?
It cost $75 and it's a hard cover 8X10 book with 240 pages. It's less or more with more pages and if you want a larger book. I searched online for a coupon and found one for 20% so I was able to get it for less that 75 even with shipping! SOOO worth it! The cost is so low for what you get. Seriously.

I'm going to start working on a 2011 one soon. I love the one I made, but I am wondering if there is a better website out there that I don't know about. If anyone has a website they love for this purpose, will you please leave me a comment?

It's hard trying to decide how to display/document all the pictures that I take. I thought about scrapbooking several years ago and found it so overwhelming and time-consuming, so that's not the route for me (but I envy those who do it!) I have honestly spent lots of time thinking and pondering about what to do with all my pictures and stuff and I think I've decided that I'm going to make a blog book ever year as our main scrapbook/journal. Then, I'm going to make a picture book using some other website (shutterfly, heritage makers, mixbook) for big things like vacations, family pictures, etc. I think this will be the easiest, least-stressful way for me to go. 

What website would you suggest for those picture books?

Hope all this helps! I'm no pro. 

This is the first time I've ever made any book online, but I hope that info helps a little.