For quite a few years now we've made a special effort at the beginning of every year - not to stick to our New Year resolutions but to put together a photo book of the previous year's highlights. Now this is not a cheap activity and so we've tended to shop around for a bargain (using Kodak and Photobox amongst others) but this year we've decided to go back to a favourite - Albelli.
Now this is probably not a photo company that you're familiar with (and where I heard of them is lost in the mists of time) but they provide a solid product that isn't crazily expensive. Even better they also provide a downloadable tool that allows you to edit your photo-book on your computer at your leisure (in all of its glory) before uploading it to their website. So that removes the frustration of having to cope with a limited and flaky website at a stroke!
Anyway I've spent a large part of the weekend picking out the best photos from 2011, photo-editing them to some measure of perfection (Paint.net is a fantastic and free tool for this kind of work) and then inserting them into a hopefully coherent photo-book. And here it is: Our Year in Pictures. Obviously the printed book looks a lot better, and is certainly easier to flick through, but this preview is pretty good I think.
Now all we have to do is keep taking lots of nice snaps for the 2012 book. We've got a way to go yet!