For the past three years, we have been creating year-end photo albums for some of our clients with a service called Blurb. There are others out there that can do the job, but I started using Blurb and have stuck with it and I think it’s just great – easy to use and not very expensive for a really high quality product.

If you want to check out the books we have done, just go to Blurb.com and type zimmcomm in the search box and all of our books will come up – or you can just use this link. I wish we could do photo albums for all of our clients, but they are a bit time consuming – although I am getting better at it every year! Next year I hope to make a few personal ones for our family. Daughter Chelsea has used iPhoto on the Mac to make some for family. She is currently designing one for Chuck’s brother and his family, who just lost their house to a fire last weekend, that includes some of the many photos we have taken on visits there over the years. I’m sure they will treasure it.

In this age of digital photography, I have heard many people complain that looking at pictures on the computer is just not the same as having those prints in nice albums that you can take out and pour through the memories, and most of us just don’t want to take the time and trouble to have them printed to put in albums. Doing it on-line is a great way to solve that dilemma – and with custom backgrounds and colors and text boxes, etc – it’s actually easier, more fun and makes really long-lasting and beautiful books that can be bring memories for years. Plus, you can make multiple copies to share!

The fire that destroyed Chuck’s brother’s house really made us think about all those memories we have lining the shelves of our house. We have at least 40 albums containing more than 10,000 photos that we could never get out of the house if there were a disaster. So the big project next year will be to get them all digitized to save – along with the 70,000 plus digital that we already have on the home server from work and personal events over the past seven years or so! I had already looked into getting our old 8mm videos digitized by a service called iMemories and they do photos as well. If anyone has already used a service like this and have some feedback, please let us know.

Wishing everyone a blessed and joyful holiday full of memories that will last forever!

Long-time Agwired readers may remember the lovely and talented Laura McNamara who did quite a bit of work for us back a couple of years ago. Among her many assignments was covering the 2007 Indy 500 and Agritechnica. She was also at the 2008 Farm Progress Show with Chuck and helped us with a number of other clients. Her amazing talents include writing and fabulous photography. She is truly an exceptional artist.

Laura has been living out her dream and traveling extensively over the last couple of years, as that is her passion. At last count, she had visited more than 22 countries in Europe, Southeast Asia and Latin America – including 12 countries in one year alone!

She is currently traveling around Mexico and basing herself in Chihuahua. Some of her most recent photo albums include spectacular views and portraits of the people in Mexico’s Copper Canyon.

Laura now has set up a store on her main blog, giramonda.com, where you can purchase some of her fine photography. Check it out – you will be amazed!