Celebrating Summer

We So Cal people don't really "do" weather. We just don't know how.

When the weather cools a bit, (which it really hasn't considering we are about a month into Fall, but that's not important right now) we pull out socks to wear with our flip-flops and exclaim "Fall is here!" (you think I'm kidding, don't you?)

Even now, the days are the ones that are flip-flopping in their inability to commit. The mornings will start off cool until the sun comes out around noon and then the day gets hot, then it cools off again when the sun sets.

It's not really "Fall" around here by anyone's standards, but we like to pretend it is.

"Isn't it great that the seasons are changing?"

No. (I will not even point out that we are still wearing shorts and flip-flops, but that unfairly, the water is too cold for swimming. sigh)

I miss summer.

(Yes, I say it in a really whiny voice.) We had such a fabulous summer.
In fact, the thought kept going through my mind that we had a lot to celebrate.

So, I made a photo book called, appropriately, "celebrate Summer, 2008."

I used a Designer Digitals template designed by the amazingly talented Ali Edwards, but I put my own spin on it using Photoshop Elements 7 and my own digital brushes.

Usually I like to tell my stories in my albums in much more detail, but I figured since I have blogged about pretty much everything that happened this summer (and God knows I'd hate to be redundant =D) I chose to make the book more artistic.

I uploaded it to shutterfly and just got the finished copy in my hot little hands. Oh, baby!

The format is a nice, big 12x12 and I am absolutely delighted with it.

Here's the table of contents page:

I decided that creating this book digitally was totally worth it for me because:

a) It really does capture everything we did this summer beautifully into one place and in a format we can all enjoy (with nice BIG pictures, too).

b) I probably would have bought an (expensive) album and spent tons of money on getting the photos enlarged (because the bigger the photos the happier I am) and made dozens of trips to my local scrapbook store for paper and embellishments and still be stressing about how I don't have enough time to scrapbook and then I'd feel guilty for having spent all that money and not using every last sticker and scrap and then I'd have trouble sleeping, and really, is that worth it, I ask you? But that's not important right now. =D

Instead, I have this wonderful big, fat, coffee-table-worthy book that I am happy to share with anyone who sees it on my coffee table, which, of course, kind of forces them to ask, "Hey, what's that?" And then, after they see it, they usually say, "Wow!"

And I try to have the decency to blush a little when I say, "It was nothing..." ;-)

Anyway, if you're interested, the entire album is up on the Photo Album sidebar to the left.

It was nothing. (blush, blush) ;-)