My daughter, Grace is 3 and for every year of her life I have created a book on Shutterfly that tells her story over the year. (I think others like Kodak, Snapfish do the same.) This is so great because, like Dessa, she loves to look at herself in photos and learn more about “the story” behind the photos. I think there great because: 1) I can create it electronically and work at my own pace and just need to hit a save button. 2) Each book is stored on my Shutterfly account so I can have it reprinted. 3) I can customize it and not use glue or scissors. 4) It something I love doing and it keeps me motivated to take pictures throughout the year.

For my husband’s grandmother, who I adore, I create a movie of photos for her birthday a few years back. I work on a Mac so there are applications that I used to create the photo movie and I used iTunes to choreograph the photos to music. Again, it took some time (I collected photos from when she was younger which required scanning) but it was priceless and there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.

Those are my thoughts – hope they help – I also wrote a blog about my Shutterfly experience – here is the link: http://styleforgrace.com/blog/2008_11_01_archive.html

Good luck!