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My final Canon PIXMA post, folks, the one where I go “Oh my Christmas cookies, Canon IS Santa!” and save Christmas by a pixel. Read this if you want to 1) save Christmas or 2) feel superior to me in your Christmas preparedness. We’ll see who’s laughing on Christmas. 

Ladies and gentlemen, we have officially reached The Last Minute. It’s too late to order gifts from Amazon without paying $9.99 per item expedited shipping and I don’t feel like giving everyone gift cards printed on a piece of paper.

Sure, I could go out shopping, but I have three kids and I’m not into torture. I’m willing to make one trip to maybe one or two spots and that’s it, so I need to make them count.

Did I mention that I haven’t even begun Christmas shopping?! Right. This month has been one of those months (as evidenced by my dearth of posts on my lovely blog here) and I’m thisclose to calling it. But you can’t. Not on Christmas. You have to bring it.

Now, how am I going to pull on heartstrings and do it through roughly two hours of effort? I’m going to kneel at the altar of my Canon PIXMA printer and create heartstring-yanking gifts that keep on giving: photo gifts!

We can do this, people.

What do we need?

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When the digital world opened wide as a way to preserve our lives as an electronic time capsule, I was thrilled to capture our lives in this new way.

I actually posted a picture of my positive pregnancy test on my blog with my now 3.5yr old. That's a story for a different day...

Oh the cuteness of it all...

Back to memory preservation, I have over 50K images in my online photo-hosting account. Yes, you read that right,  fifty thousand pictures.

They are safe up in the cloud and backed up on a hard drive here in my home, but as I mentioned before, I forgot the importance of having pictures you can snuggle with. You know, you need photo albums that can be thumbed through lovingly on the couch, and everyone snuggles up to see the pictures together.

 

Ok, I'll admit it, I'm no fan of actually putting pictures in the photo album pages. I love to print them and watch them appear. I love to look at them, but putting them behind the plastic is like watching grass grow for some reason.

Want a tip to get around this? Offer your kid, niece, neighbor 5$ to place them all neatly in your albums for you. Yeah, it's that easy. Boom. Done.

I'm all about win-win solutions!

I can't tell you enough how much I needed this. I needed to get back in the habit of making my memories snugglable.

This all makes me so happy. All the boys love to see the pictures everyday after school. They may wrestle and fuss over who is breathing on whom or who is hogging the pages and fight later, but sharing these times where they relive memories? Priceless!

 

Once again, I'm challenging you to do the same.

I know my type-a friends will be short of breath at the thought of tackling a big job like liberating your memories from the digital wasteland.

Don't think it has to be done in a day. Just print a few out every week or every month. Keep it fun!

A big pile of happiness. Memories, love and magic captured all over my dinner table. Love it.

Many thanks again to Canon for sponsoring this post and for providing me with this wonderful PIXMA printer that has inspired me to make my memories beautifully snuggle-able.

I’ve been that mom. The one that sent her kids to school on Pajama Day without realizing it was Pajama Day until we were in the parking lot and. saw. all. the. pajamas. At the end of the year, the Montessori school included a photo of Pajama Day in each kid’s scrapbook. There were all the kids in their cute pajamas. There were my kids in jeans and polos. Sigh. They were the only ones whose mom forgot.

I’ve been that mom. The one that pulled into the school dropoff line and noticed that every single kid hopping out was wearing a cowboy hat and… how is it possible that these many kids own overalls? Happy “Dress Like a Farmer Day!”?!?!  I made a U-turn, flew into the house, grabbed an old straw hat, a plaid button down, and a round green pig from Angry Birds. There. You, my fresh kindergarten son just trying to fit into a new school, you are a Hipster Farmer. Have a great day! I love you. No, I swear. I adore you. I’m just forgetful. And you really do look like a farmer. Really.

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I still love the Pink Panther cartoons.

There is something special about old photo albums.

Pages of magical moments and small glimpses into daily life that little fingers can flip through and imagine the lives of those who make us who we are.

As a tiny girl I lost my dad and later my grandmother, I grew up imagining them through the pictures and albums that told their stories.

This must be why I love to capture so much of our lives in pictures as an adult.

Pictures capture moments, tell stories and surround us with a connection what we love.

I adored my grandaddy.

The last wedding he officiated was mine. My husband and I were married on a beautiful August Saturday. The fact that my grandaddy was still well enough to marry us made it perfect.

My memories of my grandmother are just a few pieces of  days spent together.

Breast cancer took her away from us.

Her memory lives on with her granddaughters.

My only connection to her with her writings,  stories the family would tell and with my photo albums that grandaddy gave me.

Thanks to my new printer (one that actually is easy to use- who knew that was possible?) I’m doubling down my efforts to print our memories.

I have thousands of digital pictures that are stored in the cloud and on various hard drives, but those memories aren’t available for snuggles. My children, my future grandchildren and their grandchildren can’t snuggle up on the couch and flip through pages of memories. There is something more real about holding and feeling the paper in your hands as you explore the moments caught in pictures.

I’m taking a little time on Sundays to print out some of the magic I have taken over the years. I want to share moments in our family with generations to come. The pictures of my ‘Grandaddy & Nana’ below are some of the most meaningful in all my photo albums. I hope by sharing them with you that you will be inspired to give your memories the ability to be snuggled with as well.

Grandaddy & Nana- Look at the mischievous twinkle in their eyes.

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When I was in high school, I contributed to a student-run Underground Newspaper. It was cool, because it was SUBVERSIVE. And decidedly low-tech. All we had was a typewriter, a copy machine, and a healthy disrespect for Mr. [REDACTED], the cranky SOB who hovered over us at lunch just because of that one time when [ALSO REDACTED] completely obscured the cafeteria clock with butter pats.

That paper was the tangible beginning of my deep abiding affection for print humor. It’s just so indelibly nerdy. We need our Onions, Spys, National Lampoons, and Insert Eyerolls, because we need to speak sass to power. And feel the artificial empowerment of Sticking it to The Man.

You can imagine, therefore, how my heart leapt when my son told me he wanted to write a humorous newspaper and print it out so he could show his friends. Was I ready to encourage my son’s desire to tweak authority? Sweet Mother of Gumby, yes I was.

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You remember that episode of Mad Men, when Roger Sterling’s daughter gets married on the day after Kennedy was shot? That one intrigued me especially, because my parents very nearly did the same thing. Instead, due to an innocuous scheduling conflict, they pushed the wedding up by a week and found out about the assassination while they were on their honeymoon. I’ve always marveled at goings-on like this, how a seemingly trifling thing can live on to cause startling ramifications. It’s just remarkable, even though you’re probably better off not remarking about it so much. Because you might freak out.

Forty-eight years later, they are still together. (And this is decidedly NOT random. But that’s another story. Or possibly several. See how I started three consecutive sentences with different conjunctions? That’s pretty impressive.)

Where was I?

Oh, yes. When your parents reach a certain age, there really isn’t much left you can get them as gifts. At least, that’s the case with my folks, who live pretty simply. Over the years, their favorite gifts from us have been the ones their kids (and grandkids) have made for them. I don’t usually give them gifts for their anniversary, but I think I should, given the work they’ve done for their marriage to survive this long. So over the weekend, I decided to use my new printer and act on a bit of inspiration.

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Never have we documented our lives so thoroughly. I have always adored family photos, but now I feel a gnawing incompleteness if I don’t catch the moment in at least one photo or one quick movie.

I don’t get so caught up in documenting that I fail to experience, no, I know better than to filter everything through a lens. But knowing that I’ve captured a glimpse of something that matters relieves me of the burden of remembering so hard.

I smarted at the line “Photos are for people who can’t remember.” in the movie Up In The Air. Spoken by George Clooney’s character, it felt like a personal assault. And from such beautiful lips, man, come on.

Even one image, representing one fraction of a second of a memory, arms and detonates a barrage of emotions for me. It’s not just the memory, not just the facts.

A photo brings back the way the air felt, the way the light fell, the smell of a toddler’s hair or the nape of a soft neck. Our minds can only hold so much on the surface. Sometimes we need help tapping into those deeper stores.

Photos anchor my life around me. Keep me from floating away.

So you can imagine how unstable the following photo makes me feel:

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I never had a real camera until I was in my thirties. I have very few pictures of myself before my twenties. I secretly like not having any awkward, frizzy hair Alli pictures out there in the world- don’t tell anyone, OK?

I do wish I had more pictures of my childhood. I must be overcompensating because I take hundreds of pictures every week with my Rebel and my trusty iPhone.

When the big boys were little I would print pictures at the store (Can you believe we used to have to drive to drop off film and wait to pick it up?) and attached them to magnets with adhesive strips.

Pictures of my wedding, daily moments with the boys and favorite quotes were used through the years on our fridge, our dishwasher, even the washer and dryer.

Now I have eleventy-zillion pictures on my hard drives but I never print any pictures anymore. I miss them. I miss having something I can hold in my hand. I miss paper. I love all the wonders of modern technology, but sometimes I want the real thing.

I was inspired by the chance to create something fun with a Canon printer this week. It was just the kick in the pants I needed to take some time for myself and do something creative.

I looked at the old magnets on the side of my fridge and decided to find some new photos and create some new memory magnets.

I also added some favorite sayings and quotes to pictures I have taken or graphics I own and made some cool fun prints to use on magnets.

I made a slideshow of the pictures and graphics that will be attached to magnets soon.  Canon is providing a printer and I have to go pick up some magnet sheets and business card sized cut outs from the office supply store and I’ll get my crafy-time on!

If you really love any of the prints with pictures and quotes just let me know. I’m happy to share.

Enjoy the slideshow.

Thanks so much to Canon for sponsoring this post and for providing a brand new shiny PIXMA printer to play with.

About two weeks into this past school year, my six-year-old son, TwoBert, was given a special homework assignment: He had to make a collage of pictures that were taken over the summer and present it to the class. His mom and I took this opportunity seriously, since we’d just moved to this new community, and giving TwoBert a platform to talk a bit about his life would be a great icebreaker for him to meet his new first-grade cronies.

The problem was that I had most of the pictures, but she had the printer.

It’s true, people. I’ve been a free-lance writer and small business owner for over a year now, and during all that time I’ve been content to take all my printing projects to the UPS Store or the library. Because I am very careful with money.

*cough* CHEAP *cough*

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