Surprise your parents (like I did) with a Shutterfly photobook!
I was so excited that Shutterfly agreed to help me surprise my parents for their 25th Wedding Anniversary. I was provided a gift code to purchase a Shutterfly photo album for my parents anniversary.
When it comes to surprises, my mom and I are complete opposites. I fear them but my mom loves them! Since I am fearful of surprises, in turn, I am awful at giving surprises, but this time it was different. I wanted to surprise my parents (especially my mom) with a gift of a photo album capsulizing my parents 25 years marriage. And that, I did!
Knowing it was coming up, I collected photos from my parents house while they were distracted. I snuck around grabbing photos out of frames and photo albums and scanning them on to my computer, so I could quickly return them to their place. I ended up scanning about 200 photos and dozens of hand written notes and cards.
Now that I had all of this material on my computers hard drive. I debated what to do with it. When I saw a friend’s Shutterfly photo book from her recent trip to Japan, I knew that a Shutterfly Anniversary Book would be perfect! A photo book was exactly what I could make to get my mom to cry. Ha, that was my goal!
Making a photobook with Shutterfly was surprisingly simple. Shutterfly has a lot of neat features that give their photo albums a unique look. I could change fonts, backgrounds and colors with just a few clicks. I was able to edit photos directly on Shutterfly, there was no need to open up a separate photo editor program (or be really skilled in photo editing at all.) Yes, that easy.
Shutterfly had so much material to choose from. For a small (around $5) upgrade, I had access to thousand and THOUSANDS of unique quotes, words, stickers and more. There was so many, that I didn’t even check all of them out! Having the many options allowed me to make my parents’ photobook that much more unique and personalized.
Here are a few pages from the photobook I made with Shutterfly!
- My parents discovering Hawaii.
- Christmas’ with the family.
- My parents enjoying their favorite activity together, hiking the beaches!
- A two-page spread of scanned greeting cards and love notes.
- Trips to Mexico … and more!
When I was editing the Shutterfly album, I couldn’t stop admiring the crispness of the colors, the boldness of the images and the creative letters and prints. I was so happy with the way that it was turning out, I couldn’t wait to get it in the mail to check it out!
The book arrived quickly, and it was absolutely perfect! The quality was wonderful. I couldn’t help thinking what a great gift this was going to be. I was so excited to present it to my parents (and now I was sure I’d make my mom cry)!
Well, since my parents are out of state, I don’t get to see them on a regular basis. That is why I planned to surprise them with this photo book on their visit to Colorado. During their trip, my husband and I took them up to his family’s ranch. (We had to hide the book when we packed up the car.) We had a fun weekend of hiking trails, 4-wheelings, ping pong, horseshoes and quality time in the kitchen! On the morning of their very last day, we gave them the gorgeous Shutterfly album. Surprise!
My mom was thrilled with the gift. My dad was kind of excited too.
My mom especially loved the page with all of the scanned hand written notes and cards over the years that my dad had written her. She had forgotten about some of these (since they were buried in boxes in their house). She read some of the sweet words my dad had written to her over the years… and that’s all it took.
They absolutely loved it. And, in case you were wondering, LOOK! I did get my mom to cry!
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If your parents or other close loved ones have a special anniversary or lifetime event coming up, surprising them with a Shutterfly photobook is a great gift! Shutterfly makes it easy to create special photobooks that will be cherished for years. But be prepared for tears of joy from giving this special gift that they will never forget!
Find out more about Shutterfly products like photobooks, photo scrapbooks, photo albums, photo ornaments, photo gifts, photo calendars, photo prints, and more at www.Shutterfly.com
