I really should learn to read the instructions.
Each year I put together a DVD of about 150 photos taken during soccer games throughout the year. I set it to music and during our annual end of season party it shows on the big screen over and over and over again... Each family gets a copy of the DVD, but I seriously doubt if it's ever watched again, because I know my family doesn't, it just collects dust with all the other CD's that I have and will probably one day be unwatchable all-together when technology decides to come up with a new medium for storing data.
So this year I had a new idea. Having just done a photo book through Shutterfly of some digital scrapbook pages, and being very pleased with the way it came out, I decided I would create a similar book of soccer photos taken throughout the year. The book would cost $30 to $40 each and all the parents were very receptive about the cost and excited about having a real "yearbook" of photos and accomplishments.
So it's all good! I spent weeks going through 6000+ soccer photos taken between last August and last weekend and pulled out a couple hundred of my favorites and then began developing the scrapbook pages. I was REALLY pleased with how it was all coming out, plus because I was going to be ordering 12 of them, Shutterfly gave me a nice 25% off discount, thus allowing me to add just a few more pages - 29 in all.
I put some finishing touches on the pages this morning while the kids were getting ready for school and then uploaded them to the Shutterfly website so I could then work on laying them out in the book and getting them all in the right order. And then this is where I discover that reading the instructions first a couple of weeks ago would have come in real handy! Turns out the books are only printed in landscape format. I did all my pages in portrait format. Damn.
Completely annoyed with myself at this point, I left my computer and drove back to work in a funk. Then I realized that the way I laid out most of the pages (all but the 12 individual pages of the girls, which I used a different technique on) won't be too difficult to re-work. It will take me another 4 to 5 hours, but it won't be anything like it was to pull out all the photos, which is what I thought I was going to have to do all over again. So, while I'm still annoyed with myself for not getting all the information I needed to begin with, I realized it won't be quite as bad as I originally thought.
I wonder if I've learned a lesson here? Hmmm... probably not, instructions are for weenies... I like to live on the wild side.
