{ It's here....my Blog to Book for 2006 }

Oh my gosh, I am jumping up and down in excitement!!!

Oh, Oh, Ohhhhhh you have no idea how happy I am to have just received these books, or maybe you do because of my tone and the jumping up and down.  I can't stop smiling, I have the biggest, goofiest grin on my face.

Ok, so I promised I would share it with you and I'm about to do that.  First I want to say that I'm very happy with the quality of the book, the binding, the cover, the whole process.  I couldn't recommend Lulu Printing enough.  I've just ordered my 2007 book and am almost done with the 2008.  It's going to be a pleasure working with this company to turn my dreams into reality.

So let's get right to it.  If you've been wanting to do turn your own blog into book, you are going to have to first go and read this blog post I did explaining it all, showing you how to format the posts and how to pick the book to use etc.  It's got a lot of information for you all :)

I ordered the book on the 26th of May and it arrived today, just about two weeks, which is not bad considering it has to be printed and shipped out etc.  The total cost for this book was $32 and that included shipping.  Again NOT bad at all.

Here are the books, this is how they were shipped, wrapped in plastic which I really like.  I got two books, one is mine and the other my mother in law paid for and ordered for herself.

The cover.  It's really good quality.  You can have colored covers or designs etc. but I wanted mine to be plain white, I just prefer it that way.  They will all be white and have the same colored text and font.

Here's the book spine.  I chose to label them by volumes so this is Volume 1 for 2006, the next is Volume 2 for 2007 and so forth.

I love how it turned out :)

I picked the Professional Hardcover Casewrap.

The first page.  It's very well bound together.

And now to show you the inside.  I was a little apprehensive about how the pictures would show up, because I chose black and white.  You have the option of using color as well, though that is more expensive. 

Obviously the pictures aren't high quality, and that's understandable as well because the original photos were not that great to begin with.   My first years blogging I had a very cheap digital camera and didn't get my Canon until 2011.

I'm still really happy with how it all turned out, the quality of the pictures, the print and so on.

If I didn't have so much blogging material, I would have chosen to have each blog post on it's own page, but that's just not going to happen.  I decided to fit as many as I could on a page. 

Again I wasn't sure how it would all look in print.  It's one thing to see it in a Word File but to see it in book format is completely different.  I'm thrilled with the results though.

Here's the back cover.  I LOVE how it looks.  All the books will have the same text on the back too. 

So overall, I couldn't be happier with my blog to book.  I am glad I found Lulu, and I highly recommend it to anyone who is looking to turn their blogs to book, or publish any other book they want.

You can self publish, you can keep it just for yourself, or you can even sell the books online through Lulu and Amazon etc.  The possibilities are endless.

I am thinking that I may run a giveaway and give one of these books to the winner.  Kind of like a thank you for reading my blog over the years.  You would get your very own Book with the very first year of my blogging adventure :)

I'm already working on the next years to turn them into books, I'm also working on a Slow Cooking Thursday book with all the slow cooking recipes shared on the blog.  And I'm currently doing a Full Bellies, Happy Kids Cookbook as well with all the recipes on my blog. 

I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to format that one, I don't want it to be just the usual cookbook look, so I think I might stick to the blog format and do them by year?  I don't know, I'll figure that out, but if any of you are interested in having the food blog in book format, I'll have that for you in the near future.

And that's basically it.  I hope this post has given you all the information you need, or at the very least inspired you to turn your blogs into books, after all these will make wonderful additions to your bookshelves or even coffee table, and think of all the amazing memories jam packed in these pages.

If you have any questions and I can help, please leave a comment below and I'll try my best to help you as best as I can.

I'm off to continue on my 2008 book and also start reading through my new beautiful book :)