Picaboo Yearbooks {Review}

We have not always homeschooled our children.  We have only been homeschooling for about 7 years.  One thing our children say they miss most about public school is getting a yearbook at the end of the year.  So when Picaboo Yearbooks came up for review from the Schoolhouse Review Crew I was thrilled!!

Years ago I was big into scrapbooking.  I would put a kind of family yearbook together for us using scrapbooks.  Lets face it...that takes up a lot of time!!  I recently sold all of my scrapbooking items.  I just do not have the time or desire for it anymore.  I could not wait to put together our yearbook.

We were offered a free Softcover (8 1/2 by 11) 20 page yearbook to review.  I will tell you right up front, this takes a long time to complete.  When we do our yearbook for next year I am going to start it up early in the year and add to it as we go along.  There are no deadlines, so I can come back and complete at my own leisure.

First I had to chose how I wanted the front cover to look.  I think I changed it many different times.  Especially once I really figured out how everything worked.  I decided that I would dedicate one page for each of our kids.  Then do a summary of each of our school months.  At the end I did a tribute to our daughter that graduated.

Once I picked the background for my page I got to work.  Choosing the background was the most time consuming thing for me.  Haha!  There are literally hundreds of backgrounds to choose from.  Since this was a page for October I wanted orange.  So I typed in orange for the background.  Who knew there were so many different shades of orange out there.  Next I had to pick how I wanted the layout of the photos.  Uploading the pictures really took a long time.  I chose the pictures and then started the process, and moved onto another task.

Along with all of the hundreds of backgrounds there are also little "stickers" you can add to the pages.  I love this feature.  It makes it seem more like the scrapbooking I love.  I was able to resize the "stickers" and move them around to where I want them.

Adding text to the pages was so simple.  I was able to easily place text under the pictures so I could remember what that even was.  I could even place colored box behind the text so it was easier to read.  Which I did on some of the darker pages. 

I love how this turned out.  The printing colors are so clear and crisp.  The pictures seem to "pop" off the page at you.  This project was so much fun.  It is defiantly something I will be doing again!  I am going to have my daughter Hannah create one this year for part of her schooling.  I could probably mark it down as art, computer science, writing and more.

The cost of the book we created is just $8.49 for a 20 page book.  If you want to add more pages they are just .22 cents per page.  Shipping has actually gone down since I got my book,  It is now 8.99.  We were told that it could take about 3 weeks to get our book, but we had ours in less than 2 weeks from the time we submitted it.  These would also make great gifts for family members.  Where else can you purchase a quality gift for around $20? 

Picaboo Yearbooks have gained a new customer!  Not only do they have softcover yearbooks but they also have hard cover books as well.  I am very happy with the quality of this book.  Many times the softcover books will not hold up.  I'm pretty sure this will hold up to many years of viewing.