By Holly Rust

As a child who grew up in the 70’s and 80’s, my parents didn’t have too many inexpensive options to capture all of our first milestones, family vacations, and everyday life moments. We were, however, able to take our obligatory Olan Mills holiday family portraits, and our yearly Life Touch school photos. Besides these horrendous photo opportunities, much of our other life moments can only live on in our memories.

In today’s world we have the complete opposite scenario. We are equipped with a digital camera at all times. Thanks to our Smartphones, we don’t have to lug equipment around, take film to a developer, or wait days to see if we captured a perfect picture. The technology is all there right at our fingertips. Now, however, we’re faced with the tasks of keeping all of these photos organized and showcase them in a way that will last the test of time.

Like most moms, I take hundreds of photos of my babies on any given day. My normal plan of action was to either share the plethora of baby photos with my adoring Facebook family (who I’m sure are not annoyed at all), or store them in iPhoto. Recently I’ve realized that in order to keep these photos organized and not get lost in digital purgatory, I needed to find some great sites and apps to help protect my precious memories.

Here’s some I found through my search:

DayOne App: This one is worth the price with its beautiful design and super easy use. It makes journaling through sleep deprivation that much more likely to happen.

You even have the ability to tag different kids, events, and activities for easier searching and export your entries to a PDF.

Groove Book: The Groovebook offers you the most inexpensive way to create a personalized photo book with pictures you take with your iPhone. For a small monthly fee Groovebook creates a photo book with up to 100 photos per month and ships them to you directly.

iMovie: If you have a Mac, iMovie already comes installed on your computer. The program is very easy to use and you can create videos with pictures, video clips, add cool effects and even add music. You do not have to be tech savvy to use it either.

Canvas Champ: I still love a great hanging photo and if you’re looking for something different than the traditional frame I recommend transferring your photos to canvas. Canvas Champ is a great inexpensive site that offers several different ways to save your memories on canvas. They can print off any of your Instagram photos and also easily connects to your Facebook albums.

Custom Wallpaper: You can now order customized wallpaper to showcase all of your family’s favorite photos. I think this would be a great idea for a family room or basement area where your family spends a lot of time. Follow the link to learn more.

ChatBooks: I’m quickly falling in love with these! Chatbooks are a very inexpensive way to create a photo book series. You can customize your books or they can create a series for you straight from your Instagram account. They come in 60-page volumes and are only $6.

Gmail: Some friends I know set up a Gmail account for each of their children and emails them photos, videos and current thoughts they’d like their kids to know in the future. You can easily organize the emails into category folders and it’s a great way to document their life for them.

Shutterfly: This is an old favorite of mine. Shutterfly has great templates to create photo books, and you can customize as well.  Shutterfly is also very user friendly. If you sign up on their mailing list they send you coupons, too!

Overall tip: Be sure you always backup your computer to protect those memories so they last a lifetime. Happy organizing!

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