We recently went through what I lovingly call “Petrovic birthday season,” as four of us have birthdays in a 25 day stretch – which also includes Valentine’s Day and a ton of other family birthdays (Sasha’s sister and cousins, my grandma and aunt). As I was editing the girls’ birthday party photos, I realized that I never shared Isla’s flamingo themed birthday party from last May! Although I’m very late to share these, I have posted every one of the girls’ parties to date, so didn’t want to skip out now!
Isla invited all of the girls in her class over to swim, and we had such a fun afternoon celebrating! One of my best friends, Kristin, helped to style the dessert table and inflate a million balloons – she is so talented. We are grateful for our sweet new friends here in Austin! Lots of photos below!
Yesterday we celebrated Isla turning eight years old. It was such a low-key and fun family day, and Isla told me as she was falling asleep that it was her favorite birthday ever. We threw a party for her before school let out in May (will share photos soon!), so she was very content having a quiet day at my parent’s house in Durango. She chose to go zip-lining with me and Sasha, and we had a blast with our little dare devil girl. She tested Sasha’s fears just a few days earlier at the carnival, and again as she jumped backwards off the super high zip-line towers.
For her birthday, Isla received jewelry, slime, crystals, a sketch pad and pens, a stuffed animal dog, a ton of great books (she loves graphic novels right now!), Polly Pockets, and a pink ATM machine bank to keep her money safe (from little sisters, of course). She requested spaghetti and meatballs for dinner and snickerdoodle cookies for dessert (in lieu of cake, which she doesn’t love). Isla got to choose the movie for the night – Parent Trap – which makes me cry every time I watch it! Such a great classic.
In Isla’s 8th year of life, she spent a summer in Colorado, 7 months in a rental house, and moved into a new house – as well as starting at a new school and making all new friends. She began gymnastics and tumbling classes for the first time in her life, which she absolutely adores. She will begin cheerleading in the fall with two of her best friends! Isla has become much more independent, but also still loves spending time with us (especially if it’s 1:1). Isla loves art – she is always coloring, sketching and creating.
I wrote in her birthday card that she is the best “mini-mama,” and she kept bringing up how much she loved that phrase. It is absolutely the truth – she takes care of all her sisters, especially Poppy, so well. She has such a loving, tender heart and cares deeply about other people’s feelings. We are so proud of the sweet big girl she is becoming!
Sasha and my dad are very avid cyclists – riding almost every day of the week. The big girls learned to learn a two wheel bike before their fourth birthdays but were active on their strider bikes before, so we have had 7 bikes in the garage for ages now – spanning all varieties of terrain and age. On multiple occasions, we’ve headed out on big family bike rides, but guess who has never had a bike? Me! As in, the last bike I owned was when I was probably ten years old. We have talked and talked and talked about me getting one so I can join on on the fun for years now, but I could never find one I loved until I discovered the EVRYjourney 500W Navy by Sixthreezero. This fun, colorful bike is an electric bike, which is what I have been looking for. Our neighborhood is full of hills, so it makes sense to have a bike with a little extra oomph. I’ve ridden my mom’s e-bike before, which only has manual and pedal assist modes, but my new Sixthreezero bike also have an electric mode, which is the only way I can go up and down our steep street! We had friends over this weekend, and the dads were all taking turns zooming down and powering up the road. I have some pretty funny videos of their encouraging commentary!
This pretty new bike of mine is very easy to mount and dismount and has a rear rack for easy portability. I love the width of the handlebars which create an ergonomic riding position. The different gears and modes are very straight forward, so there is little to no learning curve.
Our littlest love turned one over a month ago, and in typical fourth kid fashion, I’m only now sitting down to write her one year post. We could not be more obsessed with our baby – she is every Petrovic family member’s favorite. On the flip side, I am hers, but Isla is a very close second. Her most said word is definitely, “I-ya!” whenever she sees Isla. She goes through phases of words – first was Dada, then Mama, then she threw in ba-by for awhile, but it’s mainly just Isla’s name now!
You know the phrase “so-and-so has never met a stranger?” – well, Poppy is 180 degrees from that, ha. She loves her family dearly, but is very suspicious of all others. She still loves to be out and about to explore the world, most especially going on walks. She is in love with her ‘walk-abouts’ with Papa (my dad) – he has been doing this little walk with her since she was a baby, and she is entranced with him!
Her favorite foods are blueberries, bananas, yogurt melts, salmon, chicken, lentils, cauliflower pizza, broccoli… and as shown below, cupcakes! She wants to do everything that her sisters do, so I feel like she had been watching them eat cookies and cupcakes lustfully for so long. When we gave it to her, it was the cake smash I’d been waiting 6.5 years for!
Poppy slept through the night for the first time last week – at 13 months. Until then, she was all about the nightly check-ins from mom. She still nurses in the morning, once during the day and at night. It is something I’m going to be very sad to give up!
Poppy has worn shoes maybe 6 times in her whole life! She is still crawling – walking with a little baby walker/stroller – so there hasn’t been much need! Thanks to Isla, she has gone down a few slides in her sissy’s lap, and been pushed on the baby swing (which she loved). We took her in the hot tub last weekend, and she was all grins the whole time.
To get Poppy to laugh, you need to have her sisters do silly dances, to say, “PICOLETTO!” (a Luca movie reference), or make animal noises or silly blowing sounds. When she smiles big or laughs, her eyes all but disappear and I love it. She has two tiny teeth coming in at the top (two at the bottom which have been there for a few months), and I love that I can now see them in her gummy smile.
Through and through, Poppy – we love you! I also love these photos my dear friend Jen Dillender took of her. We had just moved in the week before they were taken, and I’m so glad we could be *home* for her first birthday session!
I had the greatest mail day two weeks ago, as the remainder of my 2021 Artifact Uprising photo books arrived and we got to pour through the hundreds (thousands?) of photos of our family from the past year. My photo books are truly my most treasured physical possessions, and if you’ve been reading this blog or following along on Instagram for any length of time, you’ll know how much I love using Artifact Uprising. Their quality and design aesthetic are unmatched, and I have been using them exclusively for the last four years. My 2021 books included: four hardcover books (Parts 1-4) with everyday photos of our family, layflat books for Poppy’s newborn photos and two sets of professional family photos, and the new signature layflat books for Poppy’s six month portraits and a mini session we did with just the Petrovic girls! I still need to order art books for the girls’ school art, which I shared about in a blog post here.
Every year, I create a series of photo books made up of everyday-type photos that I’ve taken of our family. I’ve done this religiously since I was in college actually! When Isla was born in 2014, my ‘annual book’ became ‘books,’ and with each passing year, the number of books needed to hold all of the photos taken has grown! Now, I typically print four to five books a year. Since I’ve been doing these for 14 years, I wanted to share a few tips, tricks and lessons learned for making your own. I know it can seem like a very daunting task, but I promise it is always worth it!
My Annual Books
Customization options: I use Artifact Uprising’s hardcover book in the 8.5×11 size. Every year, I choose one color that will represent all of the books created that year. This past year, it was the beautiful Seamist color. I choose the partial dust jacket (now you can put text on the binding, which is the best!). I always put black and white photos on the cover for consistency! I choose lustre paper and do the standard dust jacket.
Page count: If you choose a 50 page base count book, you can make anywhere from 40-100 pages. If you choose 100 pages, you can make a 50-140 page book, and if you choose 150 pages, you can make a 100-210 page book. I always choose the 150 page option to start off. You can always change your page count if you click on Customize on the top left toolbar, then click the dropdown to the book size/page count.
Page layouts: There are so many templates to choose from (see screenshot of the options below). Artifact Uprising did a refresh a few years ago of the book making process, and it has made it so much easier to build your books. I try to maximize how many photos are in each book, so I typically use as many of the 4×4 templates as much as possible! A tip I have is to pre-populate your pages with this template, then go back to the beginning and drop in your photos chronologically, stopping to change the page to a ‘big feature’ layout if a photo calls for it!
Cost: The cost varies based on the number of pages, but I would say the average hardcover book (approx. 200 pages) is about $150-$200. Of course, you can always adjust your page layouts and book size to do more with less! Artifact Uprising kindly gave me a custom promo code to use, so you can get 15% off if you use SNAPSHOTS15.
Galleries: I create a gallery for each month of the year (essentially just a photo album), even if I’m playing catch up. It helps me to segment the photos into smaller time frames. I have galleries for July ‘21, August ‘21, etc. This is what works for me, because I typically have a lot of photos, but isn’t necessarily right for everyone, especially if you are playing catchup for multiple years! If you are creating a book with photos from your phone, I would recommend going through your camera roll, selecting all of the photos you want in the book then Airdropping them to your computer. They will end up in your Downloads folder, and from there, you can upload them directly to Artifact Uprising. PS The gallery names in Artifact Uprising are static – so be sure to name them accordingly when setting them up.
iPhone quality in books: I don’t have any phone photos in my books; however, I have friends who have created entire books with iPhone photos and they look great. I would probably err on the side of a layout with smaller photo sizes vs. one where it’s a full-page spread. When using digital camera photos, the quality is great. If the resolution is too low, you will be notified before ordering.
Staying ‘on top of it’ and finding time to create/update books: I try to update the annual books once a month so that it doesn’t seem like a daunting task. I have a calendar reminder set for the last Sunday of each month which I find really helpful. If you are getting caught up on years past, I recommend blocking out a few hours to tackle a bulk of the book. I find it hard to catch up in small increments on time, because I can’t remember where I left off!
Autofill and Design Services: I used to create books with another company that had a ton of colorful backdrops and looked more like a scrapbook. That became way too overwhelming to keep up with, plus I love the classic simplicity of the Artifact Uprising books. There is an autofill option that allows you to pick a gallery and fill in the photos automatically, then you can adjust any layouts if you don’t like how it populated the pages. I have done this before then tweaked it afterwards. I chose the chronological order and pre-populated a lot of 4×4 layouts beforehand.
Also, if you are pinched for time Artifact Uprising has a Design Services Team who can help with the curation of your yearly albums! The packages start at $316, including the album and design service. I totally have faith in you being able to make one yourself, but if the task seems too big and you keep putting it off, it may be worthwhile to have someone else build it for you!I hope this was helpful for you! If you have any questions, please email me!
Here are some screenshots of a few pages from 2021: Part I. As I mentioned, I try to use 4×4 as much as possible, but some photos (like Poppy’s announcement) get a full page! The wide variety of layout options for hardcover books are shown below!
