Projects, Projects, Everywhere! Here's One...

This time of year is a real killer when it comes to accomplishing a lot of stuff in a short period of time.  I like to make as many of my Christmas gifts as possible, be it a tin of cookies or a photo book.  But they all take time. 

For the past two summers, and likely next summer as well, my cousin has given us use of his vacation home down on St. Simons Island in Georgia.  The island is beautiful, quiet, serene.  The word of the week is always relax.  A mighty good word, if you ask me.  I decided this year to create a photo book for him to thank him, highlighting some of the details of his house and yard, as well as the "village" and the beach.  Back in August, after our trip, I told him I was making something to send him, and to keep an eye out for it over the next few weeks.  However, that fell during the time that I was frantically trying to finish the DSANV calendar in time for its Buddy Walk debut, and the thought of putting together a photo book in the midst of all that panic was just laughable.  Besides, with Christmas virtually right around the corner, it might make more sense to send it then. 

I finally finished the project, and placed the order lastnight, along with the order for my Christmas cards (won't preview them for you here, yet, until I've sent them all out to their recipients - I will tell you, though, that the photo is completely, hopelessly priceless).  I just want to point out the amazing deal I got (although based on what people have been telling me on Facebook, they've had some even more amazing deals!  I'll have to look more closely next year and not rely on waiting for/hoping for Shutterfly to do another "free 50 cards for bloggers" campaign that sustained all of my Christmas card-giving needs over the past two years) - 1) I'd purchased a voucher from TravelZoo for 30 Shutterfly cards for $20 (could only buy one, though), 2) Shutterfly was having 40% off cards, 3) there was an additional 20% discount code available yesterday only, 4) Free Shipping for yesterday only, 5) some random discount off the photo book, 6) and a $20 off voucher that I'd gotten for purchasing the Santa photo package at the mall last week (that totally sweetened the deal and made me feel not-so-bad about shelling out $30 for the pics!).  So, with all of that stuff thrown in and calculated at the end, I got (incl. the pre-purchased 30 for $20 voucher) 60 photo cards and an 8x11 photo book all for $50.00.  Not bad, eh?  Especially considering the shipping was free - it would  have been $18!  It was totally worth the time I had to spend on the phone waiting for Customer Service lastnight at 10pm trying to get the Free Shipping code to work after it seemed to bounce out when I added in the Santa discount (for the record, Shutterfly Customer Service were very nice, very helpful, and fixed the problem quickly). 

Anyway, if you were able to follow all that, great.  If not, just know that I'm kinda proud of myself for finding all those discount codes and getting them to work such a great deal.  :-)  If you'd like to preview the St. Simons photo book, here it is (my cousin doesn't read my blog, and doesn't even use the internet if he can help it, so no worries about him seeing this...):

(The embed code doesn't look like it's working, so here's the link to the book):  http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0AbOGTZm0ZMWT14

Click here to view this photo book larger

Turn your favorite photos into a photo book at Shutterfly.com.