I am in love with my digital camera. I’m a new mom, so how could I not be completely addicted to it? My poor daughter thinks she’s Brittney Spears or Paris Hilton with the way the flashbulbs pop everywhere she goes. I affectionately refer to myself as “the Mama-razi.” (My husband is, of course, the Papa-razi.)
At any given time, my camera has pictures of BabyHacks in no less than a dozen different outfits, generally doing almost exactly the same thing. “See how she’s waving ‘hello’ in this one and ‘goodbye” in the next one?”
It’s great how the picture review feature on our digital cameras literally allow us to start reminiscing an event before it’s actually over. “Do you remember 30 seconds ago when you did that cool thing…”
While I get to enjoy the photos over and over, there is a real downside to the digital age: I never have to get my film developed. I am instantly gratified by seeing the image on my camera’s screen. I might even get as far as uploading it to my laptop so I can post it on my LiveJournal, Facebook, or Flickr accounts. These options are great, but they don’t do much for my parents and grandparents who aren’t online. It’s also put a major crimp in my scrapbooking plans.
We recently discovered how to solve this problem without even making an extra trip out of the house. It turns out that various retailers now allow you to upload or email your digital photos to them, and they’ll get them all printed out for you. We like to send ours to Costco because they can even get them printed in an hour. So, if we know we’re going to go do some shopping, we can send a few files in before leaving home, and just pick them up when we check out.
The best part, though, is that you can send pictures to stores all over the world and have other people pick them up. We live in the Northwest but were able to have our digital photos printed out in Florida at my grandparents’ local Walgreens. I chose to pay for them online, but they could have also paid when they picked the photos up. I’ve heard that for an extra few bucks, you can even have them delivered.
So, without even licking an envelope, I can now ensure that GreatGrandmaHacks gets to see her progeny’s progeny’s progeny in dozens of different outfits waving both “hello” and “goodbye.”
(Mama Hack: n. A tip or technique that reduces the chaos in a mama’s life and makes it easier to manage or more convenient. Because no one looks back and says, “I really needed to run more errands.”)
