Sunday, December 7, 2008

Holiday Shopping Tip #5: Photos always make a nice gift

I was hoping to get a lot of writing done this weekend, but as it turned out, all of my free time has been used up in my preparations for placing an online order of approximately a gazillion photos.

Since we got a digital camera to make our lives easier, I have fallen a little behind on the whole "ordering actual prints" thing. About three years behind, to be exact.

As you can imagine, the grandparents, who live 2,000 miles away, would like to see a snapshot of their rapidly changing grandchildren from time to time. In fact, the grandmas send each other photos of the kids. They send me photos of the kids. Most of the actual, frame-able, hard copy pictures I have of my own children have been given to me by someone else.

Last year around this time, I decided to buckle down and remedy the problem. I stayed up late and spent hours and hours putting together a seriously heavyweight order. Since I didn't want to pay $40 in shipping charges, I had the prints shipped to a CVS pharmacy. Since I didn't live anywhere near a CVS pharmacy, I had to ask my mother-in-law to pick them up for me.

When she went to pick up the photos, however, they were nowhere to be found. After she checked at three different CVS pharmacies, I made some phone calls and learned that my photos had never been printed.

Apparently the order left my computer, but never made it to the Kodak Gallery, so my hours and hours of work were lost forever in cyberspace.

I was so discouraged that I have not even attempted to begin the process again, until now.

Under pressure from my guilty conscience and occasional not-so-subtle hints from my mom, I am trying again. This time I'm using a different company, a faster computer, and free shipping, which should deliver my photos directly to my mailbox and bypass the step where I send my mother-in-law on a wild goose chase.

So, I've selected a gazillion of my favorite photos from the past three years, and at this time about a zillion of those have been uploaded to Shutterfly. In just a couple of hours, I should be ready to place my order.

Wish me luck. I will be sure to post an update on that glorious day when I open my mailbox and find a package from Shutterfly.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Ruth,
Just stopped by to say hi and thanks for cruising our blog, too. Your comments always make me laugh. Love your holiday tips... I also get behind ordering prints and then can't remember which ones I've ordered and which ones I haven't. I'm adding your blog to our blogroll today, if I can remember how to do that. Fingers crossed... type to you later...