Want to publish your blog? Take 2

I just found out that Blurb (the book making software) has now fixed their problem with blogger and you will no longer need to do all that extra stuff to publish your blog in book form. So with some easy steps you can use this great program to make a wonderful book of your memories. You have so many creative options! Have fun!

The steps:
1. Go to the Blurb site and download their Booksmart software. (If you already have the Booksmart software, download it again to upgrade to their newest version.)
2. When you download the software double click on the desktop icon to open it.
3. It will ask you to pick your book size, then click continue. (prices for different sizes are here)
4. Then you will need to make a title and put the author. Press continue.
5. Then you are going to choose a starting point. Second from bottom is Blog Book. Click it.
6. Identify your Source: Click on Blogger and put in your Blogger username and password.
7. Your blog should pop up and should already have a check mark by it (if you have more than one blog you will need to pick the one you want to publish) Click continue.
8. Once it downloads your blog it will pop up with a screen asking which entries you want. If you are like me and want to do only 2008, unclick any from this year or previous years. Click continue.
9. Then it will ask you to Autopopulate your book. When it autopopulates your book it will put all of your entries in automatically. I find this easier because then you can evaluate each page one by one and see if you like them and if you do you have nothing to change (you can change any page format at any time). When you don't autopopulate you have to place all entries in yourself. Make a choice and click continue.
10. Pick a theme (again, this can always be changed later). Click continue.
11. It should then start importing your photos. Once it is done importing the pictures it will bring up your book and you can click on any page and change its layout, design, color, etc.

Now, I did notice one little quirk and it must be something to do with downloading pictures from the blog. You will likely see a yellow triangle with a red exclamation point on many of the pages. This is saying that the picture on the page is not high enough quality to print (in other words it will be blurry and pixilated if you try to print it). A way around this: On the left hand side of your book you will notice it says "My Imported Photos", click on the arrow and open it. Then a button that says "Get Photos", click on this and open up Picasa Web Albums** put your password in and download any photos related to your blog. Once the pictures are all downloaded you just drag and drop the correct photos into the correct spot (right over the other photos already in place). The picasa web pictures are at a higher resolution and will take away the problem.

**Did you know that all of the pictures in your blog are also automatically saved on Picasa? So to open up all those pictures on Picasa you have to open up a Picasa account (if you have a Google account you use that username and password). If I remeber right it takes a little bit to start up the account (time-wise) but once you have it opened just follow the steps above to download the pictures. On a side note: if you have Tivo you can watch all of the pictures in Picasa on your t.v.!