Photobooks on Photobox

I have always liked photographs. As long back as I can remember, anyway. I was given my first camera when I was seven. I took photos on holidays with my little Instamatic. At some point I was given my grandfather's old 35mm camera.

In my teens, I took photos at school; I embarrassed friends by taking photos at parties. I was absolutely thrilled with the gift of a negative album and half a dozen photo albums when I was about fourteen. I organised and annotated some of my pictures; I stored my negatives carefully, with dates, names and places.

I suppose it's because I'm not at all a visual person that I like looking at photos. I can't picture anything clearly in my head, with my eyes closed. So I rely on photos to remind me of scenes in the past, and people I have known. My parents had a darkroom in the house I grew up in, and I loved seeing the pictures emerging after developing the films, and then processing the images.

In the early 1980s, colour films dropped in price, and it was possible to send films to be processed, at a cost that was rather less than that of buying new chemicals for the darkroom. I was newly married, at university and then out at work, with a house that needed a lot of repair work and redecoration. So I appreciated the saving in time, too. I was much less disciplined about organising negatives - they came in nice little sleeves anyway - but I bought new slip-in albums and kept more-or-less up-to-date with the photos.

In 2005, we moved from analogue film to digital photos. But I still ordered prints. It was more economical and far more efficient - I could take as many photos as I wanted, choose the best ones, and order just those.  I didn't get them locally; I uploaded them to one of the online photo processing places; originally Kodak Gallery (which closed some years ago), and then the excellent Photobox site.

The number of albums kept growing. It was proving more difficult to find suitable new albums, however.  And I was running out of space:

Back in 2010, I had managed to make a digital 'photobook' at Kodak Gallery online. It was our thirtieth wedding anniversary, and I wanted to make a memento. I scanned some of my favourite photos over the years, which I uploaded, then the site took me through the steps of creating a hardback book.  There were several different formats offered for each page - I could place just a single picture, or four, or nine... I experimented with the options, and we were very pleased with the eventual result:

I had wondered, more than once, about making more photobooks.  The Photobox site offered them, but they seemed extremely expensive.  However, they regularly sent me emails of special offers:  50% off everything on the site;  60% off photobooks;  extra pages free with photobooks; - I never knew what was coming next, but tried to take advantage of special offers with the prints I was ordering.

Early in 2016 I calculated the cost of making a regular photo album with prints ordered from Photobox.  I had discovered somewhere in Cyprus that sold photo albums holding 300 prints, which would - just about - take about a year's worth of pictures.  The album cost about €20.  300 photos at about ten pence each cost around £30.  Total: not far off £50.  The special offer reduced-price Photobooks, with up to 100 pages, cost about £40.  I could put in more photos - each page can take at least six photos - and I knew they would take up much less space than regular albums.

I decided to try it with our 2016 photographs. I finished my last analogue album, ensuring it ended at the end of 2015. And over the year, I sorted and uploaded to Photobox one month's photos at a time, then very much enjoyed playing around with the online system to create the photobook. I realised I didn't just need to use the pre-defined templates. I could add extra photos, place extra text, and change the size or shape of the pictures.  There were different backgrounds available, and also some extra illustrations I could add.

Many of my online friends were creating 'bullet journals' at the time; hand-crafted beautiful books containing memorabilia of their day-to-day lives, along with photos and hand-written text.  I am so un-artistic that I could not do that kind of thing; but making an online album fulfilled a similar function.  Early in 2017 I ordered my 2016 album, and was very pleased with it.  There were, inevitably, lots of pictures of my grandson:

I liked being able to include several similar images.  And at times I placed far more than six on one page:

Inevitably there were a few typos in the text, and I had not been consistent with the font size or colour. But I was so pleased with it that I've kept making the current photos into photobooks: 2017 and 2018 are complete, and 2019 is in process; I'm up to the end of June so far.

Having established that photobooks are good value, great quality, and - best of all - replaceable, should any disaster strike the ones we have - I started thinking about making them with older photos.  My first album, from the 1960s, has photos falling out; we don't have an album at all from Richard's childhood.  But I had some scanned copies of negatives of photos from both sides of our family, and decided to start with the year Richard was born.

I quickly realised that I didn't have all the available photos. So this project was going to have to pause until I could get hold of them to copy.

Meanwhile, our 1980 professional wedding album was looking considerably the worse for wear:

The photos inside fall out if we're not careful, and some of them are starting to fade.  We only selected about eight of them, but there were about fifty or sixty taken by the photographer, and more by my father and my father-in-law.  We had photographed the 'proof' album with all the professional photos (which my parents-in-law had bought), and I had scanned my father's negatives, and also some slides we had taken on our honeymoon.

So I decided to skip forward to 1980.  I first made us a new wedding/honeymoon album:

I even scanned copies of the wedding service booklet and hymn sheet to include:

And then I made the decision to create photobooks of ALL our photos - the analogue albums only ever contained a selection of the better ones, and some of them are very faded now.

So I got going on chronological albums, making one that covered the years from 1980-1983, and one that covered 1984-1985.  I've been reminded about my grandparents' golden wedding, my grandfather's 80th birthday, and some holidays we had in the Middle East, where my parents were living.

I was particularly looking forward to the next few, as they include our sons as babies.  I ordered 1986-1987 about a month ago:

Daniel had four grandparents and five great-grandparents still living when he was born, so I have loved seeing photos of them together.  I've also included pictures of Richard's work at the time - photos which never made it into our former albums.

I've been working on the next two albums as well, and they're just about ready to order; I'm hoping for a good special offer in the next few weeks.  There's no hurry - once created, they stay in my Photobox 'creations' collection, along with the ones I have ordered.

The bookcase in the photo above is about 60cm wide.  The middle shelf contains twelve books, which just about fit, covering something like 18 years of our married life.  The lower shelf contains ten slightly bigger books, covering ten years of our life.  Digital photography leads to more photos being taken, and as I get older I like more photos anyway. Particularly of our grandchildren.

By contrast, here are our first eight photobooks. The two on the left are the special anniversary and wedding ones. The remaining six, covering ten years (1980-1987 and 2016-2018) take up just eight centimetres of shelf space:

It's said that one knows how good a company is by the way they deal with things that go wrong. I had to test that out a couple of months ago, when I ordered two photobooks at the same time. When the parcel arrived, it contained one of the ones I had ordered, and one that was nothing to do with me - on the front was a photo of someone I did not recognise, and some text in one of the Scandinavian languages.

I clicked 'help' on the Photobox site, and was greeted by an online 'chat' box. I explained the problem to an extremely helpful assistant, who apologised profusely and said that just occasionally something goes wrong with the printing, and an order gets missed out. She ordered a replacement album to be sent to me, and asked me to return the one that wasn't mine, and to send them a copy of the postage receipt. I did so, and the amount was refunded to my Photobox account within a day.  I was very impressed with how quickly it was handled.

I would highly recommend Photobox to anyone interested in trying this kind of thing. If you do, make sure to get on their mailing list so they send you regular special offers.  

Ten years in this house - and yet more minor improvements

I'm not very good with dates.

I know all the family's birthdays, but if it weren't for my Google calendar reminding me in advance, I might well forget about them until too late to send a card or gift. I often don't even notice dates that other people celebrate - Valentine's Day, for instance, or Mothering Sunday. Facebook is quite good at letting me know when we, and other nationalities mark an occasion, so I spotted that yesterday was Independence Day in the United States.

But I had entirely forgotten that today, July 5th, is quite an important anniversary for us. Happily, Facebook told me that I'd mentioned it a couple of times in previous years... and so, this blog post is to celebrate that it's ten years today since we bought our house in Cyprus.

I would have been a bit sad if I'd missed it this year, though I'm sure I don't always notice it. That's partly because of it being a round ten years, and partly because in the first six months of this year we've done a great deal to the house, in recognition of our having owned it for ten years. It was looking tired; we had done very little before this year, and some of the paintwork was looking terrible.

I've written at length about the damp proofing system which we had installed back in March.  We won't know how effective it is until next winter, but the guest flat already smells less musty.

Before that, we had employed our teenage friend Jacob to do some painting; many of our window frames had lost all the paint, and some were quite rotten. So he sanded and painted, and repaired, and then painted the places where the damp proof course was installed, and the front of the house downstairs, which spruced it up nicely.

Then in April we had our bathroom replaced, something we had talked about for many years, but finally did this year. We did the last few bits and pieces for that in May, and are still extremely pleased with it.

But one thing that Jacob kept putting off was painting the railings on our front patio. We weren't surprised; it's something we kept putting off too. It looked like a very fiddly and time consuming job. However, our good friend Sheila (Jacob's mother) said that she would like to do it for us, so she came over early in the morning several times, and did a great job. I didn't take many 'before' or 'after' photos, but did manage to get this one, right after she had painted one half of the gate:

The difference is stunning.

When it was finished, we realised how very tatty the postbox looked. Like in the United States, people in Cyprus don't have slots in their doors for mail, but have little boxes outside. We have a PO Box at the Post Office where we get most of our mail, but there are vast amounts of junk mail advertisements for shops and eateries which arrive regularly, and it's a legal requirement to have a post box near the street.

This is what the box looked like:

The lock was a bit rusty, and it looked terrible on our newly painted fence. We thought about painting it to match, but it would have been quite a task, and almost impossible to hold the flap and the opening door out of the way while the paint dried. It was held on the fence by ancient pieces of wire.

So when we had to make a trip to the local SuperHome Centre, for a couple of things, I had a look at the mail boxes. There were dozens of them in all kinds of shapes, sizes and colours. I nearly gave up when I spotted a small black one, at a good price, which would meet our needs perfectly. We bought a metallic number to affix, and Richard installed it... with cable ties:

On the same trip to the DIY store, we saw some mosquito netting that could be fitted to the window sections that open at the top of some of our doors. We thought it would be ideal for the one in the dining room, which we like to keep open in Spring and Autumn, but have had to close in the evenings to keep out mosquitoes.

So we bought it, and Richard installed it immediately:

It took a little getting used to, and now the weather is so hot that we mostly keep it closed if we want to be in the room in the evening, so we can use the air conditioning. But it should be very useful in the Autumn.

There are still a few small things that need to be done: the last bit of plastering and painting on the wall outside our bathroom, a new fitting in one of the loos, re-tiling in the guest flat bathroom. Our friendly local builder said he should be able to come some time this week. It will be good to have these last few bits done. There are still other more major jobs that the house needs, but we've had enough of house maintenance for now, and will leave the rest until next year.

Happy anniversary, house!

Anniversary trip to Platres

I'm a little shocked to see that it's almost a month since I wrote on this blog. And that it's nearly four weeks since the events of which I am about to write. But, I hope, better late than never...

Six years ago, we spent a couple of days in the mountains over our wedding anniversary. We went to the little village of Kakopetria, which was pleasantly cool and a great place to relax, away from the heat and humidity of Larnaka.

This year has been quite stressful in many ways, so Richard decided to find another village - since there wasn't exactly a whole lot to do in Kakopetria! - and take me into the mountains again, for this year's 33rd anniversary. He opted for Platres*, and checked reviews of several possible inns/hotels/b&bs in the neighbourhood. He rejected several which were apparently unfriendly or had smelly drains, and opted for the Semiramis Hotel, which most reviewers claimed was basic but friendly. The price was pretty good too...

It was a little complicated to find; we went to the wrong part of Platres at first, and then tried to set the address on Richard's phone app... it wasn't very accurate, but happily he spotted it just as we were about to drive past on the main road:

We were a bit tired and rather hungry by the time we got there, as it was around 1.00pm. We were checked in by a very friendly young woman, and informed that we had 'half board' - a slight surprise as we thought we only had bed and breakfast.  Our room was like one from a traditional Cyprus house of fifty or so years ago, dark wood and indeed fairly basic.  The only slight disappointment was that there were no coffee-making facilities - and that the drains were a little smelly! 

However we wanted to eat first of all, so walked a couple of kilometres into Platres village where we had some excellent rolls and then found a place for frappés. We then walked back to the hotel, and to my astonishment I lay down for a second to see how comfortable the bed was, and then fell asleep almost instantly.  I almost never take siestas... it must be something to do with the mountain air, and perhaps having just walked four kilometres.  Even having had caffeine did not keep me awake.

Our evening meal was not served at the hotel but at a taverna in the village, which was run by the husband of the lady who had greeted us when we arrived. Apparently his father is the owner of the hotel. It truly is an old-style family-run business, and very friendly indeed. Richard had a couple of long conversations with the owner, discussing the hotel's history and the economic crisis, and living in Cyprus in general. 

Although our room did not really have anywhere comfortable to sit, there were lounge areas downstairs, and after breakfast each morning - basic but good - we sat and read for a while:

I really like the lighting in this photo... not that I set anything up. It was one of those snaps that just happened to work:

Later on we walked back into the town - the hotel staff had told us of a rather shorter (albeit very steep) route, and looked at the shops. I'm not keen on shops in general, but it was quite interesting to see them and wander round a few. There were vast numbers of restaurants and tavernas; we chose one offering free wi-fi to have coffee, since the hotel did not offer wi-fi.

Here's a little area in the village where we sat briefly:

Having rather exhausted Platres we drove up to the summit of the mountains at Troodos - not far away - and had lunch there. Then we had some ice creams... this was mine:

No doubt highly calorific, but absolutely delicious. 

In the evening it was back to the family-run taverna: 

The options for 'half-board' customers of the hotel were a little limited, starting with an excellent Greek salad:

I passed the olives and beetroot to Richard but enjoyed the rest of it. 

Then we had the option of about eight different Cyprus specialities. Richard chose kleftiko the first night and afelia the second.  They were served as plates of meat - no veg at all; a dish of couscous accompanied the kleftiko, and some chips the afelia.  I had moussaka the first night which was okay, though not the best; the second night I made the mistake of having what I would call dolmades (stuffed vine leaves) although they were given a Cypriot name.  They were a bit bitter, and also just served with chips. I would have liked some vegeterian options.

However, since we had these evening meals included, we could hardly object - and they were certainly substantial and filling.  So much so that we didn't even think about dessert. 

We walked back to the hotel the long way round on our second evening, stopping to explore a few little detours, and were interested to see that although grape season was well underway on the island, the Platres grapes were evidently not yet ripe:

All in all, it was a very enjoyable couple of days away.

*Note that Platres is not pronounced 'Platters' or Platers' but something approximating to PLAT-rez

Two restaurants in Larnaka

Last week was quite a social one for us, with something happening every evening. Monday we played a (Settlers of Catan) game with two of our friends; Tuesday evening two other friends came over for a meal and a couple of (Rummikub) games.

Then we ate out on both Wednesday and Thursday. Two evenings in a row. This is almost unheard of in our household, where we typically pay to eat out three or four times per year at most. We're also sometimes treated to meals at restaurants by friends, which is very pleasant, but unless we have a lot of visitors staying that's not very often either.

One occasion when we always try to eat out is our anniversary, which fell last Thursday. Last year we had Tim with us, the year before Daniel... but this time, with both sons in the UK, we decided to have an evening with just the two of us, to celebrate thirty-two years of married life.

However, Thursday also happens to be Richard's sailing buddy's birthday. Just to confuse us (and it regularly does...) he's also called Tim. We worked out that we were married on his 21st birthday, although of course that was many years before he and Richard met. Tim and his wife wanted to celebrate both occasions with us, so they generously asked us out for a meal. They chose Militzes, a restaurant on the sea-front beyond the fort, where we've been a couple of other times with friends:

Since it's Summer, the place was open and we sat at a table for four near the street. Portions are usually quite big, so our friends suggested we begin with a salad, then continue by sharing some pourgouri and three 'main' dishes: chicken, kleftiko and some mixed beans.

The beans were good, and the kleftiko was wonderful... I'm not usually a huge fan of this traditional lamb dish, but it was extremely tender and tasty.

It was a very enjoyable evening out.

On our anniversary, we had considered trying a new Mexican restaurant we had spotted recently. But on the day, Richard said that he really felt like eating fish and chips... and preferably the ones served at Alexander's. So, as we have so many times before, we went to this relatively inexpensive and popular place:

While other restaurants in the area are often almost empty until at least 8.00pm, Alexander's always seems to have customers.

I pondered the vegetarian moussaka which I've had several times before, and like very much, but then realised that fish and chips actually sounded quite appealing. So I ordered that too.

How very British of us...

We enjoyed the meal very much:

Afterwards, as is usual at Alexander's, we were asked if we wanted anything 'on the house' - they offer coffee, ouzo, brandy, ice cream, and various other possibilities. Richard had some decaf coffee, and I opted for ice cream:

Then we went for a walk along the sea-front, and came home to watch a DVD which seemed appropriate for the occasion, and which we both enjoyed: the Steve Martin version of 'Father of the Bride'.

Our 31st anniversary... and my 1000th post!

It seems somehow appropriate that my thousandth post on this blog - started over six years ago - should be about the celebration of another wedding anniversary. Not that 31 is a particularly significant number (unless you are interested in the different kinds of prime numbers in which case there's a detailed Wikipedia article about the number 31.) Last year's 30th ('pearl') anniversary was more of a milestone. But this is the year in which Daniel was married, and Tim finished his degree... and it could have been easy to forget about our wedding anniversary.

We have a guest staying in the guest flat but he was invited out to a meal with some other friends, so we decided to take Tim out with us for a meal. Last year only Daniel was with us - and while we liked to spend our anniversaries on our own, where possible, when the boys were younger, it's now a treat to have either of them with us.

Since we only eat out a handful of times each year, we don't know many restaurants in Larnaka. We didn't want anywhere with hot or spicy food in a Cyprus summer, and we didn't really want to try anywhere new that might prove disastrous. So, perhaps unadventurously, we opted for our favourite of the sea-front restaurants, Alexander's.

Tim took some photos of us, for the record, with his good camera, and I think this is probably the best of them:


Then I did manage to take one of him:


Since Richard and Tim both attempt to be dairy-free in their eating, we knew there were no Alexander's desserts that would be appropriate. So afterwards we drove along the sea-front towards McKenzie and the yogurt ice cream shop which also does regular ice cream, including some sorbets.

Richard opted for strawberry sorbet:


Tim decided on peach:


I was going to have a yogurt ice cream with fruit, but the strawberry sorbet looked rather good, as did the 'coconut/bounty' ice cream. So I had a scoop of each:


Alas, they were rather disappointing. The coconut ice cream wasn't bad, but the strawberry sorbet tasted very artificial. And the peach, as Tim said, tasted as if it had been made with canned peaches in syrup.

Still, they were cooling and refreshing. And the ingredients can't have been too bad since I didn't develop a migraine the following morning.

We arrived home again about 8.30 and Tim suggested a game of 'Ticket to Ride', since he had not played it for about six months. Cleo was delighted when we took the lid off the box:


It was quite an interesting game, which I thought Richard would win since he (playing red) took the only eight-train-track (worth 21 points) and had a lot of different missions. Tim (playing blue) took several extras too, and it was clear that some of the new ones overlapped perfectly with the routes he had already played.


However, I (playing yellow) managed, rather neatly (I thought) to play all my trains AND all my train cards. I only completed the original three missions I had kept at the start of the game, but I gained an extra ten points from the longest contiguous route, and I had not used any stations... and since Richard failed to complete one of his routes, I won: