As Christmas draws near, I’ve been busy shopping and making gifts for my family. One of my favorite homemade gifts to give as well as receive is anything to do with photographs. Throughout the year, I take thousands of photos and for Christmas I use some of my best ones to make gifts. Because some of my family members read my website, I can’t tell you exactly what I’ve been creating this week, but in the past I’ve made puzzles, calendars, mouse pads, photo books and more. Shutterfly is my go-to website for creating these masterpieces! What I love about Shutterfly is the flexibility. You can make your project as simple or as complex as you want. They have templates that will do everything for you or you can choose to make all of the design decisions yourself including layout, fonts, and colors. I usually opt for something in the middle – choosing a preset template as a starting point and then editing as I go. Like I do every year, I spend hours searching through my thousands of photographs trying to find the best ones for my projects. I always love this annual trip down memory lane! I like to take a wide variety of pictures using different settings on my camera. Even though a lot of these won’t work for my gifts, I still love how they turned out. Below are some of my favorite black & white images from our Disney Alaska cruise this summer. I hope you enjoy them!

If you are interested in making some fantastic photo gifts for your friends and family, please check out these amazing deals offered by Shutterfly (this post contains affiliate links):

• All customers save 30% on orders under $50, 40% on orders of $50+, and best of all, 50% on orders of $100 or more through Sunday, December 14, just click here and use promo code GETMORE.
• New customers save $20 off orders of $99 or more through Monday, December 15, just click here and use promo code 20OFF99.
• Spend over $49 and receive free shipping through Sunday, December 14, just click here and use promo code SHIP49.
• Free shipping on orders of $70 or more shipped to Canada through Wednesday, December 31, just click here and use promo code SHIPCAN70.

Interested in booking a Disney Cruise? Just click on the image below and fill out the quote form to get more information from my friend, Jennifer Hardy at Destinations in Florida!