Books

First Birthday Ideas: Personalized ABC Book

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In this post, you’re going to learn how to create a personalized ABC book for your child.

This DIY guide includes:

  • ideas for each letter of the alphabet
  • a simple process for taking, finding, and organizing children’s photos
  • an easy and manageable layout for a custom ABC book

So if you want to get the PERFECT gift for your child’s birthday, you’ll love this guide.

I made my child’s custom ABC book for their first birthday, but this project is perfect for any birthday or occasion. Toddlers are learning their letters, and older children appreciate the sentiment. A personalized ABC book is a thoughtful gift for any age.

Why I Made a Custom ABC Book

For me, that first birthday stress is what motivated me to complete this project. First birthdays are extremely special. I wanted to have a memento from my little one’s party to enjoy after the party was over. I debated over other cute ideas I found. Other options I considered were an everyone loves you book, a DIY family board book, or even a commissioned cartoon book. Finally, I decided on the ABCs because it’s a classic and easy way to share many pictures. This is how I made it work.

*FTC disclosure: Some of the links in this post are affiliate links, which means I may receive a commission for purchases made through my links. All opinions remain my own.

Personalized ABC Book how to guide

Timeline

First, I had this book made, printed, and shipped BEFORE the party. I know what you’re thinking. I don’t have time to pre-plan like that. But, I’m someone who is a known procrastinator. This was a huge accomplishment for me. If I can do it, you can too!

Having the book physically present at my little one’s party was important. I had all the birthday guests sign and write a little message inside the front and back cover. It is something that brings a smile to my face when I see it. I know my little one will appreciate it even more when she’s older.

Creating the book took some planning, but not as much as you would think. Seriously, you can do this.

Like many parents of a little one, I already had a LOT of pictures. I started on this project about two months before my child’s birthday. I spent about a month creating the book. After that I waited a week for the book to be printed and mailed.

This book was made through MixBook. They always have great deals. I got an 8.5 x 8.5″ Glossy Hardcover and find the size perfect for reading with my little one. I paid about $30 at the time, including shipping. It takes about 11 days (using standard shipping) to receive your book, so be sure to plan in advance! (My book arrived 7 days after ordering, but the site shipping averages are longer.) I found Mixbook’s online book creator easy to use. I was very happy with the quality of the printed book.

 

How to Brainstorm ABC Book Letter Ideas

Brainstorming ideas for each letter for your personalized ABC book is time-consuming. So, use my tips and list to make it easier.

First, I thought about words to use based on pictures I knew I already had or could easily take. This is how I came up with simple words like B for Bath or T for Toy.

Second, I brainstormed words that focused on teaching my child. Thinking about your kid’s learning makes coming up with letter ideas easier. ABC words can be:

  • Common verbs and nouns that help teach your child (eat, drink, book)
  • Names of colors
  • Types of animals
  • Family related words (sibling names, last name, pet names)
  • Favorite characters (Elmo, Daniel Tiger, Pete the Cat, Thomas the Train, you get the idea)

Using this method I jotted down a list of possible words for each letter.

 

Personalized ABC Book Letter Ideas

Here is my list of the word I used for each letter, along with extra ideas in parenthesis:

  • A is for Applesauce (airplane, avocado, aunt)
  • B is for Bellybutton (blanket, baby, bath, brother, ball, brush, bye-bye)
  • C is for Cat (crawling, car, cousins, cookie, crib)
  • D is for Daddy (dog, dinosaur, drawing, dancing)
  • E is for Eat (exploring, eyes, elephant)
  • F is for Family (frog, flower, fish)
  • G is for Guitar (grandma & grandpa, go, green, giraffe)
  • H is for Hat (home, hair, help, hello,hug)
  • I is for Ice cream (ice, icky, inside)
  • J is for Jacket (juice, jumping, jars, jam, jogging)
  • K is for Kayak (kiss, kite, kicking, knocking, knot, kitchen)
  • L is for Lip (lion, love, licking, light)
  • M is for Mommy (mat, milk, monkey, moon)
  • N is for Nap (nose, nanny, nature)
  • O is for Outside (open, over, odor, ouch, okay)
  • P is for Plane (playing, puppy, pushing, please)
  • Q is for Quiet (quilt, quick, quack)
  • R is for Reading (red, rocking, riding, robot, river, rain)
  • S is for Smile (sister, swinging, sliding, shoe, sock, spaghetti, silly)
  • T is for Toes (train, throwing, thinking, towel, toy)
  • U is for Ukulele (uncle, underwear, unzip, upset)
  • V is for Vacation (velvet, vegetable, vacuum)
  • W is for Water (waving, watching, walking, wagon, window)
  • X is for Xylophone (x-ray – hopefully you have no use this word!)
  • Y is for Yawn (yard, yelling, yummy, yucky)
  • Z is for Zoo (zebra, zero, zigzag, zipper, zombie)

 

Photo Organizing System

I created a folder on my computer and I began filling it with pictures I wanted to include in the book (regardless of what letter it’d go with, I just WANTED that picture!). Easy peasy. I collected about 15 photos to start with. You can find 15 photos, easy!

At this point, I began renaming each photo file with the word I thought I could use for it. Now, this is where creativity comes into play. If I had any letter duplicates, I brainstormed an alternate letter word for that picture. Let me explain.

personalized alphabet book example page

My “N is for Nap” page is a good example of a pic I just HAD to have in the ABC book. When I looked at this pic, I could easily have included it on lots of other pages instead. It could have been “B is for Bow (or Bed)”, “C is for Crib”, “F is for Fox”, “Q is for Quilt”, or “S is for Sleep”.

For example, you can use choo-choo for train if you already have a “T”. Or, you can use water for bath if you already have “B” and need a “W” (which I did!). You get the idea.

You can also move pre-existing pictures to use with harder to find letters. I originally was going to use “yard” for my “outside” picture, but then I couldn’t find any “O” pictures. Stay with me now. It was much easier for me to find a “yawn” picture and move my “yard” picture to “outside”. (If you followed that, you’re on point. I had to reread it twice and I knew what I meant. Ha!)

At this point, you start to see what letters you are missing. Before taking new pictures, I searched for pictures on my phone. I tried to see if I already had something to match certain letters.

 

Stage Pictures to Fill in Missing Letters

After this process, I ended up having to take more pictures. I had no letter “x”! So I bought a xylophone second-hand just for this book…haha. Later, I let my daughter taste some “ice cream” so I’d have a letter “I” page. I did this to fill the remaining letter spots.

Staging photos at this point was easy. I only had a handful of letters that needed pictures for the book. I’m glad I didn’t start with trying to stage photos for every. single. letter. of the alphabet. It would have been too much.

 

Photo Layout Idea

example of a diy custom abc book layout

In actually creating the book, I kept the layout simple. Most pages featured one photo with the letter text underneath. I have a tendency to go overboard, so this kept the project manageable.

 

Custom ABC Book Title Idea

The title of the book can be based on your child’s first name, like “B is for Brennan”. Or you can name it based on your child’s last name. You can keep it simple and name it “ABC Book for [your child’s name]”.

 

Wrapping it Up

This idea is really versatile and would be age-appropriate (Hello ABC’s!) for any child in Kindergarten or younger. So, don’t fret if the first birthday is already come and gone. Of course, any age can appreciate an alphabet photo book!

I already have some other books in the works, but I love new ideas. What are your tips for a personalized ABC photo book?

If you are looking for other crafty ideas, check out the learning tower we made our daughter.

My Current Astrophotography Astronomy Setup

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This is a quick list of Equipment I have and what I want. I have yet to have the time to get any spectacular images yet, but I think I could get some good ones given some practice. This is mainly a list for myself, but in case anyone else is interested in what to get for starting out in astrophotography, here’s a reference point. My next post on this topic will likely be a description of how I plan to use this to take wicked pics of planets, nebulae, and hopefully some galaxies.

  • Meade LX-10 telescope with declination motor kit (no longer sold new, but check craigslist)
  • Hacked together arduino system for guidance
  • HD Webcam for guidance and tracking
  • Green laser pointer for pointing at stars and such to make show people what I’m talking about (pointing into the sky with your finger is useless…) Make sure there are NO aircraft in your entire field of view before using this! While they don’t make the exact one I have anymore, this one seems to be the closest I can find.
  • I have a set of spirit (bubble) levels. I like using the T-type level to level my tripod and the top of my tube when polar aligning, and I use a torpedo level to level my forks. I got all of mine at a discount hardware store and all together they costs like $8, and this included a line set level.
  • Meade 1.25″ diagonal prism
  • 26mm plossi lens
  • 2x barlow lens
  • Extension tube (Mine’s a meade, but they don’t seem to make them anymore)
  • Canon T-ring for my friend’s 5D
  • Nikon T-ring for my Fuji and Nikon
  • The book Nightwatch: A practical guide to viewing the Universe. I literally keep this in my telescope bag and bring it with me everywhere I go!
  • My Red head lamp is priceless out in the field! I love the ability to flip it up and down when I’m using it. Be aware though because it turns the white LED on first, the second time you push the button it turns on the red LEDs so hold your hand over it until the red LEDs come on to save your nightvision.
  • A must-have is this wireless shutter-release for my Nikon. It uses radio, not IR so I can literally be inside my car or house and set the thing to take an image. This is great for winter nights. It has other modes on it as well.
  • You can also use an android or iOS app called DSLRDashboard which controls your DSLR via a tablet or phone. It gives you control of pretty much all the camera settings (except manual settings such as the autofocus switches on the lenses) from a tablet or cell phone. With this, you’ll simply need a USB “On The Go” OTG cable and your camera’s USB cable. The OTG cable allows you to plug devices such as cameras, keyboards, mice, flash drives, etc. into your tablet or phone. I prefer using the 90-degree cables to keep all the cables clean and out of the way.
  • Though, I’ve really been considering getting this wireless adapter for my Nikon because it will replace the wired setup mentioned above. This will be mainly for if it is too cold for comfort.
    When I’m roughing it, and my wife won’t let me use the Nikon, I use my old Fuji DSLR. I have my manual cable release for it so I can do long exposures the old-fashioned way.
    My low-cost DIY Dew Sheild.
  • And since I mentioned it, my telescope bag didn’t cost me much.

My next purchases:

Book Review: “Hot Seat” by Dan Shapiro

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Since we placed an order for the GlowForge laser cutter (more on this in another post), we got a pre-released copy of the Dan Shapiro’s upcoming book on Startups and Entrepreneurship “Hot Seat  The Startup CEO Guidebook” Dan is the CEO of Glowforge and has a string of successful startups behind him such as Ontela (now Photobucket), Sparkbuy which he sold to Google, and Robot Turtles which is a board game designed to teach children as young as 4 years old about programming and logical thinking which he did as a kickstarter and which is now available in Target stores.

“Hot Seat” is basically a cheatsheet on startups broken into 5 parts. Founding, Funding, Leadership, Management, and Endgame. Dan explains his history and cites specific people and examples of practices that will help you navigate the dark waters of a startup.  The first section of the book is all about Founding. There are some great tips here I wish I used in my previous business ventures. Founding is a dirty and scary thing for every startup. You want to think about contingencies from the start. Dan recommends to do this before you even incorporate.

In the first section of the book, Dan gives advice on everything from who should be a cofounder to even providing a template for a decision matrix on what projects your startup should focus on. He also gives great examples of how shares might be calculated for different types of cofounders, answering the question of “How much is each cofounder really worth?”.  These kinds of things are what make this book awesome. Dan also freely gives advice that I’m sure he learned the hard way. Some of this advice is common sense, but there are plenty of gems you’d only learn from a good mentor.

Each section has several chapters in it. Again, the information comes straight from Dan’s personal experience. For the Funding section, there are slides directly from the pitch deck of some of Dan’s successful ventures.  He breaks down what to put on each slide, and how to best present it. Arguably, this could be considered style more than anything else, but with a record such as his, and the fact that he now is an investor in other startups I’m going to go out on a limb and say it’s more than just style. There ae several other chapters in the funding section that explain the differences between different types of investors and what each of their motivations are, which is what you need to keep in mind if you are pitching ideas to them.

In the Leadership section, he discusses the different duties of a CEO, and how to cultivate a good company culture. I think anyone applying for a new job or even considering changing jobs would find this section interesting because you can tell a lot about how day-to-day interactions reflect the culture. The CEO is the taproot of the company’s culture and is the archetype all the other management will follow. It says a lot about a company if everyone is constantly gossiping…

While I’m not a CEO right now, I am in a newer management position at my full-time gig. I found the management section of this book very helpful. I’ve memorized some of it as one-liners that I can repeat to myself to help me learn this new set of skills. My favorite and most obviously useful advice in this section was on “playing the CEO ‘Inspire’ card”. This section also gives great general tips on hiring, whether you should buy or lease furniture, how to deal with a board of directors.

The final part of this book discusses the Endgame. What are the different types of acquisitions? Who do you negotiate with?  It stresses how important it is to have done things correctly and thoroughly from the beginning of the startup.  Technically, the entire goal of any startup is to either be bought or to reach critical mass and go “Google” on the market and end up buying other startups. Either way it is important to know what to expect. Dan gives the example from his previous company Sparkbuy’s acquisition by Google and breaks down the different parties involved and somewhat what to expect in negotiations.

Overall, I really enjoyed Dan’s book. It gave more gritty details than any of the other books on buiness and startups I’ve read. The devil is in the details and while this book stops short of giving you legal advice, you get insights on how things are supposed to work.  Personally, it reaffirmed my intuitions on getting a business started correctly and having contracts in place for the “big day”; be it an exit, acquisition, or other huge event for you or the company. The book will be available in paperback May 2015 and

Book Review: Ready Player One

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Ready Player One came out in 2011. I had heard great things about it and finally decided to check it out. I’m pretty stingy with my book choices and it is a best seller that has 4.5 stars on Amazon with more than 8,500 reviews and 4.31 rating with over 233,000 ratings and 33,000 reviews on goodReads.

Ready Player One starts out very promising with a good post-apocolyptic cyber-punkish feel set in the year 2044. But it quickly turns into an episode of MTV’s “I love the 80s”. You can’t get 3 sentences without the author name-dropping some 80’s cartoon/movie/actor/band/song.

Synopsis (no spoils):

The premise of the story is that there was a game designer from the 1980s who creates the best gaming system in the world over the next few decades. It is an entire virtual universe. People connect to this virtual universe (called the OASIS) using virtual reality goggles and haptic feedback sensors such as gloves or a body suit. Different worlds seem to be massively multiplayer games that have all the best parts of all the popular PC games such as The Sims, Spore, World of Warcraft, etc.

The creator of this system filled it with 1980s memorabilia. Entire planets are designed to look and feel exactly like the player is re-living the 1980s. The creator has died (being 70-something years old in 2044…) but he hid a special easteregg in the OASIS system. All the players are trying to find it because it will give you control of the entire system. The system is worth billions of dollars. As this is a dystopian novel there’s an evil supercorporation also vying for the easter egg.

That’s all I can say without giving too much away, but what I take issue with is the focus on the 1980s. With more focus on the story or the characters, this could be a great book but instead it’s about 50 pages of story and about 320 pages of 80s references.

Do you remember the 80s? It sucked. The music, the clothing styles, the color schemes used on everything… gah. I’m reminded of it every time I see some hipster doofus with skinny jeans or listen to the radio nowadays. I think of the 80s as almost like the dark ages of style… except you can’t call it the dark ages… maybe the NEON ages. This book simply panders to hipsters that like saying “Hey man, remember Cyndi Lauper’s “Time after Time”? Remember Wham and Devo? Remember the TRS-80 computer? Remember Galaga arcade games? Remember the Goonies? Weren’t those things just the best!?” (This is not hyperbole. These are just a few of the hundreds of needless 80s references, practically 2 per page in the 350+ page book!)

Now I’m all for 80s video games. I’m not a gamer but I appreciate the art and the ingenuity of games. In fact, I prefer some of the 80s era video games over games nowadays because of the programming tricks that were involved to get certain features out of the very limited hardware.  The programmers had to be very clever to even get some systems to draw full screen color graphics. Nowadays, no one thinks much about that kind of thing because every system has gigabytes of RAM, GPUs that can handle all sorts of crazy 3D rendering and multicore processors. While there is certainly amazing work done nowadays, I feel that the 80s were a special time in video game history that should be appreciated. Unfortunately the way this was done in Ready Player One left a bad taste in my mouth.

I’ve heard they are making a movie out of this book. I admit while reading it, I could easily see it as a movie, but this is mainly because this movie has already been made. There’s nothing novel here whatsoever. If you take some random distopian/cyber punk 80s movies, add a dash of video game story lines from over the last 30 years, and a pinch of Hackers (from the mid 90s), mix them all together, you get this movie. I was much more interested in the book/movie The Martian by Andy and hopefully they will make a movie of Wool (the Silo Series) by Hugh Howey which came out around the same time but is much better.

All together I give it a 2 out of 5 rating based on the story itself and for wasting my time with all the reminders of a horrible decade for style (since for some reason I did read the whole book).

</rant>

Appendix:

At random, I flipped to a page in the book (page 106). Here are the references for just that one page. Mind you, this book is set in the year 2044:

  • Dungeons of Daggorath
  • Vector-graphics
  • cassette decks (in this case being used to upload a computer game)
  • Conan the Barbarian
  • Ladyhawke
  • Wizards (I’m counting this because of the context and all sorts of games/movies in the 80s had wizards in them)
  • Dot matrix printer
  • WarGames (the movie)