Today is my Aunt Jean’s 70th Birthday! Over the weekend, my dad threw her a birthday party in Connecticut. Yes, she was very surprised! For the last year, I’ve been working on a very special gift; a family photo book.

Aunt Jean is the queen of photos; she has a photo album for every decade going back decades! She requests an updated family photo from everyone annually. Whenever we’re all together, there she is, snapping away. While some of her photo taking is met with eye rolls, we all have come to appreciate her photography. Whenever we’re at her house, we go right for those photo albums to look back at some of our memories.

I swear, this photo bug is hereditary. My cousin, Jenn, and I inherited this family gene. Her 70th birthday gift had to be special. With my cousins spread out from Connecticut, to New York, to Florida, Texas, Idaho, and Hawaii, it’s been harder and harder to get family photos to Aunt Jean.

We Know How To Push Aunt Jean’s Buttons

Every summer, my entire family would head to White Lake in New Hampshire for camping. This was a place my dad and his family would go when they were kids. One summer, we were on our annual family camping trip at White Lake. Aunt Jean, for the millionth time, wanted to get a photo of the family. One of my uncles thought it would be funny to draw faces on paper plates, so the next time she wanted a photo, we would put up those faces. She gets so mad when we do not cooperate with her photo taking. It’s a lot of fun to mess with her and push her buttons. So when she asked for that photo, there we were with our paper plate faces.

For this photo book, I thought it would be appropriate to use these paper plate faces as the theme. Luckily, my cousin in Hawaii was getting married over the summer. Most of us were already making the trip out to Hawaii, so I only needed to plan one other trip to Texas.

This photo book was a huge success. We drew paper plate faces, successfully got families together and took some really great photos. Special shout out to my photo assistant, Fatima, and my mom for helping draw paper plate faces. I tried to find a photo book service that allowed full-page photos on the cover. My Apple calendars are a hit at Christmas, so I knew I had to use Apple’s photo book service for this project. I love the finished product!

Does anyone in your family take the cake as a shutterbug? Let us know in the comments below!