Two more weeks and the pace of life will slow down a bit.  I must say this spring has reached a whole new level of craziness – I feel like I wake up first thing and crank up the engine and plow through non-stop – until I realize that it’s 11PM and I’m exhausted.

Anyhow, I’m not here to complain but thought I’d share some learnings I had as I was working on the year end lacrosse photographs, captain and coaches gifts for my son’s team.  In today’s age, there are so many options for printing and using photographs – it can be overwhelming.  I browsed all the traditional sites like Shutterfly and Snapfish, but ended up thinking that I could probably do the best price-wise at either Wal-Mart or Costco.  (Although you can get great deals at Shutterfly, Snapfish, etc. when they’re running specials).

So if you’re looking for the most inexpensive hassle-free way to get many pictures reproduced (in my case 5 x 7s) – Costco is my recommendation.  I originally went through Wal-Mart online, and fifty of the pictures they sent to me were printed wrong.  So then I went off to the store to try to remedy the situation – we were able to fix one set of 25, but not the other.  Then I was told to have more produced I’d have to pay the rush fees (as my deadline for needing them was 3 days away).  Then off to the customer service counter to return the bad ones for a credit, upon which time I was told that I had to do it online, after I had been told that I could do it in store.  So, never having been a huge fan of Wal-Mart, the store has dropped down a few more levels in my book.

So I ran home, uploaded my photo to the Costco site, specified pick up at my local store, and 2 hours later they were waiting for me, printed correctly, and 20 cents cheaper per print than Wal-Mart.

Now for my second discovery during this photo process (this discovery is more fun).  I needed to find a site that would allow me to put titles on the photos I was printing.  My daughter pointed me to picnik.com - a very fun and easy to use site with a great selection of fonts and styles.  Some of their styles/formats/borders do require a fee, but everything I did was free, and I was very pleased with it.  Interestingly enough, Google just bought this company.

So….Costco and picnik.com – next year this job will be much easier as I’ve gone through the journey and learned my lessons.