Photo Love {+ printing from Instagram}

I’ve realized recently that just about every great moment of our life over the last year or two has been captured on Instagram. I think it has officially become an affliction. Can’t. Stop. Filtering.

So, I have waxed poetic before about how much I love Walgreens and, in particular, the mobile app – especially for photos! However, I’m going to do it again. But listen up! You have got to check it out.

You know how we used to rush in with our rolls of film and then waste time for an hour waiting on photos to be ready? And oh, the rage if they were delayed or we had to use next day printing.

In the midst of everyone else being put out with the U.S. Postal Service, I’ve always been stunned at the bargain of a stamp. Really. I can give you two quarters, and you will take this note across the United States for me? Amazing!

I’m similarly shocked by the incredible ease of online printing these days. Yes, I am apparently a relic of some bygone generation, prone to sheer delight with every tiny advancement.

So, you can imagine my delight with the Walgreens Mobile App.

Honestly, before it was available, my family photography was a little embarrassing. It was the equivalent of the mom who makes an intricately designed scrapbook for her firstborn and nothing for subsequent children. I had lovely, leather-bound, chronological photo albums depicting every waking moment of our older daughter’s life, every step, every ringlet. I have ample photos of my youngest daughter, but apparently around the debut of the iPhone and my transition from carrying a camera to taking iPhone pictures, I stopped printing them. Meaning, years of photo albums simply ended with the year 2008.

Walgreens to the rescue!

I’ve been dutifully printing right from my phone and iPad, often in the car on the way home from a trip. I’ve made progress going back and printing The Missing Years (circa 2008 to 2012). And, I’m also convinced the Walgreens app will make me a better human being by inspiring me to send more timely birthday cards and thank you notes.

Our oldest just spent two weeks at grandparent camp (a story for another day), so I hopped on the Walgreens app to print from Instagram, turning some of the photos from her stay into a 5×7 card she can use to write her thank you notes for guitar lessons with Granddad.

Best of all, I think, is the printing from Facebook and Instagram. As I increasingly record every step of our lives on Instagram, I can now just link it to the Walgreens app to print those lovely filtered and oh-so-photojournalistic moments. Obviously, there are lots of printing services for Instagram out there that everyone is very fond of, and I bet they are lovely – but I am not a patient variety of human and do not want to wait for photos to arrive in my mailbox. Nothing beats capturing the insta-moment and driving twelve blocks to get the print from Instagram an hour later.

I also realized the sheer number of photos that other people have taken and tagged us in on Facebook – I may have seen them when they were posted, but then they disappeared from my mind and didn’t make it into the end-of-year photo book I now print for our family. Thanks to scrolling some of my Facebook pictures from the Walgreens app, I caught this gem of Sophie that a friend captured during the last soccer season:

Say all you like about the genius of storing photos in the cloud – which I do, and I agree it is genius… no more arcane times where decades of photos are lost due to a damaged cardboard box of negatives or a missing roll of film.

However, it’s hard to beat the cuteness of my girls snuggled up on the couch thumbing through a photo album together. And, just as my dad would say consolingly to my younger sister regarding his not-quite-getting-around to adding her to his will – “Your sister will take care of you.” *Cough* – I hear my oldest explain to the youngest “Don’t worry. Mommy took pictures of you when you were a baby too.”

Better send them to Walgreens for printing. Sigh.

Oh, AND: the very best part of all this photo printing fun was devouring some crafty photo ideas for gifts. I’d like to think I’m planning ahead for Christmas. Here’s a link to an incredible Pinterest board full of easy photo projects – I’ve got my eye on the photo transfers to marble, rocks and wood.

In the meantime, with my voracious reader entering fourth grade and a thought toward instilling confidence in her, I had to run with the idea of the proud look on her face in that photo above being one that I want her to see repeatedly for an instant confidence boost. So, I made her a nifty little bookmark with a quote from Goodreads (author: Gail Carson Levine, The Two Princesses of Bamarre:


Bonus: maybe it will keep her from always stealing my bookmarks. Would love to hear if you’ve tried the #WalgreensApp and how you’re using it!

All photos from this project are in my Google+ album!