As many of you who follow me on various social media platforms might have noticed, Jessey and I went on vacation to California in late November. We did an epic roadtrip from San Francisco, up through Napa Valley, over to Lake Tahoe, down highway 395, over to Big Sur, and then back up to San Francisco. Altogether, ten days of beauty and majesty and largess.

And — arguably one of the neatest aspects of it — I basically took my friends and family with us through the viewfinder of Instagram. When we returned to the east coast, our friends didn’t need a digest of our adventures, they could just comment freely on the epic images we brought them over the previous week and a half. It was great. Nobody asked “Oh, how was your vacation?” Everyone already knew: IT WAS AWESOME.

Then I had this great idea: Since I had accumulated all of these easy-to-access images, already uploaded to the interwebs, and since many services exist now that connect directly to Instagram and boast their skills at printing high-quality versions of those digital artifacts, why not make a book of it?

So I did.

I highly recommend blurb.com for all of your self-publishing needs. For around $70 with shipping, I was able to design, print, give and adore this high-quality keepsake of our journey. It took me a couple of hours to figure it out and get everything just right. I received the book in under two weeks (even though it was only a couple weeks before Christmas). And it was perfect. Such good quality, the prints look so nice, and it was so easy that I actually just did it and I am not still just talking about doing it.

And you can embed your photobook or share it via social networks. Here’s mine. Feel free to vicariously enjoy our California roadtrip vacation!