Terra Traditions creates some gorgeous, artisan-style, eco-friendly baby books. Their Baby’s Journey style is my favorite. Winner of the iParenting Media Award, this beautiful 11″ x 11″ linen book has room for 200 4″x6″ photos. There is a place to preserve every memory: the baby shower, the birth record, the family tree, and baby’s favorite toys, animals, and songs. A beautiful Angel Baby adorned with real Swarovski crystals graces the cover. The perfect record book for baby’s first three years, this makes a wonderful, thoughtful gift for a new mom. It sells for $79.95 and can be found in stores in California, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Florida, and Texas. To find a store near you, visit TerraTraditions.com.

Lil’ Grams is a recently launched website that creates modern, online baby books for busy parents. They promise to help parents organize baby’s most important moments and photos to share with family and friends. It helps parents by suggesting different “grams” to send out, including milestones baby might be doing at their current age, such as “babbles a few words repeatedly” and “shakes head to indicate ‘no’”. There is a tool to help upload photos to your grams as well. Parents control who sees each “gram,” ensuring privacy, unlike many websites. You can check it out for yourself at lilgrams.com, where a free trial is available, and plans start at just $29 for one year of service. In addition, UpscaleBaby readers can receive a 15% discount on plans using the code “UPSCALEBABY” .

This is a great idea for a future gift for your new baby, or as a gift to new parents. Writer Suzanne Loring has started A Storied Life, a company that writes personalized stories of events in one’s life, including the birth of a baby/baby’s first year of life, wedding stories, and anniversary stories. Each book is handmade, including the binding, so you can choose the color and style of the design. The book will be written based on Loring’s interviews with the person involved and family and friends. The descriptive story she creates serves as a keepsake and memory for years to come.

Books are priced based on size, starting at $295 per 18 pages. If you want more information about this unique, innovative idea, check out YourStoriedLife.com. Gift cards are also available, if you prefer to give your gift to someone and let him or her work with Loring directly to create a special book.

I haven’t been particularly pleased with either of the baby books that I have for my girls. I’m not in love with the way they look, or the way they are organized. Maybe that is why I just keep jotting things down on the calendar and telling myself I will get my notes transferred to the baby books one of these days! This has made me curious about what alternatives there are to these very traditional books. A little research reveals that one of the hottest baby books out there at the moment is this book made by Baby Feats. What makes this book unique is that it is made with a Baltic birch cover, which is available in pink, blue, yellow, or natural wood versions. It was featured on the CBS Early Show and is popular with celebrity parents, including Julia Roberts. While the outside of the book is innovative, the inside is fairly traditional, including pages for a family tree, and important firsts such as first bath, first picture, etc. Overall, this is a very sweet baby book, but it doesn’t wow me. You can buy one of these books for $60 at babybox.com.