I have fond childhood memories of opening up family photo albums and learning about my family history. Whether I was flipping through my parent’s wedding albums as a young child or looking at my baby pictures later in life, I loved reflecting on these photos and discussing them with my parents and siblings.

Even today, when my family visits my parent’s house, my kids spend time looking at these photo albums and digging through shoeboxes filled with family photos to see what my life was like as a kid. We spend time sharing funny stories or giggling at those awkward photos of Mom when she was a teen.

Photos are a great conversation starter for my kids, helping them learn about their family’s past or reminisce about their own life. Our family includes three kids busy with plenty of activities and events, which means we have a life well-documented in photos.

Finding a Solution for Our Digital Photos

Most of these photos are captured on my smartphone's camera roll, and I needed a better way to document these memorable family moments. While it's great to have all of these photos accessible with the swipe of a finger for easy viewing, they're otherwise left 'locked' in the cloud.

It was time for me to look for a better way to store and showcase these photos. While I have a few canvas prints featuring my kids as babies and toddlers, I wanted to find a way to display more recent photos, too. And let's be honest — at this point, I have thousands of photos saved in the cloud that needed to be organized.

Printing digital photos and organizing them into albums seemed like a cumbersome task. So, I needed another option. I decided to start by preserving my favorite snaps from the last year in a Mixbook photo book — and I couldn't be happier with how my family year-in-review photo book turned out.

To start, I explored Mixbooks handy guide on how to create a photo book to learn some design tips before looking at the available year in review photo book designs. It didn't take long to find one I loved: the Black and White Editorial Year-in-Review photo book.

The sleek design, versatile page layouts, and creative font and sticker options allowed me to design a photo book that my family will cherish for years. It was a refreshing, modern take on the traditional photo album, and I was ready to dive into the details, including photo selection, page layout, and caption writing.

Telling Our Family Story

The photos I capture of my kids throughout the year tell our family’s story. Some of these photos are planned, whether they’re professional family photos taken in our favorite park or my kids’ school pictures for their yearbooks. But, so many of my favorite photos are candid shots that capture everyday moments: my kids playing together in the backyard, my oldest reading a book to her younger siblings, or our dog making everyone laugh.

So, I designed this year-in-review photo book to showcase this diverse collection of photos. I wanted to celebrate all of life’s moments, big and small. Creating a book that featured our most polished pictures along with those silly snapshots allowed me to showcase each child’s personality in a unique way.

Bringing Our Story to Life

I’m a writer, so I wanted to develop a book that showcased photos alongside text that helped to capture our year, so I loved being able to add text to my photo book pages. Whether I drafted short captions noting my kids’ achievements, using these creative caption ideas, or longer paragraphs describing the highlights of our year, this text added dimension and meaning to our year-in-review photo book.

When I think back on a year, I like to imagine it in seasons—not just by the time of year but by the milestone events that shaped us as a family. I enjoy reflecting on these seasons as time passes, and I was grateful to share these feelings of pride, joy, and happiness on the pages of our photo book.

Writing about milestones like my daughter's 5th-grade graduation or our fun-filled summer vacation to Florida brings the photos to life. Plus, adding details about my kids' funny interactions or silly quirks allowed me to preserve this moment of their childhood.

The addition of detailed text will be especially important as the years pass by. Our memories might fade over time; these descriptions will refresh those memories simply by opening the book.

Even more, the photo book design process allowed me to set time aside to reflect on our year, our most significant accomplishments, the challenges we overcame, and the fun we had. It was truly a gift to simply sit down and spend time designing the book and reflecting on my favorite moments from the past year.

Making Our Photo Book a Family Project

This photo book was my first Mixbook project, but it certainly won’t be my last. I hope that these photo books will become a family tradition, a project that we look forward to completing every year. And if this project was any indication, my kids are interested in helping out with the next one.

As I designed this photo book, my youngest daughter pulled up a chair beside me to help pick out her favorite photos. My older kids were interested in the design as well and wanted to flip through the pages on my computer even before I was finished designing them. We worked together to decide how to perfect our page layouts.

Next time, I'll incorporate my kids in the design process even more, letting them contribute their photos, add stickers, or lay out the pages. What a wonderful opportunity to rediscover my favorite photos and memories from previous years — all while working alongside my kids.

Looking ahead, I can see our family designing photo books that capture milestones in their life. In standalone photo books, we could feature big events, such as graduations, birthday parties, and family vacations. Or, I can make a year-in-review photo book for each child as a birthday gift.

A few years from now, I can see a stack of these beautifully designed Mixbook photo books sitting on my coffee table so that my kids can flip through them whenever they want. Perhaps someday, they'll even show them to their grandchildren and reflect on their favorite childhood memories.