The human memory is a funny thing. We overestimate our ability to remember the moments of our lives — even the most special ones — and confirm the adage that “the days are long but the years are short.” Fortunately, we can tie our memories to photos. Each one has the magical power to evoke a time, place, person, experience, or feeling. Enhance and harness that magic by creating a photo book to keep as a memento, commemorate a milestone, or give as a gift.

The creating, giving, and receiving of a photo book are all wonderful, emotional experiences. Plus, one of the best things about creating photo book gifts on Mixbook is that you can do it in minutes, with just a few clicks of a mouse or taps on a screen. Everything you need is already at your fingertips!

The Best of the Old and New Technology

Photo books aren’t new. They used to be called photo albums and feature printed photos pasted under sheets of transparent film. You might even have some on your shelves right now. So, they’re not a new concept, but family photo books are a major improvement in terms of ease of use, quality, and versatility.

With digital photography, social media, and cloud storage such as Google Photos, we typically have thousands of photos to choose from as well as the option to edit out imperfections. The Mixbook mobile app and online interface allow for countless editing, formatting, and theme options, all with zero learning curves.

You can scan in those old photos stored in a shoebox, include scrapbook-type elements such as scanned kids’ art or a wedding invitation, and add text for captions, quotes, and notes about little details that could otherwise be forgotten. A photo book is more than an album. It’s part album, part scrapbook, part diary, or part baby book. You can make it a vacation photo book, recipe book or a yearbook. There are truly no limits on your creativity!

Professional printing and beautiful themes ensure your photo books are of the highest quality, indistinguishable from a fancy coffee-table book you might buy at a store. This is one of the top reasons to create a photo book — the unrivaled emotional experience of holding something tangible in your hands. Scrolling through your phone or going through files on the computer screen simply doesn't compare to looking at real-life photos in print. This is just as true for the youngest members in your family as it is their great-grandparents. (It’s also the reason family photo books make such excellent gifts.)

Get Photos Out of the Cloud

Digital photography, cloud storage, and social media are all amazing inventions that were unimaginable just a few decades ago. The ability to take and store thousands of photos means you can capture so many memories and keep them forever. The drawback, though, is that they often just stay in the cloud or disappear into the archives of your social media feeds. By creating a photo book, you can highlight the best of those memories and hold them in your hands. Your best photos are so much easier to find and enjoy when you can flip through a beautiful book, rather than scroll through endless files.

Watching Children Grow

It’s common for relatives to exclaim, “Look how much you’ve grown!” to kids, even if they saw them just a few months ago. Children really do grow and develop remarkably quickly, but the sheer speed of it all is easily unnoticed by parents in the thick of day-to-day parenting. When your 2-year-old’s obsession with penguins dominates your life, it’s hard to imagine you’ll ever forget all about it. But you will… unless it’s captured in a photo book to celebrate that time in your lives.

Photo books featuring kids are among the most popular Mixbook creations. They’re a wonderful way to capture all those sweet and silly moments, phases, and milestones. Make kid-focused photo books an annual project, starting with a baby book and continuing through the years as they grow. These kinds of photo book gifts are ideal for grandparents, aunts and uncles, and other relatives.

Creating an Annual Tradition

Annual photo books are a perfect project and gift idea for all families, not just those with young children. There are 365 days in a year, and there's a good chance you took some great photos on many of those days! Whether it was a big year for you with lots of changes or pleasantly unremarkable, it’s always worth celebrating in a photo book. Gifting photo books is a fantastic annual tradition as well. How about a grandkids-themed photo book for Grandma's birthday present, or a year-in-review book for the whole family every New Year?

The options for annual photo books are endless. You could dedicate two pages to each month, pick seasonal themes, or showcase events like holidays and birthdays. Or just let Mixbook’s Automagic Story Creation tool do all the work for you. It automatically organizes your favorite memories and instantly transforms them into a photo book. Make it an annual tradition to make a photo book for the year, and start lining up the years of memories on a bookshelf — you'll be able to return to those times whenever you desire.

Immortalizing Major Milestones

Any milestone worth celebrating is a good reason to create a photo book. Weddings, engagements, births, baptisms, graduations, retirements, and all life’s major events lend themselves to heirloom-worthy photo books. You could also compile multiple generations of milestones into a family history book.

Remember, you make your own milestones. Maybe you brought a new pet into the family and want to bring together all those adorable photos. Perhaps you played a part in a community theater play and lived out your dream of stardom, or the old family minivan finally went to the scrapyard, and you’re creating a photo book themed around its road trips. Whatever event is personally meaningful to you can inspire a photo book.

Remembering Fun Vacations

Vacations are prime photo-taking time. The scenery, fun activities, photogenic vacation outfits, and smiling faces all make vacation photos the stars of our photo feeds. The best of these photos are an excellent choice for a travel photo book. Add captions to remember details and vacation highlights while they’re still fresh in your mind. If your family has a vacation tradition of returning to the same destination, these vacation photo books can become a whole series.

Ready to Make a Photo Book?

Creating a photo book, whether for yourself or as a gift, is quick, easy, and rewarding. They're sentimental, fun to create, and fit almost every occasion! You could spend a delightful few hours going through your photos, selecting the best of the best, and tinkering with themes and layouts. Or, use Mixbook's handy tools and features to help you create a beautiful photo book in a matter of minutes. Get started on your next photo book at Mixbook.com.