Growing up, my mom was great at making scrapbooks for each one of us kids. She would go away for almost a whole week every year with a bunch of other ladies, rent a cabin and they would just scrapbook all day and all night. She’s super creative & her scrapbook spreads were all sorts of beautiful & fun, all themed with whatever that spread was about. I love looking back on them now & I want the same for my kids, but I don’t have hours & hours and days & days to work on them. Plus, I’m much more of a digital person anyways, so designing them on the computer just seemed much more up my alley.

Our first year married, I knew I wanted to do something to document our year & get those photos off of my phone & computer. Even though it was just the two of us, we did some fun things that I wanted to remember! So I went on the hunt to find a place I could design one & have it printed. I found one that seemed to have great reviews, and was super affordable. As a newly married couple, that was super appealing. Well after getting it, I decided that I probably should’ve spent a little more money because I was just not impressed with the print quality of the photos, and as a photographer, that’s super important to me. So I vowed to do more research the next year & get a good one. That’s when I discovered Mixbook! I love them & haven’t gone back since! I just got back our third yearbook from them & am impressed every time!

Two Birds, One Stone

The year Henley was born, I decided to not only order a book for our family, but also one for her to have one day. So I choose to order a large 8.5x11“ book with Layflat pages so I’m not worried about kids tearing them as they are looked through. And then I order another identical 8”x6” book for each child, that I will give to them when they move out or get married one day. This eases my mom guilt of not providing them with their own personalized scrapbook, without any extra fuss or work after putting together the family album. So far I’ve only had to order one of those small books, but this next year I’ll order two as we’ll add another little one to the family!

I will also add, the Layflat pages are more expensive than normal pages, but they are WORTH IT if you have young kids! I want these books to be on a bookshelf where my kids can go grab them and flip through them whenever they want. I don’t want them to be something that they can only look at when Mom or Dad is sitting with them, to make sure they don’t tear our memories in half, as kids do. So the extra cost is hands down worth it to me & I will always splurge for it. But if you are worried about cost, then you definitely don’t have to! I don’t get the Layflat pages in the smaller books, because they won’t be kids when they get them, & I want them to be small enough that they are easy to store, especially because they’ll have 18+ of them by then. Do what works for you!

Do it as you go

You can totally wait to do them until the end of the year, but I promise you, it will be way less intimidating if you chip away at it as the year progresses. This is the method that I use to organize & design them, but you do you! This is just what has worked really well for me!

At the beginning of each year, I create a new album on my phone titled “2022 Yearbook” or something similar. Then I will make it a shared album with my husband, so if my phone takes a dip in a lake & is toast, then he still has access to them. Every once in a while, when I have time sitting waiting for grocery pickup, in a waiting room, or just bored in the evening, I will go through my camera roll & add my favorite photos to that album. Not all of these will go in the book, but it’s way easier to sift through a couple hundred photos than thousands.

I also go into Mixbook and create a new book for the year. If I did one the year before, then I’ll just make a copy of it & delete all the photos, leaving the formatting that I want to stay consistent through the years(cover design, back of book, etc.). I also choose the Blank Canvas design option and keep it simple, but there are so many cute designs as well!

As I add photos to my album, I can then open the Mixbook app and upload them right to my book! I like to do this after I’ve edited the ones that I want to use, but if you don’t want to edit them, then just upload them right away!

I also have a decent amount of photos that I take with my nice camera that get edited on my computer. As soon as I edit them & save them to my hard drive, I also immediately upload them to the Mixbook website so I don’t even have to think twice about it.

I prefer to design the book on my computer, but you can definitely do it on your phone too! When I have spare time, I will sit down and open the book design, and start organizing the photos I want to use. I choose to organize mine by month, and then events within the month if there were any. But you can do it however you want! This step saves a lot of time at the end of the year!

Finalizing

In January, I will finish uploading Christmas and any other photos I have, and then get to finalizing it. A few things I like to do are list everyone’s names on the inside cover along with the year, and at the end of the book, I add our family photo from last year and then this year’s to see how our family has grown and changed in the last year. I will also go through Jarin, my husband’s camera roll to see if there’s any photos he has that I want to include. If your spouse takes a lot of photos, you can totally tell them to upload their favorites to the shared album. Mine doesn’t take many, so there’s usually just a few that I will find that I want. I will upload them and add them in wherever they fit.

Then I’ll go through the entire book from the beginning of the year & tweak things that I notice like photos not centered, typos, multiples of the same photos, etc.

Ordering

At this point, I could order it and have it in a week! But I like to make my dollar go as far as possible, and I don’t really need it in hand by the middle of January, so I like to wait for a good sale. Mixbook always has deals & discounts available. It’s like Hobby Lobby, you just don’t ever pay full price if you can help it! The highest code I’ve ever seen is 55% off, but I’ve only seen it a couple times. So I wait until I see a 50% off code, which happens pretty often if you’re patient.

I became an affiliate for them recently, just so I can have access to the codes that they don’t advertise, no shame! As of the time of writing this post(Feb 2022), the best code is MEMORIES22A for 50% off orders of $149 or more or 35% off orders less than that(expires April 2, 2022). But if you’re reading this later, I’ll try to keep it updated on my Links & Codes page for you!

OR, if you are a new customer, sign up with this link & get 45% off plus free shipping with code NEWMEMORIESA.

OR, get $25 off plus free shipping using this link! I think you may have to be a new customer to use this, but not positive, so check it out if that is the best deal for you!

There is also a tab on the website titled “Deals” that has their current offers. Be sure to check that to see if there isn’t something better!

Cash Back

Then on top of the discount code, I also get a little cash back if I open the Mixbook website right before ordering with the iBotta or Rakuten app or website. Both of these sites are awesome at getting you cash back on online purchases you’re already making!

If you sign up with Rakuten using this link, then after your first $30 purchase, we both get $30 in cash back. Talk about a no brainer!

Final Cost

Before starting projects like this, I’m always curious what I’m going to spend at the end. So I’m going to totally break down what I paid this year so you know what to expect! I promise it looks like a ridiculous amount, but remember that you’re going to use a code to break it in half! You also won’t spend as much as I do if you don’t add so many pages. They come with 20 included pages, and this year’s book was 43, so I over doubled the amount in mine.

11x8.5” Book: $44.99

Add 23 Pages: +$41.17 ($1.79/page)

Upgrade to Premium Matte Layflat Pages: +$68.10

Total Before Discount: $154.26

8x6” Book: $34.99

Add 23 Pages: +$18.17 ($0.79/page)

Total Before Discount: $53.16

Both Books: $207.42

Code MEMORIES22A: -$103.73

Shipping: +$14.98

Tax: +$11.99

TOTAL: $130.66

It’s not a “cheap” thing by any means, but the quality of the books and memories that they are documenting are absolutely worth it to me and my family! We love sitting down & pulling these out to look through. And I know that as Henley and our other kids grow & get older, they will love looking back at themselves & our family when they were younger. Photos are so important. Please keep taking them. And then have them printed. Whether in a book like this, or in a photo album, or on the wall. Just print them, please! I promise you won’t regret it!

Whenever I pull out our books, the whole family can’t help but look through them and remember all those fun and everyday moments. You don’t realize how fast your kids are growing up until you look at photos taken just a year ago and realize that they are a totally different little human now than they were then. Keep taking those photos, and get them printed!