Photos are one of my favorite things, literally! Capturing memories and moments fills my heart and feeds my soul. I love a photo that sparks a memory and emotion. There’s just something so magical about life captured.

Over my life time so far I am certain I have taken hundreds of thousands of photos. I’ve been carrying a digital camera with me since I can remember and back in the days of film, I remember taking nearly 100 rolls of photos from a family trip to Seattle. Capturing moments has been a part of who I am since I started becoming me. I love a great photo of a location visited, a group photo of memories with friends, an emotion captured spontaneously. To me, photos capturing moments allow me to step back in time and see & feel all the moments of my life.

It’s beyond tangible, it truly is emotional. Seeing a smile with laughter that fill the eyes. The scrunch of nose. Awe captured. Joy captured. Sometimes, even sadness captured. All of these moments caught in a camera to be saved and seen again.

These days with digital being the way in which our lives exist, having most of our memories documented on social channels like Facebook and Instagram, photos seem less and less prevalent. We are in the habit of capturing snippets of life for a 24 hour period. But, let’s be honest, magical moments don’t end up printed in photo albums like they used to. Where taking photos has become something of everyday culture, actually having tangible memories like a photograph printed seems to be a long gone practice. I recently did a massive purge of my printed photo boxes (still regretting that deeply) and lost a good chunk of memories of my life in one fell swoop of cleaning and purging (captured memories from age 15 through age 24 gone).

Nowadays I vow to not only capture moments, but to also ensure those memories are documented in family photo albums. There are a few magical photos that make it onto our walls and are framed for viewing again and again throughout our house. More importantly, those photos that just capture a quick moment; a first day of school, a musical performance, another birthday party – these moments are not only being captured, but also being printed in photo albums for our family to reference time and time again.

My go to source for all things photo books and photo printing is Mixbook!

Mixbook is incredible. First things first, where I may use Mixbook for photo book creations they have so much more to offer. One can create a photo book, or one can get lost in creating magic – cards, calendars, home decor or a standard photo prints. All things photo needs are covered with Mixbook. Creating isn’t often cheap, but making memories will last a lifetime. Another incredible benefit of Mixbook is their offers and deals, they are always offering something by way of inspiring creativity and motivating one to print that book or photo.

Back to the books… I have a long list of photo books I want to create and complete. I may never actually get caught up. Each quarter I dedicate time to one of the books on my list with the hopes of creating and printing. To date I have completed 5 travel books and 1 photo book for our high school graduate. In the works I have a family cookbook to create (with three girls, a cookbook to start life on their own would be a magical way to revisit home while on their own), a handful of other trips to document (Michigan + Mackinaw Island, London, Paris, Madrid, Hawaii + more), our wedding day and I have a goal to create a yearbook of each year of the Doodle’s life (getting the photos off of Facebook and into her very own photo book). So many photos and memories stuck in phones, on computers and in hard drives, it’s time to bring them to life.

Mixbook has made creating part of the magic. All of the unique book themes allow for every single type of book one can even imagine to be created. Within each unique photo book theme there are unique page layouts, backgrounds and stickers that compliment the theme and allow for a completely customizable book that is styled like a scrapbook, but created like a yearbook / photo album.

For all of its beauty and benefits, I must be honest and say that there are a few areas of improvement for Mixbook to consider. When creating a book within a theme there are unique fonts and stickers that those fonts are applied to (sayings if you will). Those fonts and stickers are not customizable. However, those phrases may not apply to your book or your style of communication and therefore are simply deleted, versus, being customizable and therefore edited to match your style and communication. It’s a little thing, but I’ve noticed that I often want to change the sticker phrases out the font is not available to use to create my own and a wider variety of phrases is not provided. Adding more fonts may be the ideal solution, but it hasn’t stopped me from creating yet!

I love our Mixbook photo book collection (and love that it is continually growing larger) and all the unique creations I have made for our family. I love that for each trip we have taken I have created a new themed album. Our girls spend hours just going through the books, laughing at memories, asking stories about themselves and longing to be reminded of moments in their lives. I love that a good photo book can bring so much joy to a person and make someone feel so loved. That a good photo book can capture a moment in someones life and remind us of our best memories.

*** Please note: I am not being compensated for my opinions or for sharing Mixbook. I am sharing Mixbook because I love it so much and want to share the things I love with you. ***