Our Family Yearbooks

Thank you buybuy BABY for sponsoring this post!

Several years ago I got the itch to make a yearbook of our year. I take SO many photos (guys, it is a bit unreal) and I hated the idea of them just sitting around on a hard drive never to be seen again. That was 2016. Then I made one for 2017 and I remember being SO sick while making it because I was in my first trimester with Hilde! Then 2018 and 2019 got put on the back burnners because I kept having babies! HAHA. Over quarantine I got our 2018 book ordered and I’m in the middle of 2019 just now.

At first we just sat them out on our coffee table but now with a toddler and a growing stack of yearbooks, I wanted to figure out a way to store them that made them still really easy to look through! Because that is the point! These books are meant to be enjoyed. In fact, Hilde loves to look at them and point out all the people she knows!

One day it just clicked – I needed to hang them on the wall! I wanted to find some floating shelves that would fit three of them across to make the most of the space and then I ordered three so that we could fit NINE years there before I had to make a new plan! I found these beautiful shelves on buybuy BABY and added them to my cart right away! When they arrived we hung them up and it was perfect!

I shared them in my stories and was flooded with questions about our yearbooks. So part two of this post is all about the books!

The books I order are Mixbook. The first time I made one I took one of the more simple layouts and made it even more simple. I only wanted photos (not text boxes and art) but I still wanted some clear way to keep things in order. I ended up doing a simple front cover with just the year and then a full page photo with the month written in the bottom right. My photos on my computer already are organized by year and by month, so I just click through the albums in each month and add a page or two (or more if it is Disney) in the book!

Each year since, I copy the old one (you can do that in Mixbook), rename it, and save it again without pictures so I can put in the new year. I do change the layouts a bit to add more pages or take away pages from certain months but I stick with the month layouts by only adding a new picture to represent the new year. Keep in mind that if you want to do a layflat style like I do, the max amount of pages you can have is 99. That feels like a lot but it can go fast! I like to add a lot of pages that do 9 photos because it lets me fit more in!

You can save your progress at any point with Mixbook so I will go in and work on it as I have time throughout the year. Once I am all finished with December, I let it sit in my account until there is a sale. I feel like there always a sale of at least 30% off but they also do 50% every now and then! When a sale comes up, I add it to cart and check out with the deal!

Here are the details for ordering the same style that I do: Square Photo Book “10 × 10” Matte Hardcover Premium Matte Lay Flat

PS: If you are at all interested in using the exact same layout that I use, I can add you as a contributor and essentially get you the same layout on your account. Send me an email at oakandoats@gmail.com and I will send you the details for how to do that! Please make the title “Mixbook Layout” or something similar so I know what you are talking about! HAHA!