How-To: Make An Easy Family Yearbook

It has become a tradition that every New Years Day, I sit down for a couple of hours and compile a photo yearbook with all the meaningful highlights (and lowlights) from the previous year. I think I have a family yearbook covering the past five years and every time I look through one, I am filled with gratitude to my past self for making the effort to put it together. These family yearbooks don’t just cover the big special moments, but instead are filled with photo reminders of anything and everything that felt significant, whether it be a lesson learned, a personal goal achieved, a family milestone, or even just a sliver of joy on a random day.

I’ve been sharing about our yearly books on Instagram for the past few years and every time I do, there is a ton of interest in how I put them together. I decided that this would be the year I would share a step-by-step guide so that you can see how easy it is to do for yourself. I’m all about simple efforts when it comes to memory-keeping, so I hope you’ll be inspired to make the (small) effort for such a long-term payoff. If you’re anything like us, you’ll look back on your yearbook for years to come and be so thankful you saved these precious memories.

Here’s how to do it.

Step 01: Gather your photos.

The photos you include in your yearbook are completely up to you. It can be as simple or as complex as you prefer. However, when I gather my images, I like to remind myself that the purpose of the yearbook is to give an overview of our year. With this in mind, I try to choose 4-6 photos from each month of the year and never include more than one photo from a particular event. I personally like to leave space for photos that represent the little - but still significant - moments in the year too and try to be very intentional about finding a good balance between the flashy family highlights and the quiet personal highlights. And since I want to give an overview of the year, my photos sometimes represent the valleys too, like a difficult season, a hard experience, or a personal heartbreak. This book is intended to be like a journal in the form of photos, so I think it’s more meaningful to include more than just the joys.

The majority (if not all of) the photos I take throughout the year are on my phone, so that’s exactly where I gather my photos from. I open my camera roll and scroll back to the beginning of the year and then look through the photos, month by month, to collect any that feel significant. My favourite way to organize my selections is by making a specific album on my phone so that I can simply compile them in one place. If you are using photos that already exist on your computer, you could just as easily create a folder on your desktop to collect your selections in. However you go about it, what is most important is that you collect them in one place so it’s much easier to print or upload them in the next steps.

As one final note, if it feels overwhelming to do this all at once, you could prepare for your next yearbook by collecting your significant monthly photos at the end of each month throughout the year instead. Taking a few minutes at the end of each month to gather a few photos into a folder or phone album would be really simple and could help ensure that you save what matters the most when all the happenings are still fresh in your mind.

For many years, I used these cute 4x4” albums (no longer available).

For the first time last year, I used a photobook printing service.

Step 02: Choose a direction.

Once you have your photos gathered, it’s time to choose how you want to create your book. There are two different ways you can do it: you could use a photo book printing service or you could print off the photos individually and arrange them in an album. I’ve personally done both and either option turns out beautifully, but there are pros and cons to both.

Photo Book Printing Service

I chose this direction for the first time last year and I was so thrilled with the result that I did it again this year. To create your book, you simply upload your photos to the service’s website, edit and arrange the photos using their editing software, and have them print and deliver your book directly to you. This option is really easy and time-efficient, but it is generally a little more expensive than simply printing the photos. But with that being said, there are many different companies that offer this service within a variety of different budgets. The only downside to this direction is that you can’t easily write a blurb with each photo, which I’ll talk more about below.

A few photo book printing services I like include Parabo Press, Pikto, and Artifact Uprising, and a few services I have heard of (but haven’t tried) include Chatbooks, Mixbook, and Shutterfly.

Print Individually and Arrange in an Album

When I started my yearbook tradition, this was exactly how I created them. I would print out the photos on my own photo printer at home, crop them into squares, and compile them in adorable little 4x4” square albums. I loved creating my books in this way because the process of physically printing the photos and arranging them gave me a lot of meaningful time to reflect on the memories that the photos represented and I think that really captures the purpose of creating these yearly books in the first place. On the downside, this option does take a little bit more time to put together and the photo albums feel a little more clunky than the photo book option.

You can choose whatever direction makes the most sense for you depending on your budget and time availability, as well as personal preference. As I mentioned, I have done both in the past and love both for different reasons - you really can’t go wrong either way!

Step 03: Create your book.

Once you have chosen a style direction, it’s time to actually create your book using your photos. If you are using a photo book service, simply upload your photos to the service’s website and arrange them in chronological order. Sometimes I will swap the placement of one or two photos, but generally I like to keep them organized by month so that I can look through the book and see the progression in our family over the year. If you opt to print the photos individually and physically arrange them in an album, you may need to wait a few days for your prints to come back before you actually put your album together.

Step 04: Write descriptions.

This step is optional, but I like to journal a short blurb about each photo and why it felt significant to include. For the years that I made the DIY albums, I simply journaled each blurb on the back of each photo before slipping it into the album sleeve. I loved being able to do this because then the journal entry isn’t obvious if you are simply browsing through, but is still available for you to reference in the future when you’re looking back. I like to think that maybe one day my grandchildren will browse through these books and may appreciate the insight into the selections that the written words provide.

Including the journal blurb proved to be difficult last year when I first used a photo book printing service for my yearbook. The photos took up the majority of the page and didn’t have a hidden back, so I needed to find a new solution for sharing a written blurb. What I decided to do was create a typed document that shared a brief blurb about each photo in chronological order, which I then printed off, neatly folded, and placed in an envelope that I glued to the back cover of the book. I like that, like the album version, the blurbs are available if you’d like to take the time to read them, but they don’t take away from the big beautiful photographs in the book.

Step 05: Repeat each year.

With that, you can take the time to enjoy your album! Curt always loves to look through ours a few times and eventually I stash it away with our other family yearbooks. Every now and then we pull them out and browse through years-gone-by, reminiscing and celebrating all the beautiful memories we have made so far as a little family.

If you enjoyed the process, be sure to repeat it each year so you can build up a healthy little yearbook collection.

I hope this step-by-step guide inspired you to make the efforts to compile your own family yearbook this year. It’s such a simple and meaningful way to cherish your memories as you learn and grow over the years. Let me know if you have any questions about the process. Happy memory-keeping!

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