Here at Mixbook, we’re a creative bunch. But we also like to get off our butts once in a while and do something active. And if we can add a little creativity to the getting-in-shape process, we’re naturally that much more motivated to track exercise progress and weight loss benchmarks.

A year ago, I decided to see what kind of transformation I could undertake in twelve months if I did it right. For me, that meant eating well and challenging myself to get active—really active—every single day. To make sure the process was as enjoyable as possible, I created a Mixbook in collaboration with my sister, who lives a few states away, to track my exercise and weight-loss goals. Now that we’re at the end of our journey (as of yesterday—hooray ), we have proof of all that we went through. The book tracks our increased fitness with photos, organizes the recipes that kept our eating on track, and displays all the fun and folly that happened along the way. Here’s how we did it—and how you can too.

1. Find A Friend (or Go It Alone)
One of the most amazing things about creating a Mixbook photo book is that you can invite one or more people to collaborate. Whether you’re goal setting with a friend, a group, or by yourself, start with a concrete objective. You might be working toward weight loss, but we think it’s way more fun to choose a fun event to participate in, then set yourself up for shedding some lbs along the way. With a race or other event to work toward, you have a specific date that’s not going anywhere. Look for local races (try here and here) or find a destination event that benefits a great cause like finding a cure for cancer (try Team in Training). Consider participating in the Susan G. Komen walk for the cure or AIDS ride.

2. Start Your Mixbook

Once you choose a theme for your book, roughly layout the pages. If your goal is one year off, for example, you’ll want to have about 12 spreads dedicated to the pictures that will track your progress each month. In between those pages, add plenty of additional pages where you can  track exercise, log fitness, and collect photos and recipes.

3. Put Your Goal in Writing
Write a statement of intent on the very first page of your Mixbook photo book. You can make it as funny or as serious as you want it to be, but be specific so your end goal is measurable. Use affirmative language by beginning your goal statements with “I will” rather than “I won’t.” Above all, make your goal reasonable and healthy. Take a “before” picture to include at the beginning of the book. Whether you’re working out alone or with friends, mark dates in your calendar every two to four weeks as reminders to snap a picture and upload it to your book. Every time you upload pics, you’ll also want to add to your funnier, more lighthearted pages to strike a nice balance in tone (and to keep you smiling throughout the process!).

4. Intersperse Silly Pages

Throughout your serious monthly update pages, sprinkle some lighthearted pages that you can add to on a whim throughout your project. Ideas for page themes include

• Things We Gave Up (and Didn’t Miss)Your entries on this page might be things like: Playing Angry Birds, wasting time on Facebook, etc.
• Kick-Butt Recipes That Kept Us On Track Upload favorite recipes for meals, smoothies, and healthy desserts. Bookmark dedicated runner Mark Bittman‘s cooking blog for advice and find great daily recipe inspiration.
• Our Daily Mantras & Inspiration This page can feature a collection of favorite quotes or affirmations. You can also create a collage page of all the pictures that acted as motivation—pictures torn from magazines, pre-baby photos of yourself, or just pictures of yourself when you were a little leaner. In addition, you can pay homage to the blogs that kept you going. Some of my favorites include Well, Runner’s World Daily, Jillian Michaels‘ Blog, and Women’s Health‘s Gotta Run.
• We Mixed It Up! Photos of crazy workouts that kept it interesting: a mud run, ropes course, boot camp, CrossFit, Zumba, Wii, playing soccer, or climbing on the jungle gym with your kids, a night out dancing
• We Did It for ______! If the event you’re working toward benefiting an organization, include photos of the person or people you’re honoring.
• We Couldn’t Have Done It Without You! If you’re raising money on behalf of an organization, consider having the people who support you submit a few words of encouragement to include in your book.

5. Print Your Mixbook!
At the end of your challenge, your book—like mine—will have come together little by little along the way. Take your “after” photo, then comb through the book to make a few tweaks to ensure your layout remained consistent. You’ll have tactile evidence of a goal achieved, including “before” and “after” photos of your own. There’s nothing more motivating than seeing your incredible progress over time! Your Mixbook will become a treasure, forever reminding you of what you can accomplish if you set your mind (and body) to it. Our year ended yesterday, so we’re about to order copies of our own Mixbook. I can’t wait to have my year of transformation printed in book form.

Mixbook is a dog-friendly work space. Seriously! At any given hour of the day, there can be as many as 12 paws prancing around the office, darting in and out of conference rooms and scavenging under desks for crumbs. So it comes as no surprise that one of our favorite photo book themes is the pet photo book. And it’s clear that Mixbookers love their furry friends too! All you have to do to be convinced is visit Mixbook’s gallery of recently published pet photo books to see how many books are created by real Mixbookers like you and dedicated to their sweet, silly, and utterly lovable four-legged children. Below find five ways to honor the mangy muts in your life that give you comfort when you’re sad, company when you’re lonely, and unconditional love when you need it the most.

1. Give Your Pet a Voice

After so many years together, we know our best friends so well that it feels like we can read their minds and almost hear what they’re saying to us. Why not create a pet photo book from your precious angel’s point of view? That’s what Melissa M. did in her pet photo book called “The Life of Czar.” In it, Czar the cat tells the story of how it felt to arrive at a forever home and the times when curiosity resulted in multiple spilled water cups. We adore this truly personal approach to creating a commemorative pet photo book.

2. Quote Charming Sayings

“A dog is a bundle of love wrapped in fur,” “Every boy should have two things: a dog, and a mother willing to let him have one,” and “Home is where the dog is” are just a few of the funny-but-true sayings sprinkled throughout Marilyn R.’s pet photo book, “Tribute to Mr. Big.”

3. Record the Story of How You Met

Patti G.’s precious kitten, Sebastian, was found in the backyard one day along with his 3 tiny sisters. Patti writes, “I just had to keep him, he was so cute.” We don’t blame her! Just look at that little guy getting his first bath. What a trooper! The details of how Sebastian joined Patti’s family will forever be remembered in her charming pet photo book, which tells the story of a “lucky gato” named Sebastian.

4. Organize a Decade of Memories

Chances are, you’ve got piles of pet photos sitting in boxes or collecting dust in drawers. Mixbook makes it easy to organize all of your memories in one place. Jeanette R. created a pet photo book starring her dog, Cleo, and featuring over ten years of memories. Carefully chronicled photos memorialize a lifetime full of adventure, holidays, playtime, and those big, irresistible puppy-dog eyes.

5. Allow a Poem to Speak for You

In a pet photo book named after her cat, Nakita, June P. created a beautiful tribute to her special feline friend. June wove the popular poem “Rainbow Bridge” throughout her book, which expresses feelings of love, gratitude, and anticipation of one day reuniting.

Whether your pet is the newest addition to your family or has been around forever, there’s no better time than today to memorialize your special friend in a pet photo book with a little help from Mixbook. Get started now!

Last year was a big one. Don’t believe me? All you have to do is click “2011” on your Facebook timeline to see what I mean. If your year was anything like mine, you’ll find oodles of photos from birthday parties, baseball games, vacations, baby showers, and weddings galore (royal or not, I’m sure you got gussied up for at least five this past year—maybe you were even a princess for the day in your own love story!).

To commemorate all the good times that were had in 2011, don’t settle for scrolling through a digital timeline of your events—use one of Mixbook’s three new year in review photo books to create a beautiful tribute to the year that was. Not sure which design to choose? Let’s take a look at all three!

1. A Year to Remember

Our first new year in review photo book makes it easy for you to chronicle important events, holidays, and people in your family’s life. You’ll love the way photos from parties and vacations shine in this airy design. Flower, bunny, and balloon stickers make this year-in-review design the perfect place to show off your little one’s big achievements, from Easter Egg Hunt spoils (bonus points for chocolate-covered faces) to first days of school, new backpacks and lunch boxes in tow. Make your own A Year to Remember book!

2. Year in Review

Our second new year in review photo book boasts a richer, more masculine color palette.  Imagine photos from a romantic wedding anniversary dinner surrounded by subtle colorblocked design. Fond images from your annual backyard barbeque will also be perfectly complemented by our Year in Review’s navy blue, burnt orange, and golden yellow color scheme. Make your own Year in Review book!

3. My Year Magazine

Lastly, we’re proud to debut our My Year Magazine design. This year in review photo book is all about big beautiful photos, and consequently, all about you! We love this photo-focused theme because it’s the perfect place to try out our gorgeous two-page photo templates if you haven’t already. Think of this design as the chance to star in your very own issue of Better Homes and Garden, People Magazine, Parenting, Sports Illustrated, or Martha Stewart Living. The best part? No hair and makeup team or art department necessary. Our My Year Magazine layout is all you need to mix up your very own stunning, magazine-quality year-in-review photo book. Make your own My Year Magazine book!

We want to know, which new year in review photo book are you going to try first?

As the school season starts getting into full swing, we here at Mixbook have noticed teachers using Mixbook photo books in a very cool way.  Paula Naugle, a fourth grade teacher located in New Orleans, recently blogged about how she has created a Mixbook project to record her classroom events throughout the entire school year.  Aviva Dunsiger, a first grade teacher in Canada is also creating an electronic classroom yearbook with her students which can be viewed on her blog.  We salute you for your creative use of technology in the classroom and look forward to seeing more interesting Mixbook projects with your students!

Have you used Mixbook in your classroom or know of any teachers using it in an innovative way? Tell us about it in the comment section below.  We would love to hear from you!

Introducing our new Military Heroes theme! This photo book contains pages for every branch of the military that we could fit in it! Army, Marines, Air Force, Navy, and even the Coast Guard – we’d like to honor our modern day heroes for all their efforts here and abroad. They are truly deserving of our gratitude, love, and now you can thank them with a Mixbook theme book.

Remember that if you’d like to deliver to an APO or FPO, you need to select USPS Media Mail as your shipping method. Click below to start creating a book with this theme!

Best,
Alison

The newest theme in our Travel series takes us to the Big Apple! New York City is the focus, with stickers of taxis, subway signs, pizza boxes, famous landmarks and more. We’re excited to bring your travel stories to life with these embellishments and backgrounds. I recently took a trip to NYC, and am excited to use this to document my “Autumn in New York” book. Feel free to send suggestions for other Travel theme locations – we’d love to hear your feedback about what cities to design next!

Mix in the City,
Alison

Do you know a little boy or little girl that is as cute as a bug? If so, we have the perfect theme for the first year, toddler birthdays, and all the fun events in the life of a youngster. It’s the Scrapbook Baby theme! We’ve designed it in beautiful shades of blue and green with sunshine-y yellow and chocolate brown accents – and we can’t wait to see what you do with it! Click here to start your own book now.

Mixbook Babies Rock,
Alison

This is a first for us – and we’re so excited about it! We’ve created a Pregnancy Journal theme for families to remember everything from the moment they found out about their upcoming arrival, to the first cry their little one took. We hope that this helps to document the process from the growing belly to the amazing birth! Click below to start a book of your very own.

You might say that we gave birth to a new theme!

Keep up the Mixbooking,
Alison

Our next new theme is inspired by our Aqua guest book – we loved the brown and aqua elements so much, we made it into a theme that everyone can use. The Aqua Swirls theme has beautiful aqua, cream, and brown layouts will complement your photos – and you can add extra tags for captions and text. We even included a pop of pink with flower stickers — and you can always customize this theme by adding other elements that fit your tastes.

We love this color combination and hope that you’ll enjoy it too! Click on the book above to start creating an Aqua Swirls book!

Here’s to endless possibilities,
Alison

Want to try out our new Mini Photo Books (starting at $6.99) but don’t have the time? The quickest way to make a Mini Book is by copying a photo book that you already have into the Mini Format. Check out how to do it in these 5 easy steps:

1. Click the Copy Link Next to your Book

Find the book you want to copy in your “Home” or “My Books” section, and click the copy link.

2. Select the Size You Want to Copy To

You choose the size you want. For this tutorial, we’re going to assume you want to choose Mini.

Select a Size

Select the 6x4 Mini Book

3. Check your book, Make Changes and Order!

Now that your book is copied, you want to check it over for common issues. Since we’re copying from a Landscape book (11×8.5, to be exact), we don’t have to worry too much. Just check to make sure all the pages of the book look good in their new format. Then, you’re ready to go!

As always, email us with any questions or ideas at support at mixbook dot com.

Keep up the Mixbookin!

Andrew