One of the best gifts I ever bought my mother – for her 70^th birthday last year – was a photobook, collecting together some lovely memories of our family life. Well I say one of the ‘best gifts’, she didn’t actually say it was the best (mothers are far too diplomatic to suggest that any gift you give is better than the others) but she was certainly more excited about this one! Particularly compared to the fake bird in a gilded cage present from many many Christmases ago, when I was young and trying to be artistic with my gift choices – she couldn’t even fake excitement on opening that one. I could just see her calculating how many boxes of Milk Tray I could have bought her for the money …

But, back to the photobook. It collected together some photos from her younger years, along with special photos from the Fallon family archive, right through to the newest generation - her two grandchildren. Every time a visitor came to the house for days after, the book was taken out and lovingly displayed.  In fact, she may still be doing that for all I know ….

And the whole process was surprisingly easy. One of the reasons I hadn’t done one before was because I thought it would take ages to painstakingly upload each photo, insert it in a template, write text, choose covers, etc etc. But I was wrong. Using a company called Photobox – which I see is offering some good discounts for the next few days – the whole process was quick and easy.

Once I uploaded all my photos, the layout was automatically created – I could over-write anything I wanted, to make it as bespoke as I liked - but I was happy with the display created for me. Then it was simple to go in and add a few funny captions on most pages – I didn’t do it on every page, so you don’t need to bother with this step if you feel the photos speak for themselves – and place my order. The book arrived a few days later looking lovely – the production values are very high, this was a very professional job.

And, like I say, a huge hit with the mother - so a good gift option if you're thinking about what to buy for Mother's Day. Great for grans too of course! For more information, and to pick up a discount before March 20, visit the Photobox website.

 See all of our great ideas for Mother’s Day – including gifts to make and buy, handmade card ideas, Mother’s Day lunches and cake recipes and more

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