If you follow me on Instagram, you may recall a few weeks ago that I shared an album I had been working on for me and Ryan. Every year I make sure to get photographs taken of Ryan and me. It’s something that’s very important to me because someday I want our kids to be able to look at these photographs of us. I want them to see who we were when were young and the love we had for each other even before they were born. I want them to know what true love is like when they look at their father and me.

Anyway, I had all these gorgeous pictures Ryan and I had taken last year and other than the three portraits I have printed and hanging on my wall, I hadn’t done anything with all these other beautiful photographs. So I decided it was time to go ahead get an album put together for me and Ryan. I have a couple others from previous years, but I was really excited to add this beautiful documentation of us to our growing collection.

I also decided it was the perfect time to assemble my Gratitude Book. I’ve been taking all these photographs of things that bring me joy and peace and gratefulness but they were just sitting on my hard drive taking up space. What better way to display them than through a tangible book! After a lot of sifting through all these folders of images, I decided the best way to showcase these would be through a photo book. So that’s what I did. I compiled a book of my favorite Gratitude Images from 2013 and now have them bound together in one very well constructed paper back book.

I tell you all of this to say this – don’t undervalue the tangible. Don’t just keep your pictures on your computer. Computers crash, thumb drives fail, CDs break. Don’t lose your memories because you didn’t have time to print them. It’s the reason I encourage clients to purchase portraits from me and not just digitals. I want you to have these images that you can enjoy everyday. I cannot tell you how much happiness our wall collage brings me. When I sit on my couch and look up at our portraits I just feel so incredibly blessed for these moments that I get to relive again and again. I don’t have to sift through my computer to find them – they are right there on my wall or on my coffee table in an album. That’s instant happiness right there! So I just want to encourage you – print your pictures guys! You’ll be so glad you did!