2013 is very quickly coming to an end – it still blows my mind how much faster the years seem to fly by as you get older. In high school you couldn’t wish the school year to finish fast enough, now we’re all begging time to just slow down a little bit. To capture all of my favorite memories from this year and show off the little snapshots I’ve taken, I’ve teamed up with Artifact Uprising to create a photo book that sums up my year perfectly. I couldn’t agree more with Artifact Uprising’s motto of, “Inspired by the disappearing beauty of the tangible” – we’re lucky enough to now be able to preserve our memories easier than ever thanks to our smartphones and the ever improving quality of the little camera we all carry around in our pockets at all time, but there’s something different about it. Instead of having photo albums of these moments, they remain locked in our devices and it’s just not the same as having a physical, tangible place for them. There’s something really magical about pulling out a photo album and sitting down to look through it with someone – that togetherness that the photos create as you reflect on memories or share past moments with someone who wasn’t there to experience them firsthand.

Artifact Uprising is all about merging the old with the new, making it incredibly simple to take those photos captured digitally and show them off within a beautiful, tangible product. Creating my 2013 book was so much fun – I chose to keep things simple and use their mobile app to create an Instagram-friendly book that reflects my year in chronological order; the quality and attention to detail with clean design is amazing and it’s now my favorite little bedside addition. Flipping through my year instantly fills me with gratitude and I love having a tangible record of this year of my life, a tradition I’d love to keep moving forward.

To allow you to preserve your year as well, Artifact Uprising is offering one reader their very own soft-cover photo book:

A winner will be chosen on January 6, good luck!