Your year in 5 or 10 memories: a month-by-month method
The easiest way to choose is to scroll back through your camera roll month by month, from January to December, and star one photo per month that comes with a story. You'll end up with ten or twelve candidates. Then cut.
For Essential, five memories, keep one moment per season plus one from December: a winter evening, a spring weekend, the summer trip, an autumn routine, and something from this month. For Deluxe, up to ten, keep almost one per month and let the second gallery, which opens from the sixth memory, hold the second half of the year. A sample year, with plaque titles:
- January: the resolution you both gave up on by the 9th. “New year, same us”.
- March: the first warm evening on the balcony. “Spring, officially”.
- May: a birthday dinner and the candle that wouldn't light. “Make a wish anyway”.
- August: the road trip with the car packed to the roof. “Three playlists, one wrong turn”.
- October: the Sunday ritual nobody planned. “Soup season”.
- December: decorating the tree, or the apartment with no room for one. “Our smallest tree yet”.
How to give a digital gift under the tree
A link doesn't fit in a stocking, so give it a moment of its own. Here are four ways to hand it over, whether you're on the same sofa or in different countries. For long-distance couples it's one of the few Christmas gifts that can't arrive late.
- Open it together. On Christmas morning, open it on your phone or a laptop, hand it over and sit beside them while they walk through it. You get to watch them find every frame.
- Put a card under the tree. Write something like “Check your messages” inside, and send the link the moment they open the envelope. Copying a long link by hand rarely goes well, so let the card point to the message instead.
- Send it abroad. If your boyfriend or girlfriend is spending Christmas in another country, send the link on the morning of the 25th their time, or on Christmas Eve if that's when their family celebrates. It opens instantly on any phone, and nothing gets stuck in customs.
- Pair it with something small. A real ornament, a printed photo, a train ticket: the museum tells the story, and the object is what they keep on the shelf.
A last-minute Christmas gift: what you can still do on December 24
Physical photo gifts have cut-off dates: order after them and the parcel turns up in January. Printed books and frames need time to be made and shipped, so they drop out of the running days before the 25th. A museum sent by link has no cut-off at all.
So if you need a last-minute Christmas gift for your girlfriend or boyfriend and it's already the evening of the 24th, this still works. A realistic Christmas Eve timeline:
- 8:00 p.m.: pick five photos from the year with the month-by-month method above.
- 8:15 p.m.: write a title, a date and two or three sentences for each memory.
- 8:30 p.m.: dress the two characters, one of them and one of you, and write the final message.
- 8:40 p.m.: walk through the free preview, unlock the museum, and keep the link ready for the morning.
Christmas messages for the final room
The final room opens once every memory has been found. Its title appears in large letters, with a longer message underneath, so it's the perfect place for the line you'd find hardest to say out loud. A few ideas for Christmas, from gentle to life-changing:
- “Merry Christmas. This was my favorite year so far.”
- “Thank you for this year. Here's to the next one, and the one after that.”
- “First Christmas in our own place. Let's make it a tradition.”
- “Pack something warm: we're spending New Year's Eve in Edinburgh.”
- “Look under the tree again. There's one more box, a very small one.”
- “Will you marry me?”
Make it in 15 minutes: steps and prices
Add your photos, five or up to ten, each with a title, a date and the story behind it. Make the two characters look like the two of you: name, skin tone, hairstyle, hair color and outfit color, and with Deluxe extras such as glasses, a hat, a beard, earrings or neckwear. Write the final message, check the preview, and unlock the link when you're happy.
Essential, at €9.99, holds five memories in one gallery: one per season plus December fits exactly. Deluxe, at €14.99, holds six to ten over two galleries, enough for almost one per month, and adds every style option. You pay once, there's no subscription, and you can move from Essential to Deluxe later for €5.00 without changing the link.
The museum costs nothing to build, and its free preview shows the first two memories in full; the other memories and the final surprise unlock with payment. The demo shows a whole museum, start to finish.
It stays private, even over the holidays: only people who have the link can visit, the museum is never listed or indexed, photos are stored privately with their GPS data removed, and you can delete it any time.
