Mother’s Day is quickly approaching (its this Sunday in case you didn’t know), and mothers can be hard to buy for. Have you figured out what to get for your mother yet? Yes (good for you), no, maybe, let me help you.

Mothers love photos of their families, friends, pets, that day trip you took up the coast together, just the two of you, even photos from a weekend with the grandchildren. Little memories that we capture with our phones, transfer to our computers, and then promptly forget about.

There’s a new app that can help with the memories captured in the moment, Mosaic by Mixbook. I first saw it as a sponsored ad on Facebook and it piqued my curiosity, but out of sight out of mind and I forgot about it. I was super surprised, and excited, when I was asked to review one. So let me tell you about it. (Mixbook also has customizable templates for cards and photo albums.)

Mosaic is a free app for your iPhone or iPad (it may work on an iPod but I’m not sure) that lets you quickly create a 7″ x 7″, linen covered, 20 page photo book of the photos stored on your device.

It took me longer to choose the photos I wanted to use than it did to actually create the book. I routinely upload the photos from my phone and then delete them, so I didn’t have many on my phone to chaise from. Instead I went through my photos starting last summer through just a few weeks ago, picked out which ones I liked, put them in my “iPhone” folder in iPhoto, uploaded them to my phone and went to work making my photo book. This also means that I was able to use photos taken with my DSLR. You could scan in old photos or create a photo collage and have more than one photo on each page! I’m all about getting more for less.

Mosaic’s interface is simple to use. The order of the photos in the book is the same as the order in which you select them. Once you’ve selected the 20 photos you want to use Mosaic creates a mosaic with 13 of them. If you don’t like the first one thats created, just click “shuffle cover,” repeat until you have a mosaic you like, then click “place order.”

It’s that simple, really.

It took about ten minutes for the photos to upload to Mosaic, but please keep in mind I had a mix of DSLR and phone photos, plus I was sending it over the 4g network, not wifi. I would expect it to be much quicker on a wifi connection. Once your order is complete you’ll receive an expected arrival date and be asked if you would like to receive “push notifications.” I chose yes because I wanted to know when my order actually shipped.

Mosaic has cute graphics that shows the state of your when it is being printed, once it has been shipped and for when it’s been delivered. (Not necessarily important to its function but little things like this make my world go round.)

The book is nestled in a protective cover ensuring that your photo book arrives in the best possible condition. The photos are printed on a high quality paper and look great. Some of my iPhone photos actually look better than ones I took with my DSLR.

I had high hopes for this app and it did not let me down. I will be ordering another as soon as I can. Now I just have to decide if I’m going to give the book to my mom or keep it for myself.

Now, I’m sure you’re wondering how this is going to help you when Mother’s Day is less than a week away. This is how. Mosaic only takes four days. Four! I ordered at nearly 8pm on Monday and had the book on Friday. Well, I had a slight shipping snafu, I entered a street address thinking the book was coming UPS when in fact it was coming USPS. This isn’t a problem except when you live in a town that doesn’t deliver mail to street addresses and everyone has a PO Box. Add in that it had my name ? my friends name and my friends address and the post office was thoroughly confused. This meant that I didn’t get the book until this past Friday, but that wasn’t really their fault.

So, here’s the best part. I get to give away one free Mosaic. Just leave a comment saying what memories you’d love to share with your mom below. Comments will close at about 5am PST on Tuesday, May 6th. I will pick the winner first thing Tuesday morning, May 6th, via a random number generator and notify the winner.

20 photos for $20*. No worries about layouts or having so many photos that the book is going to cost so much your spouse is going to cut up your credit cards. What more could a girl ask for?

You can see a few more photos in my Mosaic set on Flickr.

*20 photos for $20, plus tax and shipping brings you to about $27.

I received a Mosaic photo book free of charge, including shipping and tax, but the opinions and photos are my own.