I’ve never used a calendar until this year – something about my spontaneous carpe diem lifestyle never seemed to fit inside that box.
And then I had kids – who went to school.
My calendar has been a lifesaver this year, with each day having multiple things marked: carpool, snack assignments, early day, doctors appointments, homework day, etc. etc. etc.
So for next year I decided to make my own. I’ve long admired a friend of mine’s calendar. They make one every year based on a template at kinkos or something. While I like the family pictures in it, I wanted a design a little more custom.
And so . . .
DRUM ROLL PLEASE!
This calendar took me about a month to make . . .
I designed the grid/month/text in Illustrator using fonts: Splendid 66 & Pee Pants Script
Then I tore apart the PSD files of a book template that I have from Simplicity Design, rearranged them slightly to fit my format, and inserted some of my favorite pictures of the past few years.
As I looked through my old pictures to find ones for the calendar, I was reminded: Man, I have gorgeous kids!
Just saying.
Anyhow, at first I tried to have a picture from the featured month – you know, a January picture on the January page. But once I hit March I realized that wouldn’t work – for some reason I have very VERY few pictures in March of any year. Don’t know why. So then I just let it be a free for all and put in any pictures from any time that I loved. There is one spread/month dedicated to each kiddo. And I still need to get my 2011 family picture taken so I can trade it out with the picture in September (the one with the kids on the truck – same one that’s on the October spread). And I added a photo of each family member on their birth date.
Anyhoo- it’s been a bit of a laborious process, but fun. If you want to take a closer look, you can click on the image above for a humongo humongo version, or just visit my flickr page to see each month individually.
Now to find a printer . . .
That is BEAUTIFUL!!!