Personalized Calendars

One of my husband's favorite gifts every year for his birthday is the personalized calendar that I make for him.  While you may be thinking, 'Oh, this isn't all that crafty,' you are correct; however that's why I'm a 'not so crafty mama'! :)

With all of the options available across various websites, I'd have to say that I like Shutterfly's utility the best for putting together the calendar.  I've used Snapfish in the past and that has also worked well.  It also helps that I already upload all of my pictures to that site to share my pictures with family (another not so crafty post to come!), so they're readily available to add to our calendar.

The theory for pictures that I use on the calendar goes like this; for every month on the calendar I'm making I use pictures taken during that month from the current year (ex. for our 2011 calendar, I use pictures from June 2010 on the June 2011 page).  This at least keeps some consistency with the calendar and provides a reflective reminder of where you were this time last year; our 2010 December calendar shows me as 9 months pregnant and pictures from Alexandria's birth!  Now I'm no longer 9 months pregnant and Alexandria is about to turn 1 in a few short weeks; how times change...

Enough nostalgia for now and back to the calendar.  I thought I'd list a couple of the tips and tricks I use to get this thing put together.

• Decide early whether you actually want to see some of the designs on each of the pages or if you strictly want to see all pictures.  I've gotten 1/2 way through and changed my mind, so it's a time-saver if you want it to be consistent throughout to make up your mind early.  Below is a picture from the back of our 2010 calendar where it shows you the picture part of every month.

• Do one month of pictures at a time.  This helps with keeping only pictures from that month on the month that you're focusing on.  Emma loves helping me pick the pictures we should use and figuring out where they should go on the calendar, so even your kids can be involved in the activity.
• Save pictures from the months that you didn't have room for to add to various holiday 'days' on the actual calendars day portion.  I love adding some of my favorites on random days throughout the months.
• Add in all of your family birthdays, anniversaries, and even vacations if you know the dates.  It makes my month in August when I see a week filled with pictures from last years trip from the beach representing the week we're going to the beach on the new calendar.  (I also enjoy putting goofy pictures of my husband on the day of his birthday to give him a good laugh!)  See below for an example of the what the top/bottom of the calendar looks like and how there are images on the dates.

 

• Add other personal dates to the calendar to add pictures to.  I've added dates for Alexandria's due date, my husband and I's first date, Alexandria's 1/2 birthday celebration, Trick-or-Treat night, etc.  Anything you want can be added.
• Don't forget you can zoom the photos so that you make sure you can show the part of the photo that you want to focus on.  This is especially useful for the pictures on the dates since they are small, so you'll want to make sure that you zoom (crop) in on exactly what you want to see.

The best part about all of this is that next year when you go back to make edits, the website saves your dates to reuse on the new calendar which is a BIG time saver!  Some even saves the pictures so that you can reuse the pictures you chose for people's birthday's last year on the new calendar without having to add them all individually again.

Now, I should probably get back to creating the one for 2011 since I'm behind on getting it done!!!  Feel free to comment with any questions if you get stuck.