Hello New Year!

I love the feeling of a fresh start that a new year brings.  And another thing I love about a new year is that it means new calendars.  I love calendars, always have.  I like writing down birthdays and events and the feeling of anticipation and planning ahead that I get when I start a new calendar.  And of course, when it comes to calendars, I'm totally old school: no electronic calendars for me.  It's all about the paper. 

2012 will be the fourth year that I will be making a calendar, which becomes a scrapbook of our year.  Essentially it's just creating a scrapbook layout as the art for each month.  Here's a quick look at a few of my favorites from last year's calendar:

For me, the trick to keeping up with this ongoing project is to keep it quick and simple.  Usually I spend about ten minutes putting together the page for each month.  Either I snap a new picture or use a very recent one, because I like the calendar to show what's happening at the moment.  Then I just grab some bits and pieces and scraps of paper that I've got close at hand and stick'em on the page and call it good.  Once in a while I'll spend a bit more time on it and dig out some embellishments from my stash, like I did for October's layout.  That month is special because it's Jacob's birthday, so I will spend more time on it.  Other layouts, like the ones for August and January, are totally simple and took five minutes. 
Here's the page I made this morning for January:

This page consists of a piece of pattern paper cut to fit the calendar (I use the 8.5" x 11" Archiver's blank calendars), a piece of polka-dot tape (might be 7Gypsies, but I'm not sure), a piece of sparkly red rickrack, a few letter stickers (October Afternoon), and some staples for a bit of extra texture and to make sure everything stays put.  Easy peasy lemon squeezy. 

My tip for making your own calendars is to go through and put the dates on for each month in advance.  I didn't do this the first couple years and then it became more of a hassle when I wanted to jot something on the calendar ahead of time.  There are month stickers available, like the clear ones I used this year.  Last year I used my favorite typewriter font stamps to stamp each month, and I've also just used my own handwriting.  I also double check my dates with another calendar to make sure I keep all my days straight. 

I love how these calendars show the day-to-dayness of our life.  I try to jot down as much info as I can, like funny things Jacob says, in addition to events (birthday parties, concerts, craft shows) and routine stuff like doctor appointments, etc.  It's a great record of our life.  These calendars also help me remember stuff when I want to create a page for our scrapbooks; since I'm woefully behind on those, I need something to help me remember. 

But of course, one of my New Year's resolutions is to get caught up on my scrapbooking. 

Happy 2012!