Several years ago, I made a perpetual calendar for my husband. It was a gift from me and our children. Now it's a priceless keepsake that will be kept forever. If you aren't familiar with the term perpetual it means "never ending or changing, occurring repeatedly." This means the calendar is good for every single year. There is no year listed, or days of the week on this calendar.
The calendar has lived on my husband's desk at work for almost 10 years! Recently he brought it home because I asked to see it again. I had forgotten the work that went into it, and I wanted the sweet reminder of all the things our children said.
Each day has an encouraging word on it for my husband. Some are quotes, some are Bible verses, but most of them are notes from each of us in the family. This was a big project to undertake, but it was also well worth the effort. We now have a calendar full of cute memories from our children to their father.
We made sure to include birthdays in our calendar with a special note from the person whose birthday will be celebrated. On another calendar I made, I included a photo of the person, or couple if it was their wedding anniversary.
If it sounds overwhelming to come up with 365 days of encouraging notes and memories, it's not really that hard to do. With my kids I had a certain number of cards I expected from each of us. I wanted the calendar to be fairly even. Then I gave my children categories to write things about. They could think of things they were thankful for, or a specific memory in the category.
* School
* Birthday
* Holidays
* Dinner / Food
* Church
* Pets
* Games
* Vacations
* Getting ready for the day
* Work / Chores
* Hobbies
* Movies
* Books / Reading time
* Picnics
* Sports
* Songs
* Times you were scared
* Places you go together
And you get the idea. I had the kids think of a few cards from each category I gave them. This made it much easier and didn't seem so overwhelming! In fact, the kids really got on a role with it.
Since I made this with my kids, I had them do a lot of the illustrations on it. If it was done as a gift from only me, I might have used more scrap-booking supplies. My pages were very basic as 365 days is a lot of little cards to make.
My youngest child was a brand new little baby. I obviously had to come up with all his words. The categories helped me finish his cards too! I did get his help by adding footprints and hand prints to his pages. He also doesn't have as many cards as everyone else did. It's so sweet to see his tiny hands and feet!
If you are doing memories, you could print tiny photos to add next to the memory!
The cards are displayed on a calendar base I bought at OfficeMax. You can see from the photo below my cards could have been made larger in size. I was trying to be economical. The laminating pouches can get a little expensive, and the larger the card, the less cards you can fit into a pouch.
You can also see from the photo; the cards could be made to display portrait instead of landscape. I thought it was easier for my kids to illustrate. If I make another one, I might try to do portrait cards instead.
Originally, I planned to do a coil binding on the cards, however after spending all the time creating them, I realized it would be a massive coil to hold that many pieces of paper together. You could bind together a few months' worth and have 4 separate mini calendars for the year.
I typed all the encouraging words and memories in a document on my computer. I also made sure to write the date above each note and left plenty of room in between each one so I could easily cut them out later. After the document was printed, and the dates were all cut out, I glued each of them to 3x5 inch index cards. One 3x5 index card held two dates. (Front and back) You must keep in mind, because of the way the landscape cards are displayed,
each individual card's front and back are upside down to each other. If you make them both facing the same direction, when you flip the card over on the base, it will be upside down.
If this doesn't make sense, test a card out on the base before you complete your calendar and laminate it.
If you make the cards portrait style, the cards would not need to be upside down to display correctly.
For durability, I made sure to laminate all the cards after they were fully assembled and decorated.
You also want to make sure to hole punch the cards in the correct place. If you don't test it out first, you might end up with your dates displaying out of order.
Only a few months will fit at a time on the calendar base. Because of this, I purchased a plastic box to keep the additional months in.
The kids decorated some dividers for each month. I should have laminated these. Over time the stickers have fallen off. If they had been laminated the stickers would have been sealed on each divider.
This calendar is truly a unique work of art. It also comes from the heart.
It would be a perfect Valentine's day gift for your loved ones. You could make it for all your children or make it for the one child who needs the extra reminder of love.
It would be a great gift to make for Father's Day or Mother's Day. It would make a great teacher appreciation gift from a class. It would make a great present for someone retiring. You could make this kind of calendar for anyone! The ideas are endless!
Several years ago, we made one for my grandmother who had 7 children, 22 grandchildren and wayyyy more great grandchildren. Between that many people the number of cards was much lower, especially when you included spouses. It was a collaboration of efforts from lots of special family members! With that many people contributing, the calendar was full of birthdays and anniversaries, and it left little room for quotes and extras. It was very special and full of love. It did take a few weeks to gather the information from all the family members, but I know my grandma loved it and used it up until the day she passed away. The calendar now lives at my mother's house getting even more use out of it.
Now that 10 years has passed since I made this very special calendar for my husband, I'm thinking the time has come to make another one!
The kids have grown, and their memories have multiplied, along with their love. It would be fun to see what new things would make it into the calendar!
