From Sherri Osborn,
Your Guide to Family Crafts.
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Check out these great calendar making ideas submitted by visitors just like you!

• From Joyce Smith: Joyce shared directions for making an adorable photo calendar.

• From Beth Ann: "We're stressing responsibility as a theme this year in our Brownie troop, so our first activity will be for the girls to create their own Brownie calendar, where they'll write in all the dates and times of our meetings and outings this year, along with whatever gear they might need for that event. We're hoping this will help them begin to understand that they can and shouldtake care of some things for themselves. This is an idea that would be good for any group to do, not just Brownies.

• From Jan in CA: 3 ideas - The one I'm making for my 3 1/2-year-old daughter is a special occasions and events calendar -- with each decorated page devoted to holidays, seasonal stuff and birthdays of friends and loved ones. For the birthdays, I am using the same format on each page: colored cardstock appropriate to the month, topped with a birthday cake rubber stamp. I then use a mini balloon punch on each corresponding date on the calendar.The photos on each page correspond to that month's Birthday Bunch or to holidays we've shared together. My husband's calendar will include pictures of our daughter, one of her funny phrases per page and a piece of her "artwork" -- one of her preschool or home craft projects, reduced/color-copied at Kinko's and matted on coordinating cardstock. Third is a "Family Recipe Calendar". There are plenty of food-related stickers and rubber stamps out there (Stampin' Up has a whole recipe-decorating set) to decorate each page. Add a cherished family recipe and a photo of the person behind it and...voila!

• From Heidi Kingery: This is a Great CHEAP project for family for Christmas! All you have to do is buy (or make) an inexpensive a calendar. Gather together the dates of the birthdays and anniversaries in your family and fill them in on the calendar. I like to mark the birthdays with smiley face stickers and a bold colored border around the date. The anniversaries look good with heart stickers and an xoxoxo border around the date. I made these for my 7 sibling for Christmas and they LOVED it!! They all have children and find it hard to find time to sit down and write the dates in a new calendar themselves. This way they have a gift that will be useful all year long!

• From Jo Dauzet: I run a latch key program at our school. Every year I have the parents write down important dates that occur in their family (anniversaries, birthdays, dogs birthdays, days off of school, vacations etc... I tell them to be creative) I then have the kids draw a picture for each month of the year. January-snow, February-Valentines Day, March-Mom's birthday or St Patricks Day. I take care of the calendar by putting the important dates with each month. We then all decorate the actual calendar with stickers. We put the calendar together with ribbon and the kids then give it to their parents for Christmas. It is a gift that gives all year long and the parents love it. I have been doing this for 4 years and our parents love it.

• From Amber Jonson-Rogers: Get A two sided stand up plastic picture frame and set it aside. Take at least six sheets of white printing paper and cut 12 sheets of paper that fit the left side of your picture frame. Decorate your 12 sheets of paper for the 12 months of the year and make a calender for each one. Put them in order from January to December and slide them in the left side of the picture frame and after every month take the top month and slide it in the very back of all of the other months.And you have your very own reuseable calender! Put a picture of You,Your family,friends,ect and put it in the right side of your picture frame and you're done!

• From Linda: When my preschoolers were confused with the concept of time, I made a family calendar for them. The top part of the calendar was blank, except for a holiday-themed frame (ie shamrocks and gold coins in Feb) The children would draw wonderful pictures in this spot. Then I wrote all of our families' and extended families' birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, planned vacations, (anything that the children would find fairly interesting or important) on the appropriate squares. I took the photocopied pictures of the relatives, the holiday stickers, etc and added them next. As Dr and DDS appts came up, I would add these. Swimming lessons, soccer games and dance lessons soon became a regular weekly event to look forward to, and gauge time by.

If you have a fun calendar idea, you can submit it here. For help with printing your calendars, read this article about printing coloring book pages.