Monday, August 23, 2010

Mark Your Calendar!

Here's a little story about a DIY calendar. As you read this post, you may think, "Oh, that's a great idea! Michelle was so clever to come up with something like this for her kids." Newsflash: there aren't any kiddos (yet!) in the Ten June crew. Just my slightly minor obsession with staying organized and calendaring my life away. Like, I was that kid who actually liked my chore chart growing up. But anyways, this calendar is a completely kid-friendly project that I did for our kid-less house (well... the pups have a schedule too!).

For our office calendar, I wanted something fun and functional. Pottery Barn has some absolutely amazing calendar ideas, like so:

Pottery Barn Daily System
But, of course, Pottery Barn's version was waaaay outside my budget. So I took a couple of hints from their catalog and got started with a bulletin board that David has apparently had since his fraternity house days. I had previously stained the outside of the wood frame with dark walnut Minwax.


So far, so great, but it looked a little bare. (By the way, how cute are those letters that our nieces sent us!! We love them!) So I painted the cork board part white and added some ribbon to mark the calendar's days. You can actually see in the picture below where I glued down orange ribbon and pulled it up to replace with green. Lets just say we had a "DIY Calendar Project Take Two" when I realized (after spending about an hour measuring out and gluing down orange ribbon) that I didn't really like the orange color in our office. What can I say, we're Dawg fans, so orange doesn't really work in our house!


You can see I also left a little bit of space on the side to post other things like postcards or reminder notes.



Then I just cut up some scrapbook paper and laminated each square so that you could write (with a dry erase marker) on each day of the month. I attached some good ol' Velcro to the back of each square so I could move the days around according to which  month it is.



Here are the days Velcroed up on the calendar, ready for the month of August.


Okay, now do you see where this project is looking a little kid-friendly?! It's definitely cutesy (wait... doesn't everyone put fake cartoon crabs on their wall calendars to symbolize summer?!) but it makes me smile.

Here's an close up shot.


Yes, that Board of Commissioners hearing I've got on the calendar for tomorrow does mean that I'll be working until at least 10 PM... so basically, instead of "BOC Hearing" it should read "David, don't forget to call the pizza guy!"

And here it is, in the office:


I think it fits right in and we're certainly finding it handy to keep our lives on track. Have you made anything lately that keeps you organized?

PS. <<UPDATE!>> Just because I thought it was pretty cute, here is the September version of our new calendar. Happy fall!



Happily linking up to:
mmm buttonVisit thecsiproject.comHookingupwithHoHPhotobucket

12 comments:

C.R.A.F.T. said...

great idea :) thank you for linking up to MMM!!! ps. i like your little lobster in the corner :)

1bellastager said...

Wow! You guys are organized "pretty" now:) Love the office walls, too.

Lisa at Paint in my Hair said...

great idea!

Amanda @ Serenity Now said...

CUTE!! I love all the different little paper patterns. :) Nice job! I'm visiting from The CSI Project. Hope you'll stop by and visit me too. :)

Roo @ NiceGirlNotes said...

Cute, and I'm a sucker for post-its.

Leanne said...

Very cute. I host an organizing party twice a month. The next one is September 1. I hope you can stop by and join.

Ashley said...

Thats a brilliant idea! I love the velco idea too! How perfect to change out the dates and plans! My calendar would actually look legit every day!

Thanks!
Ashley
sewmuchmoreinlife.blogspot.com

kamommy said...

We've gone high tech here and are using google calendar because we can both do our own and it puts them together...that way we never double book! For the kids though, this would be really cute in their room and something they would be able to keep! I wonder if they have an aunt that could make it for them?????

Emily said...

What colors did you use for the stripes? I love them and have been wanting to do them in my office, but haven't found the right combination of colors.

Amy said...

Very nice! I love the walls in your office! To die for! Visiting from www.justpleasedaspunch.blogspot.com

Jen @ tatertotsandjello.com said...

Cute idea!! I love how it looks for Fall. And your office is so fun with the stripes!

xoxo
Jen

Vanessa said...

This is really cute and looks to be very functional! Thanks for sharing!

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