Family Calendar

I have been busy working on some crafts, but it seems like the extra few steps of uploading pictures and writing a post is just too much. Such is my life lately.

For some time now, I have been irritated with our lack of family calendar. I try to sit down with JM on a weekly basis to review, but that doesn't always happen. And there are things I need on his calendar and there are things of his that I need on my calendar. I considered linking our phone calendars, but that was a bit much. I don't care about all his work meetings, and vice versa for him and my meetings. So I decided to go low tech and do a wall calendar. I wanted a white board so we could re-use it. I started out with this. A basic white board from Wal-Mart.

I didn't like the color so I sanded it down and painted it. I tried to skip the sanding, but this thing has serious lacquer coating on it and the paint wouldn't adhere. I only did one coat because I kind of liked the streaky look. Made it look a little old and worn

Next I figured out how I wanted to lay out my calendar. Originally I was going to go with five weeks, but Hubby requested six so we can always see at least two weeks out. That works better for our family. I also knew I wanted some space for a menu. I've also been looking for a menu board idea that I like. I didn't need anything too complicated, but someplace I can write down what meals I'm planning for the week.

After I had it all laid out, I turned to my Silhouette to cut some vinyl. My Silhouette needs a whole post all on it's own. Mostly because I want to gripe about all the issues I have with it. I do really like it. But about every third time I use it, I want to throw it out the window because it doesn't do what I want it to do.

Once I got the vinyl all laid out, I added the tags: Menu, Events, Key. I also decided to add the days of the week at the top too, just to make sure everyone is clear. The key at the bottom is because the calendar is color coded. Each family member gets their own color. Family events are in black. That way it's easy to see at a glance who is doing what. Here is the final result.

I like the way it turned out. It took another few weeks to get it hung on the wall in the kitchen. Now that it's up, I'm hoping we'll actually use it. It's going to take a little getting used to, but it will be better than the nothing we had before. I am already loving the menu portion. Eventually, I'd like the train JM to look there on nights when he has the kids and/or gets home before me. I would love to have him get dinner started. (A girl can dream right?) Here's to family organization!