It's A Date

Many years ago, as the kids began getting more involved with activities away from home, I found myself needing a way to keep up with everything so we could all be where we needed to be when we needed to be there. I love, love, love calendars and am still partial to writing down my appointments rather than keying them in. So several years ago I started using Mary Englebreit's desk calendar.

It has plenty of room to write in and her whimsical artwork provided a different piece of fun each week. The planners start out neat like this...

and end up ragged and stuffed full of all sorts of important info like this...

I got to thinking that I really need to pass on this organizational assest of mine (no -- I refuse to call it an obsession) to my kids so they can go out and face the world prepared. I love, love, love calendars anyway (did I mention that?) so I got both the kids one for Christmas. Yes, because I know you are asking yourself, they liked the gifts.

But I didn't just buy any calendar. I bought calendars with a purpose. Not only are they a place to record band practices, club meetings, ball games, dances and birthday parties, they are also works of art.

Madalyn's The Art of Animation calendar is simply delightful. Each month features a pre-production animation cell from a Disney movie.

This one is from one of the Toy Story movies.

And this one is from Ratatouille.

Cody's features vintage Auburn (what else) game programs.

The great thing about both is that when the year is up, all the artwork is easily removed and can be framed and enjoyed for years to come. We bought them locally, but they were available (at the end of last year) at calendars.com.