…My new project.
For several years, my nieces and kids, all knew roughly what they were getting for christmas from me, and as often as not could have checked it out for themselves in the weeks or months before Christmas. I would consider each person as I would look through the calendars at the mall calendar kiosk.
So my niece who happens to have an active interest in Star Trek and other science fiction would get one calendar, my son with the interest in Artimus Fowl would get something else, and so on.
Last year I decided I had had enough of that. Calendars were running in the $12 to $25 range, and other than the theme being selected for the person, they were not really personalized.
On top of that, My dad had taken many pictures through the year, and had shared many of them with me. I decided to take a hand at making my own caledars, and ended up with a couple of options, including portrait and landscape calendars.
Along the way I discovered a couple of things. Whether it is a basic flaw in the printer, or with the replacement toner cartridges, I don’t know, but even though my color laser printer does a fine job with a wide variety of materials, photograps are not it’s cup of tea. I picked up an inexpensive color ink-jet printer at Wall mart, and discovered that an ink cartridge was good for about one year’s worth of full page images. I also learned that when you print images with a phaser 8400 printer from Xerox, you really want to have printed the laser printed side first. (Seriously. If you discover my mistake the same way I did, quickly run 40 ro 5 sheets of several grades of paper through your printer right away. You may as a result save your printer.
Ultimately I got about 5 calendars printed. 1 went to my sister and her family, one went to my dad, one each to my kids, and one hanging on my wall. I learned how to use some of the tools a little bit better, and what not to do with some of the other tools.
When it comes down to it, calendars or rather the events dictated within them can be as simple as the day and date, or as complex as fully filled out series of events for every day, moon phases, julian date for the day, number of shoping days till christmas, etc. In general, I happen to be somewhere in th emiddle. Moon phase, fine. Record the solstaces and equanoxes, federal and national holidays, and one or two religions holidays as fits the needs you have. And make sure that your family’s birthdays are listed. Then scatter af few events of historical significance, or personal interest through each month, and you end up with a calendar that lists the events you want remembered through the year, That tends to leave a calendar with enough space on most days to write any notes you might want to remember as the month goes by, yet still leaves you with a calendar that has interesting things throughout.
There’s also an interesting mix for most of the various holidays out there. Some are on the same day of the year, every year. Starting obviously enough with New Years Day. Never seem to see that as happening on the second. That said, quite a few are ‘floating’ in the sense that what day they are this year is not necessarily (or for that matter even likely) to have much to do with next year. President’s day, Memorial and Labor day, and that great event Thanksgiving. All have specific days of the week, and which week of the month the day falls on, but not a specific day of the month.
Religious holidays are a different interesting bunch of dates. Ash Wednesday, Easter and Ascention day are all related to Passover, but that doesn’t mean that they have any relation to the modern Jewish holiday. The Jewish holiday schedule is based off of a lunar calendar that is not necesarily matched up with the modern Gregorian calendar. The first day of Spring for example, on the Gregorian calendar is not necesarily matched up with where it appears on the Jewish calendar, and the discrepency can put Passover a month (lunar variety) off from when Easter shows up. Other christian holidays are set up related to much more pagen holidays, All Saints Day follows All Hallows Eve, or what we recognize as Holloween. Christmas is about the time that many pagans celebratd the first day of Winter.
And while we have a general idea on the gregorian calendar when various christian holidays happen, even if some of them are related to various lunar calendars, that is no help for some other religions. I decided not to add Islamic holidays, not because I have anything against the religion, but simply because I had already added both christian and Jewish holidays, and already had a large list of events, and as I said erlier, I like to have a bit of free space within the calendar for people to write events that they need to remember in.
Speaking of writing things on the calendar. I decided this year that I wanted to protect the images within the calendar from spills, etc. As a result I decided it was time to laminate the calendar. The down side of nearly every laminating system is that they all want to laminate both sides. So I
