Photography has been my husband’s hobby ever since he was a teenager and developed his own photos in his parents’ bathroom where , due to the lack of windows, he could create a darkroom. He started creating personalized calendars way before meeting me: he would use photos from the places he visited the previous year. I loved the idea and turned it into a family tradition. Family calendars! We print out four copies each year: one for us, one for Dan’s workplace and one for each set of grandparents. It’s part of our Christmas present and they always look forward to receiving them.
It was all nature photos at the beginning, then we introduced photos of us for our birth months and one with both of us for July – to mark our anniversary. Once our oldest was born, his cute little face was on all the pages. Part of the reason was that we stopped traveling for a while and had no vacation photos, those are the ones we usually use.
Now that Victor is older he likes flipping through the pages and asks about each photo and family birthday marked in the calendar. He particularly enjoys October, his birth month, as his picture is taken at one of his favorite places: Duluth, MN. He’s going through a elevator-bridge phase (ask him what he likes about each place we go to and the elevator will be on top of each list, even if sometimes there is no elevator) . The photo in Duluth has a rising bridge in the background.
Creating the family calendars is a team work: I go through all the photos from the previous year, make a selection, we both choose the best ones and then Dan is responsible for the technical part: printing them out. It’s a nice way of remembering our great moments throughout the year and it’s a starting point for dreaming of new destinations.
Family calendars may be the best way of preserving your family memories. We all take tons of pictures of our families, especially now in the digital era, but let’s face it: how often do we go actually look at them? Even if you like to print out annual photo albums, the calendars are still “crème de la crème”: best shots of the year and they are right there for you to look at. Each and every day of the year.