The perfect gift for Grandparents

Last year, my grandparents, who live overseas, were visiting us just before Christmas.  Before they left I gave them a gift that made them cry, and frankly made me cry - a CALENDAR highlighting their family, children and grandchildren.  I gathered all birthdays and anniversaries of their children and their grandchildren as well as photos of all and wedding photos of each couple (It took a lot of time to gather the best pictures - but it was well worth it at the end).  The calendar cover had an old picture of my grandparents showing them young and showing how it all started - they couldn't believe I found this photo.

For each month I marked the date of anyone celebrating a birthday or an anniversary and I posted photos of the persons celebrating a birthday or anniversary that month.  I stuck to wedding photos (if I had one) for the anniversary pictures as I found them more romantic and meaningful.  For December, it so happened that no one celebrated a birthday or anniversary, so I did a family tree with family photos.  If you don't have anniversaries or birthdays to fill the entire year, you can get creative for the particular month, for example if August is missing, maybe post some photos from a family BBQ that took place in August.

I used Costco's Photo Centre as I am used to printing my pictures at Costco and found their program easy to use.  The only draw back is that the template only allowed me to add one or two photos, so I used Picasa to arrange the photos and then uploaded them to the Costco website to use as the picture of that particular month.   [Side note: I LOVE Picasa, if you haven't downloaded it, you should.  It makes it easy to create collages - I will certainly talk more about this on another day].    Here is an example of how the month of April looked.

This year, I am making a calendar for my in-laws for their children, grandchildren and even great grandchildren!  I have started to use Mixbook for photo books and I love the website and the variety of templates and ease to use, so I am going to try using this site for their calendar.  Will let you know how it goes!