Perfect gifts to start off the year!

Happy New Year everyone! The beginning of the year is the perfect excuse to make yourself or someone you love a brand new day planner, calendar or fresh new notebook.

I like the day planners by Erin Condren on Tiny Prints as you can personalize them with a recent photo taken over the holidays and with the name of the recipient. They have fun and colourful options with lots of useful inner parts. Take a look here.  Pinhole Press has some nice options here too.

Erin Condren Day Planner via Tiny Prints

Erin Condren Day Planner via Tiny Prints

Erin Condren Day Planner via Tiny Prints

Erin Condren Day Planner via Tiny Prints

Erin Condren Day Planner via Tiny Prints

Erin Condren Day Planner via Tiny Prints

Erin Condren Day Planner via Tiny Prints

Softcover Day Planner via Pinhole Press

Not so much into planners? How about a calendar? Check these out:

Desktop Calendar via Tiny Prints

Pin Board Calendar via Pinhole Press

Pin Board Calendar via Pinhole Press

Easel Desk Calendar via Pinhole Press

Another item I really like is the photo collage notebook from Tiny Prints. I ordered one of these for each member of our immediate family for Christmas. It was easy to personalize the collection of photos for each person and they were very affordable. It's a nice alternative to the photo calendar as everyone can use an extra notebook and the photos makes it special. I loved them so much I even made one for myself!

Notebook via Tiny Prints

Notebook via Tiny Prints

Notebook via Tiny Prints

Notebook via Tiny Prints

Update to November 11 post: The Perfect Gift for Grandparents

This weekend I received the last batch of personalized photo gifts, including the calendar I made for my parents-in-law.  As I said in my November 11 post, I decided to use mixbook.com this time to create the calendar.  I was very lucky because just when I was creating the calendar, Mix Book had a buy one get one free deal so I was able to get 4 calendars for the price of 2 and will give the other ones to my husband's siblings.  This way everyone can keep track of the birthdays and anniversaries in the family.

Anyway, all is all, I was super happy with Mix Book.  I found there were many templates to choose from for the calendar. I used this template design:

Via Mix Book

And the most important part is that I was able to add as many photos per page as I needed.  This made making the calendar so much easier and faster - a big bonus.  As I mentioned in my November 11 post, previously I used Costco's calendar template and wasn't able to add more than one or two pictures so I had to create collages in Picasa of multiple pictures then upload them to the calendar - a big hassle.  Unfortunately with Mix Book you have to pay shipping, but I think it is worth it.

Hope my in-laws love it!

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!