I just finished up the latest creative project at Chateau Cookie to help the family far away feel closer to ours and I just wanted to share it with all of you.  Now that we have 2 boys in the house, I decided to make both of my parents a photo calendar with pictures of the kids for each month of the year and it was a big hit.  I also made a calendar for Derek to take to work.  Now he can look at a different picture of his boys each month.  He says it always makes him smile.  Maybe it is a project that your family would like as well.

I went through my photo archives and picked out 12 different pictures of the boys that represented different seasons of the year.  Because Nathan is  new addition to the house, his contribution to the calendar was a picture of his feet, several pictures with his brother and one of him looking very tiny and VERY cranky.  Ethan provided the pictures of dress up for Halloween (always makes for a great October picture) and a picture of him in front of the Christmas tree for December. 

While there are rather inexpensive computer programs that can help you make your own calendar on the computer, I decided to take the lazy (and cheap) route and order the calendar online when I received an email with a 50% off coupon.  I had a good idea that there would be a post-Christmas sale and I was right.  Instead of paying the regular price of $19.99 for the calendar, I just paid $10.  Not a bad deal for 12 months of memories for grandma and grandpa.  The company I used allowed the calendar to start at any month of the year, so my calendars started in March.  Not too conventional, but who is going to know?  Had I done it for Christmas, I would have paid full price and there would have been no pictures of our new baby boy. 

While I ordered my custom photo calendar at Kodak Gallery in the States, I did a search and found companies that will do the same type thing all over the world.  In Australia, you can order custom photo calendars from Frogprints.  In the UK, Photobox seems to have similar product.  If you are in Canada, check out Futureshop.   I can only speak to Kodak's quality and it was a great little calendar for a great little price.  If you sign up with these online companies, they may send you occasional emails about sales.  Take advantage of those sales to get a great deal.  $10 for a personalized present for each grandparent was a small price to pay for the joy it brought.  My father-in-law said that at the beginning of every month, everyone in his department heads over to his desk to check out the new picture for the month.  How cool is that?