Family Calendar

Well....instead of stitching much the past week or so, I've been working on my annual project of doing our family calendar. This is the front cover of it. Yep, that's my family - all 34 of us! Starts with my parents and my youngest sister at the top, kind of surrounded (either side, plus next row) with their kids and in-laws. The balance of the pictures are the next generation (my nieces and nephews, including two "nephew-in-laws"). All the way down in the lower left corner are my nieces four kids, including our little miracle, Anthony (second from the left, bottom row). I actually print 11 originals of this calendar because I do one for my parents, one each for six of us "kids" and four for my adult nieces.

Each month has pictures of the people who have occasions that month (birthdays or aniversaries) and the event is marked on the individual day (blue for the boys/men, pink for the girls/women, green for anniversaries, and yellow for holidays). Each person's is personalized to them - saying "Our Anniversary" on the appropriate date, or "My Birthday" for the nieces who don't have an anniversary yet. And the nieces all say "Aunt" or "Uncle" where appropriate....and of course, they say "Grandma" and "Grandpa".

I started doing this in for a Christmas gift for my parents in 2003 (with the first calendar being for 2004) and have done one ever since. I get them spiral bound at Staples (which is really reasonable) and they are always the hit of our Christmas gathering. All my siblings help by contributing pictures.

Anyway - now I'm beading ornaments trying to get THEM done for our family celebration on Saturday. I love my family, but they really messed me up by having our big get together on Saturday!!! LOL