The Family Calendar

I feel like I have been battling nature all day today!  After a mayfly infestation at work (one glorious perk of working within 100 feet of the Susquehanna) and a weird pouring-with-the-sun-shining storm while walking to my car, I think the indoors are better for me today.  

Hopefully you are in the mood for an easy project.  After that wall we built, I sure am!  This is a simple but cute way to keep track of important family dates.  This is far from original; I have seen it on Pinterest, and a friend made a lovely one for her house a while ago, so I can't take credit for it.  I'll tell you how I made mine, but if you decide to make one, change it however you like to fit you and your family.

This was (naturally) an addition to my new home office:

Here's the closeup (names blurred for privacy):

I chose to use gray circles for birthdays and white circles for anniversaries.  I didn't take tons of pictures since it's fairly simple, but here are the steps to make this:
Supplies:
-Wooden plaque wide enough to accommodate 12 rows of markers
-Screw hooks and 'eyes' (I could only find eyes so I had to bend them into hooks...).  Keep in mind you need one screw and one eye for each marker.
-Small wooden pieces to use as markers (mine are the circles)- these need to be big enough to write on, and thick enough to put a screw into (or you can hot glue the screws on the back, it just won't be as sturdy)
-Paint, brushes, and paint pens
-Stencils (optional)

My plaque started out like this:

You could even use scrap wood or a picture frame, anything with a thick enough edge to screw into.  I spray painted mine antique white and added the lettering with a black paint marker.  There are also some stencils in pearl white paint (you can kind of see the one on the left), which I like because it adds a little bit of interest without being too distracting.

Attach 12 screw hooks along the bottom edge, trying to make them evenly spaced.  Paint the month above each hook (or in my case, just the first letter).  This shows how it looks with the screws in there:

I put a name and a day on each dot (or will... still missing a few dates!), and then put them in order when I had multiple on the same month (looking at you, June!).  

That's pretty much it!  I suggest buying a few extra markers so that you'll have them as your family grows (and not have to find matching ones later).  I hung my blank ones on the bottom or on rows without any special dates. 

This cost about $30 to make, but it will greatly depend on your family's size.  You could also probably save money compared to that cost if you can find bulk packages of hooks and wooden circles (I was a little impatient...).

Do you have any good methods of keeping track of important dates?  I'm hoping this will make me better about sending cards and such!

Have a good week!