{diy: notecard calendar}

July 14 is a pretty awesome day for several reasons.

First, it's Tanner and my one year anniversary! Woo-hoo!
Second, it's my five year anniversary at work! Yay!
And third, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, part two comes out tonight. This somehow makes the other two events less exciting. (Sorry, baby.) At least, I'm pretty sure Tanner is more excited about the movie than our anniversary, but I could be wrong.

In light of our anniversary, though, I've planned out some fun little things. My absolute favorite musical Les Miserables is touring in Portland next month, so I jumped on buying Tanner and I tickets to see it. (And by "jumped on" I mean I forgot to buy tickets until the last minute, so we're sitting in the last row of the highest balcony... but we're going, damn it.) It may not be on our anniversary, but it's close enough. And after taking him to see Lion King for Christmas, I think it's a must-do.

The other surprise I whipped up was a fun idea I pulled from {Wit and Whistle}, via {Design*Sponge}.


The gift is that of a "DIY calendar" made from index cards. Here's the design: you place 365 cards (+ leap day) in a small box and label each for a day of the year, with dividers to separate the months. Then, for each day, you write the year on one line and what you did that day.
The first year ends up being the least eventful because you're filling out the card for the first time. But after five years, the idea is that you can pull out a day -- say, July 14 -- and see five years worth of memories recorded there. Fun, right?

So here's how I created mine:

{notecard calendar}

366 4x6 index cards (colored or white)
12 dividers
1 recipe card box (make sure it can hold at least 380 cards!)


I found a pretty wooden recipe box at the Container Store which came with pre-made dividers. They were already marked A-Z, so I had to flip them over so I could label them myself for the months.
I wrote the date on top of each index card with a red pen, then stamped the month on the tab of each dividers. I decorated the dividers and placed them between each month. Voila! A pretty calendar box, ready to go. I considered decorating the recipe box itself, but I liked the plain wood so much that I decided to leave it alone. You can be creative about the box you use, though. I rather like the vintage look of {Wit and Whistle's} design.


Day one has already been filled out, and I look forward to many more days to come!

By the way, while strolling through {Anthropologie} the other day, I found a fun book called "Q&A a Day" that uses the same principles as the notecard calendar. Except, instead of writing the day's events on each page, you answer a question, such as: "what do you smell right now?" or "how happy are you?" or "today, are you a wallflower or a social butterfly?" 

There are spaces for five years worth of entries per page, so you can look back someday and see how your answers have changed from year to year. I like it!

One year anniversary... five year anniversary... Harry Potter... in summary, July 14th is pretty awesome.

Oh, and in light of seeing the tour of Les Miserables, today is also Bastille Day! Happy independence day, France! Yay for July 14th!