I'm Cuckoo For Calendar Journals!

Okay, so, it's been driving me crazy that the last thing I posted here was patriotic toenails...in July!  Come on get with the times already, right?  I'm not even going to bother trying to fill you in on every little detail of the last eight months but I have been busy making "stuff" and "things" that I would definitely like to share here.  So, let's get to it!

Since December 2011, I have made about fifty of these...

They are Calendar Journals.  Basically, it's a box containing a card for every day of the year.  Every day, you write the year and something simple you would like to remember from that day on the corresponding card and then move it to the back of the box.  You can keep repeating this every day, every year, until you don't have any more room on the cards.  Eventually, you end up with multiple events from multiple years written on each card.  Sort of a "This Day in History" file for your own life.

I didn't come up with this idea on my own.  I first found out about Calendar Journals when a friend of mine blogged about them back at the beginning of 2011.  At the time, I thought it was a neat idea but really had no motivation to make one of my own.  When Christmas rolled around, I decided to make a few as gifts and then quickly realized that if I was going to expect someone else to appreciate the "weighty responsibility" of maintaining something like this, I had better commit to doing it myself.  And then, things got out of hand (as usual).

After I made the first "batch" of these things I realized that it combined some of my favorite mindless, repetitive/soothing tasks: stacking small pieces of paper, cutting small pieces of paper, and sorting small pieces of paper.  Add in the bonus of picking out "fun" small pieces of paper to use as the month dividers and you have the makings of happy crafting time as far as I'm concerned.  I started thinking of other people I could give one of these to just so I had an excuse to make more.  I think I literally got addicted to making them.

So, here we are, now into the third month of the year and making Calendar Journals is still my number one stress reliever.  Also, I am still faithfully maintaining my own Calendar Journal.  I love deciding at the end of the day what event(s) to choose to write down and I look forward to being reminded of them when those cards roll around again next year.

I tried to emphasize to all the people who have received one of these from me so far that this isn't supposed to be a pain and it shouldn't cause them guilt if they don't ever get around to using it.  The great thing about these is, they don't go bad and you can jump in at any time.  You don't have to be consistent and you don't have to stress about it.  Either way I hope the recipients of the fruits of my Calendar Journal mania are enjoying them.  And, if I know you personally and see you on any kind of regular basis and you have not yet received a Calendar Journal from me, please don't feel neglected, your day is coming!*  Probably when you least expect it.

So, what will I be writing in my Calendar Journal tonight?  "2011 - Finally got off my butt and started blogging again!"

*This currently only applies to females because I have yet to come up with a good way to make this less of a "girly" project.  I hate to be so "sexist" but I just couldn't picture giving any of the above pictured Calendar Journals to any of the male friends I have.  At least not with a straight face.  I welcome any creative suggestions anyone might have.  Different paper, different containers, less twine bows?  Probably.