Grammy Countdown Calendar

Still haven't had a chance to make anything new, so here is the countdown calendar I made this summer for the trip to see my mom in NC.  She lives on Ocracoke Island which is known for the pirate Blackbeard and that's where the pirate theme comes in, along with the beachy theme since Ocracoke is part of the Outer Banks.

The colors I used were two of the retired colors from Stampin' Up! Taken with Teal and Cameo Coral, plus black and white.  The orange was Bazzill cardstock, but I don't know the specific names of the shade.  The grid, title, days of the week, and numbers are all from Designer's Calendar cartridge and the fish border, beach/sea accents, and pirate cuts are all from Life's a Beach.  For the fish border I used my Gypsy to connect the border together to make it the length I wanted, but to keep it the same height, I think it was 1" or 1 1/2" -  I can't remember.  The little red car was to signify my husband's car and that was the day we would be leaving.  I think that cut came from Going Places, but for some reason I didn't write that one down!

For the countdown circles I used Life's a Beach cartridge and selected the tag feature.  I think I did this before the hide contour feature was added, so I just cut out a bunch of the seagull tags and cut off the little loop on top that would make it a tag.  At night before bed my sons would take turns and put one seagull over the day that just ended and that way they could see how long they had left before we left to see their Grammy.

I enjoy doing these calendars for my sons and making them all different depending on what we are doing.  This fall we will be going to the Smokey Mountains  and I am hoping to do a calendar for that trip as well, maybe with a woodsy, nature theme!

Counting down to Disney!!

Woohoo!!  It's that time!

We are at our 30 day countdown to our trip to Disney World!  This time we are going to celebrate my sons' 5th birthday.  I can't wait!  My mom and dad are coming as well, which makes this trip pretty special.  I feel I am super lucky to be able to have divorced parents who can still be friends and go on vacation together to celebrate their grandchildren's birthday.  Anyway, onto the calendar...

This is another hybrid calendar made with digital paper, photoshop, and my Cricut!

 

First I worked on the calendar part using digital paper from Digital Design Essentials.  I darkened the background, and lightened the paper for the circles.  I then used the Mickey font and the Disney World font for the letters and numbers.  The size of this portion is 8x8, which is then matted on white, then matted on black.  Once this was done and printed and matted, I worked on the Cricut portion.

I used the Mickey & Friends cartridge for the heart with the Disney, the gloves (border option), and for Mickey and Pluto.  "Countdown" was using the Disney World  font and "to" was using the Mickey font and I just printed that out and cut it by hand.

For the Disney heart, I used the same digital paper I used as the calendar background.  I just printed a patch of the digital paper on regular paper and then cut it with the Cricut.

 

I also cut out little Mickey heads from the cartridge and this is what my boys will put on the dates as we countdown to when we leave.  Every night before we go up to bed, they each take turns and stick one of the heads on that days date.  We even have a special place in our kitchen where I put the countdown calendars, and when I went to put this one up they went right to it and told me where to put it.  The whole thing is mounted on 12x12 paper.

I can't believe my boys are going to be 5 years old!!  I can't believe we will be able to celebrate their birthday (hopefully, if all goes well) in Disney World!  I am really looking forward to this, but I am trying not to show too much excitement because I am always afraid that once I do, the thing I am excited about won't happen!!  So for now I will cross my fingers and hope for the best and maybe pretty soon we will be in the happiest place on earth! :)

Countdown Calendar

Every summer we take a trip to go see my mom who lives on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. This year my boys started in May with the question, "When are we going to Grammy's?" It was never ending and they just couldn't understand just how long it would be before we left for vacation. When we went to Disney World I made a countdown calendar for them and it helped with the excitement and the questions about when we were going. So I decided to do the same thing for this trip.

First I made the calendar part, which counts down from 30 days to 1 day then the day we leave for Grammy's. The background paper is digital from Digital Design Essentials and the numbers are digital from Atomic Cupcake.

I added the beach elements from the Cricut Cartridge, Life's a Beach. Love that cart!! I know I will be getting a lot of use out of this one. Then I made little circular tags for my boys to place on the day right before they go to bed. They each take turns each night. The little circles are from the Going Places cartridge. I chose the cat because my mom has cats and it represents her, the house because it's my mom's house, and obviously the suitcase because we are going on vacation!

This is the calendar before we started the countdown:


Here is the calendar a little while later:


And here is a closer look at the tags or whatever they are called!

This has really helped and I haven't heard the question, "When are we going to Grammy's" since we started this. My boys love it and get really excited when it is their turn to put their circle on the calendar. Oh, and I know that there is a comma missing in Grammy's. I forgot to glue it on and then got lazy and just forgot about it! I'll just call it creative license! :)