Easy Homemade Calender

We are a family of 7. Our little calendar just wasn't cutting it when it came to adding appointments and activities to our calendar. I was browsing pinterest and came across a picture of a neat homemade calendar. They used a 10x13 frame and used paint color strips you get from Lowe's or Home Depot. I loved the idea, but needed it much bigger. With the help of my husband, we came up with a plan and made our calendar. I'm very happy with how it turned out and how much we spent! 

$9.97 for a 24x36in picture frame (purchased from walmart)
$0.60 for 6 pieces of scrap book paper
Free- Paint squares thanks to Lowes, you'll need about 40.
$6.00 for dry erase markers. We needed at least 7 because I am giving each person a color, so this cost will vary. 
$1.00 for the dots for the date to go. I only used 35 and the pack came with like 200!

So less than $18. for a calendar that will last forever! 


The frame was very basic, it was a piece of cardboard and a piece of hard plastic. We separated the two pieces and put the piece of cardboard on the table. 

Then we took 6 pieces of scrapbook paper and glued it to the cardboard. We only lightly glued the edges because once the plastic piece is on the frame, it will help hold everything in place. 

After we glued the scrapbook paper on, we laid out our paint tiles. We went with a variety of colors and just kept laying them out until we liked how everything looked. We cut tiles in half to make the weekday tiles. Then we glued everything down.

We cut a piece of scrap scrapbook paper for the month to go, we glued that down.

We let it all sit overnight. Which we didn't need to, but we forgot the dots for the date to go :)

After the much needed sitting to let the glue dry, we put the dots on. 

We used a Sharpie to write the days of the week directly on the 'weekday' tiles. We choose to do this because the days will never change, so we didn't want to worry about having to rewrite the days when we erase the calender each month.  

We decided to leave the left side open for 'Notes'. That will be for whatever. For example, my daughters birthday is coming up this Thursday. So I'll write on there a big Happy Birthday Katalina! So she'll see it in the morning. We'll probably also use it to jot down uncommon things that we run out of in the kitchen as well. 

My husband drilled some holes into a spare piece of wood for me to store my dry erase markers in. We mounted that just above the calendar. 

 Here is our finished product!