WALL CALENDAR TIME.
It is a much shorter post this year. I think it must be that fewer and fewer people use wall calendars, so there are fewer options: I kept getting search results that looked good but turned out to be calendars from previous years. And I find I am more willing, at least this year, to Pick Something without spending as much time on it.
(image from Amazon.com)
Esté MacLeode calendar. I saw that there was a new one of these, and if I hadn’t had this post to write, I probably would have just put it in the cart and checked out. It was a few years ago that I dithered too long and missed it, and two years ago that I bought one, and I would be really happy having one by this artist again. Just nice and cheery and pretty.
(image from Amazon.com)
Feline calendar (Terry Runyan). This is another one I’ve had before and could be happy just re-buying.
(image from Amazon.com)
Redouté calendar. I consider this one each year. This year’s images would go particularly well with (1) the color of my kitchen walls and (2) my resolution for the new year to finally choose a botanical tattoo and actually acquire it.
(image from Amazon.com)
Art Deco Fairytales calendar. This is more emotional intensity than I want first thing in the morning in the kitchen with my coffee, but it caught my eye.
(image from Amazon.com)
Nathalie L’ete Woodland Dreams calendar. I LOVE THIS. I LOVE THIS. I LOVE EVERY SINGLE THING ABOUT THIS (except maybe September; what is happening with September) and was in fact about to go ahead and buy it before even finishing this post—but I double-checked the squares, and they’re less than half of the calendar. I really, really need the squares space.
(image from Amazon.com)
Floral Ink calendar. This seems refreshingly simple, and restful for the eyes.
(image from Amazon.com)
Joyful Landscapes calendar. I was braced for cheesy, and/or perky sayings, but it looks pretty and colorful.
(image from Amazon.com)
Klimt landscapes calendar. I had this one for 2022; I don’t want it a second year in a row, but would consider again another year. It was pleasing to look at. A lot of green.
(image from Amazon.com)
This Is My Bookstore calendar. I need a better look at some sample pages.
(image from Amazon.com)
Cats and Books calendar. This is relevant to my interests. I wish they hadn’t sacrificed square-size to make the name of the month so huge: I (usually) KNOW what MONTH it is.
As usual, I would be interested to know what YOU are going with for a wall calendar this year, if you use a wall calendar.
I just ordered the World Wildlife Fund calendar. I was worried it would be too expensive (like their “‘FREE’ shirt with $65 donation!” merchandise), but it was $25, which seemed reasonable. The whole family likes animals, the pictures are nice, and I like supporting the charity. The boxes are a decent size for writing in. I’m happy with it.
I bought the Terry Runyan Feline calendar for 2023. I also found myself more willing to just pick something this time. Every year I want to get a Cavallini calendar, and every year I am disappointed that they still do not leave any room for writing down appointments or other things. If I wanted art, I would buy art! I want a calendar to be useful, darn it! (The one I wanted this year was the Herbarium one, if you’re curious.)
I love Terry Runyan’s style, it’s so fun and whimsical. She also does great tutorials online and is so encouraging.
I bought my husband a calendar from etsy by an artist local to me that I met at an art fair. She’s Emma Overman and her art is just so cool and interesting:
https://www.etsy.com/listing/1320865926/2023-wall-calendar?click_key=170ac293f7c10b8241f07c8762d3ebb9fc34709d%3A1320865926&click_sum=a4b229ec&ref=shop_home_active_1&crt=1
As for me, I get a boring utilitarian calendar that has huge boxes and no photos.
For the last few years I have gotten a Tom Till calendar. He’s a landscape photographer who takes stunning pictures all over the world but he is based in Moab Utah so many are of that landscape.
https://tomtill.com/product-tag/calendar/?v=7516fd43adaa
Every year I get the Hedgehogs! calendar I first saw in one of your posts for my daughter and I intend to do the same again if I can find it here in Canada (it’s been harder and harder to find over the years).
And I suppose I’ve lovingly groused about my family wall calendars before, but I won’t let that stop me from doing so again: I comb through all the photos I’ve taken with my camera and iPhone over the year, and the photos in my husband’s and daughter’s iClouds, and download the ones that catch my eye onto my computer. Then I go through that folder (usually several hundred) and mark the best of the best with 5 stars. Then I make 12 14×10 templates and choose an assortment of photos from the starred ones to go on each template. I process each of those in photoshop, copy and paste them into the template, then resize and jigsaw them together, then upload them onto a calendar-making site. My parents aren’t together, so I avoid pics of my dad and his house and his new family for my mom’s calendar, plus pics of her since she doesn’t like photos of herself. And I avoid pics of my mom and her house and husband for my dad’s calendar. I want pics of everybody, plus lots of pics of my dog in my calendar. So I’m saying I go through this making process three times, though there is overlap in some of the photos. And I have to consider factors like: will my daughter still be with her boyfriend all year? Hm, maybe I’d better just include him in a couple of months at the beginning of the year, just in case. My stepfather passed away this past March – would my mom feel sad or blindsided to turn the page to December 2023 and see a Christmas photo of him more than a year and a half after his passing? Just in case, I’m putting the photo of him in January.
It takes between 12-16 hours of work and my shoulder is on fire at the end of each session from too much mousing, but man, those calendars are amazing if I do say so myself. I inherited the ones I made for my Granny after her passing (no photos of my dad or dog, but some of my mom and lots of pics of me and my kids) and I’m very happy to have them. This is one of the things I love most about doing photography – the preservation and presentation of memories.
For home I like to use a Note Nook calendar because it doesn’t take up much space, there’s room to write in each day, and I like to have the pockets to store things like appointment cards or event tickets. At school I have Sandra Boynton’s Everyday’s a Fabulous Holiday because my students love reading what each day is. It often sparks great conversations.
I love this artist, had her calendar this year and got the new one for next year. I have it in my craft room really just for the pictures, it’s on Amazon
https://angelaharding.co.uk/collections/wall-calendars/products/2023-calendar
And this one for the kitchen
https://www.amazon.com/Floriography-2023-Wall-Calendar-Meaning/dp/1524873462/ref=sr_1_2?crid=2H12WHKWEE27H&keywords=floriography+2023+wall+calendar&qid=1670992337&sprefix=Calendar+florio%2Caps%2C99&sr=8-2
I really like linocut/woodcut style art so I’ve been eye the Martin Truefitt-Baker, Annie Soudain, and Angela Harding calendars for myself.
For my kids I got Marjolein Bastin Calendar: Sea and Shore, The Cobblestone Way, Flower Fairies and Johanna Basford Worlds of Wonder coloring calendars.
I love all of your picks, especially the Klimt landscapes. Although I picked pretty much the opposite of that for this year. https://bluecrowmedia.com/products/brutalist-calendar I used to hate this type of architecture but I think I just didn’t like being in it. I like looking at it as weird sculpture.
Vintage travel posters for the kitchen wall, and cheap tropical islands for by my desk. As you say, I need squares! And I like pretty travel photos.
Cheap as in $5 at Costco. The tropical islands themselves are not cheap, I don’t imagine.
Thank you for this post! I forgot about a calendar, but just found the perfect one for me. https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1664812237/ref=ox_sc_act_image_1?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&psc=1
I have two calendars in my kitchen, one hangs on the fridge for writing everything on, and the other is just around the corner but visible from the dining room and the other half of the kitchen. I’ve become more and more picky over the years about the one on the fridge. Must be just the right size, have lines, etc. I would include a link but it’s currently unavailable.
As a person who does not much care for the woods in real life, I am surprised how much I love that calendar. It makes me…feel things? What is this sorcery?
Last year I bought a calendar featuring Unlikely Animal Friendships. It delighted my daughter and me.
Every year we get free calendars in the mail from organizations we’ve given money to, and there are always more nice ones than we can use. We collect them and pick a new one on New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day. But it’s kind of a pointless ceremony, because we nearly always choose the one the Washington Post sends for the kitchen. It always has nice photos from the DC metro area. I will sometimes pick one with nature/wildlife photos from an environmental organization– we get a lot of those– for my desk.
This is what we do. Those we do and do not give to send us calendars and I just pick from those. And then am fair to middling about writing anything down and wonder why my brain hurts from the remembering.
I’m checking out the Paper Source calendars this year (https://www.papersource.com/desk/calendars) – thinking of this one maybe: https://www.papersource.com/desk/2023-cavallini-co-national-parks-wall-calendar-10020071.html?CAWELAID=120031300000096325
I tried something new this year. I got a calendar that didn’t divide the year into months, but rather into other relevant seasons. For us, that is the liturgical seasons. So each page might have three weeks or 10 weeks. I’m excited to try it out and see how it affects how I think about the year. I’m trying to figure out how else you could divide the year, and all I have so far is schoolyear segments and growing seasons. It’s a fun thought exercise.
BSharp, I wonder if you’d like something like this circular wall calendar? I think it would be helpful in changing how you view the year.
https://www.theroundmethod.com/pages/circular-calendar
I do not use a wall calendar and yet I love this post so much each year! My daughter might love the books and cats one! So cute!
I get one for myself and for each of my kids. I always get the Reading Women calendar: https://www.amazon.com/Reading-Woman-2023-Wall-Calendar/dp/108750435X/ref=pd_day0fbt_sccl_1/133-4713153-7038715?pd_rd_w=KEV49&content-id=amzn1.sym.c2062204-a945-491b-941c-359f18d6fec5&pf_rd_p=c2062204-a945-491b-941c-359f18d6fec5&pf_rd_r=E6DZJPJWMPK7W7SJ9DGF&pd_rd_wg=zUwYb&pd_rd_r=8d2ae04b-76c8-4d36-8f47-f51cc5115517&pd_rd_i=108750435X&psc=1
This year I got my one son the Pun Intended calendar: https://www.amazon.com/Pun-Intended-2023-Wall-Calendar/dp/154922736X
and my other son the Minecraft calendar: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1438889119/ref=ppx_od_dt_b_asin_title_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1
I meant to mention these desk calendars on the last post. You construct them every other month and by the end you have a little zoo of calendars: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0B5G7L1MV/ref=ppx_od_dt_b_asin_title_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Third year in a row, I went with Feathered Friends.
We also have a free one with pictures of food on it for our kitchen calendar.
I got to “botanical tattoo” and OOHHH OOOHHHH, let’s get tattoos!
There’s a place called wave and pave near me (East Boston) that’s been putting up cool botanical pics (it’s a tattoo parlor even though it doesn’t seem like it) on Facebook. If you want to do an FB search for that. They’re really pretty. I have an “I got it in my 20s” dolphin on my back and a eastern tiger swallowtail on my left forearm and I have some really pretty pictures of monarch butterflies that I’ve taken and think the swallowtail needs a friend.
I stopped at tattoo as well! I’ve been resolving to get my next one for six years. If anyone has an idea for something pretty and DNA/genetics-related I would love to hear about it.
These are good options! I sometimes wait until February when they’re on sale (for Rifle paper specifically, it probably matters less on Amazon).
I got my daughter this one, but she got one with her Highlights magazine so I may keep it myself, and then I’ll have to buy another for my office which is a treat.
https://www.calendars.com/shop/cat-2023-easel-calendar/202300006981
This year I got a Rifle Paper Co calendar that turned out to be so massive that I can’t put it on the fridge, as usual. I will have to figure out how to hang it on the pantry door in a way that won’t make my husband have a fit (he worries about things scratching the paint). It was not cheap, so the other day I was annoyed to see the perfectly acceptable knockoffs in the Target dollar section. I’ve been happy with a dollar section calendar before, but one year I missed the knockoffs and now I feel like I can’t depend on them.
I enjoy nature themed art and big boxes for writing. I really loved my Abacus Corvus calendar last year so I bought another one. It fits perfectly on the wall where I like it. I hope they continue making them every year!
https://www.etsy.com/listing/1249352254/2023-wall-calendar-home-spells-for-a?click_key=696539f7ebf57782a6a32ddfd12033043d7c3bd1%3A1249352254&click_sum=18c85fc3&ref=shop_home_feat_4&pro=1
My sister is a pediatric ER nurse and one day a more seasoned coworker of hers was telling a brand new coworker of hers that to work in the Peds ER you have to have a favorite color, favorite truck, favorite animal (land, sea, sky and dinosaur) and a favorite Disney princess. My sister scoffed and she didn’t have all of those and then in that same shift found herself saying “ …well my favorite truck is the fire truck”
And so this year for Christmas I got her the Fire trucks in action calendar as a fun little joke. It might not be funny all year, but I certainly think it’s funny now.
I love the calendar idea AND that pediatric nurses need all those favorites. LOVE THAT.
I have a strong suspicion that one might need second and third favorites as well.
I got the Subpar Parks one – from the @subparparks Instagram – as it delights me so. https://ambersharedesign.com/products/subpar-parks-2023-calendar
For 2022 I got one from an Instagram as well – from a paper artist I follow @bycharlieshand. It is cheery and has rainbows and I love it so much. I may dismantle it and frame a couple of the pieces if I can figure out how to do that without it looking too cheesy. (This is the Dec photo, which I feel you may enjoy a lot: https://www.instagram.com/p/CVuhvX_jNWl/)
Wait, I should clarify. That is the art from the Dec page of the calendar. The photo in the calendar doesn’t have all that stuff in the background. :)
I love Subpar Parks! If I needed another calendar I’d strongly consider one of these too!
My son always wants the Super Mario Bros wall calendar. My daughter will usually pick an animal calendar. My husband buys his own calendar and for the last few years it has been vintage ski posters:
https://www.amazon.com/2023-Square-Wall-Calendar-16-Month/dp/1804104841/ref=sr_1_2?crid=2Z3R9O9N2E3CD&keywords=vintage+ski+poster+calendar&qid=1671243534&sprefix=vintage+ski+poster+c%2Caps%2C127&sr=8-2
Last year for the kitchen calendar, I got Kwai Kitties. I’m not sure what I want to do for 2023 so I really appreciate this post and the comments. Gives me lots to look at and maybe something will strike my fancy.
We have this one for 2023: Celestial Journeys by Josephine… https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1804170062?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share
I got us a cute rats one for 2022 and I’d probably have gone with Hedgehogs for next year, but my wife, who has no enthusiasm about calendars, was enthused by the Celestial Journeys one.