Our Family Calendar--over the years

Soon after my mom passed away, my dad married my stepmom, Ilene, a widow with four grown children who were all married and had kids of their own.  At the time only two of my siblings were married...so the stats of our blended family were:  14 children, & I believe there were 19 grandchildren.

A few Christmases later, I decided to pick up something my mom started back in 1989.   Mom asked me to help her make a calendar for our grandparents with photos of us kids on each month.  We cut and pasted recent photos to an actual calendar.  Check out the authentic 80's look....

>>>Fast forward to I think it was 1997 when I made our first "blended" family calendar.  Between my dad's side of the family & Ilene's, there were probably no more than 50 of us at that time...totally manageable, right?  Because our family lived all over the US (still do), I collected photos through email mostly, and scanned some prints, including some old family photos just for fun.  The deal was if you didn't send in a photo of yourself then you didn't know what I'd dig up FOR you (this threat only worked with my side of the family since I had no access to such delicious bribery goods for Ilene's family---lucky them!).  Wayne had a nice printer & a binding machine at work so he did the printing and binding himself.  He's always been a great support, even when it's clear with a project that I've bitten off way more than I can chew.  The family calendar evolved with technology and became easier in that sense, but harder in the sense that our family grew by leaps and bounds, and obtaining photos of every single family member every year was always a challenge. Here's a page from last years' calendar that my SIL, Ange made using Costco photo... 

I love having SIL's and sisters who took on the calendar some years when my life was too crazy.  It's one thing I love about our large family; someone is always there for you.

Current family stats:

14 children + 12 spouses

52 grandchildren + 10 spouses

10 great-grandchildren

Do the math & we're looking at nearly 100 individuals!  It's a wonderful large family, but the calendar has busted at the seams.  I had to revert to just my side of the family this year, and honestly it was hard letting go of what I started.   It felt good to have a visual gathering of this family that started because my dad & Ilene fell in love, wed, and have been committed to this family ever since.  When I've made the calendar I've tried to include photos that show what extended family togetherness there was that year, and photos that celebrate special events...births, baptisms, weddings, etc. One year I threw in a photo of our old golden retriever, Samantha, asleep on the family room floor with my 2 brothers.

One issue that I ran into with this project that comes with any digital photo project....the photos had to be certain size or resolution, otherwise they print blurry.  This was easy to overcome if I was getting photos from Picasa albums, but not everyone had them, so I still had issues with lots of photos and chose to only use photos that would print clearly.

>>>Fast forward to the present...  I just got my family calendar for 2009.  I made it on my Mac using iPhoto & loved it.  Have a peak...

I was going to put a photo of all 4 babies born in 2008 on the cover, but had resolution issues, so the babies were well represented in the calendar instead.  The space at the top is for the coil binding & delete in your mind the "(" at the end.  The "I am important..." quote is something my mom wrote, framed, and hung in our homes growing up.  It stuck. 

I chose the iPhoto "picture calendar." Each page is about 10 1/2 x13" & lets you put up to 7 photos on each month.  The print quality is awesome.  This is a photo I took of the January page (edited a bit)...
 

I love how the calendar turned out, but now I'm on the lookout for something else to do for my dad & stepmom.  If they have wall space somewhere I was thinking of asking everyone to send them a family photo and they can have a family photo collage.  As a family grows they can just update the photo in that frame.  Do you have a blended family?  Is there something you do that unites your blended family in a way other than an actual reunion?  I'd love to hear your ideas.