On the Christmas of Ro’s second year, a family friend made us and our extended family a custom photo calendar featuring photos of Ro that he’d taken and gathered from family. This was nine years ago when photo calendars were not yet readily available. It was a simple, but very thoughtful gift, and ended up stealing the show Christmas morning. Everyone enjoyed pouring over the photos he’d selected and reminiscing about Ro’s development over the year (children change so much in a year at that age). The calendar was enjoyed that day, and everyday for the rest of the year.

As someone who, for a long time has felt dis-ease with excess and has had a hard time with Christmas mornings, seeing the lovely gifts exchanged and knowing that many will not be loved for long, it struck me how loved the calendar was. So, each year since then we have given this same present to everyone in our family and circle of friends: a photo calendar covering our life in the last year. That’s it. Simple gift, but one they will enjoy the whole year.

I’ve thought more than once that I’d like to make a calendar that features the children’s art work but wasn’t sure how to. This year when I found a local shop, Tuta & Coco, out of Montreal, that produces high-quality prints and paper products from children’s artwork I was really excited to put my idea into print. Working with Tuta & Coco was a breeze, I sent them scans of the art work (thank you Dad for scanning all those drawings and paintings!), Tuta & Coco then processed the digital files and emailed me drafts of the calendar until I was happy with it and then they printed it. The work was done.

The hard part came before when I was sifting through and selecting which artwork to include…while I’m minimal in many ways saving my children’s artwork is definitely a weakness. Hashtag understatement of the year.

It was a lovely surprise to find when the calendar arrived that each month was it’s own print (separate sheets), the calendar is held together on a small handmade wooden clipboard, so after a month has passed you can continue to enjoy the print off the clipboard (there’s no perforation to ruin the print). The clipboard is a nice clean design. And, in Sen’s opinion the clipboard is “Amazing mama! But, do I have to wait until the end of all these months to use it for me?” Seriously, it is the cutest tiny clipboard!

I absolutely love that all aspects of the calendar product will remain useful and loved after the year has gone by. The prints can be taped to the wall, used as postcards or any number of other ways. The clipboard is a fun and functional small size, especially good for children to use, and will be great to bring along in the summer for sketching out in the wild.

One final cool thing with the calendars is that you can start with any month, since each sheet is separate. This means you can give the calendar to anyone (including yourself) starting in any month of the year. Bonus!

You can find Tuta & Coco’s shop here, they ship worldwide. You can also find them on Instagram here and Pinterest here. **This is not a sponsored post, just sharing a cool find 🙂

Tuta & Coco kindly included a favourite piece of artwork from Ro and Sen in their children’s gallery on their site, which the children are pretty proud about!

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