If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you already know about the Christmas gift of the century that Becca and I created last year for her Pappy, PawPaw, and Daddy. I nearly killed myself trying to get it all done in time. So I decided to blog about it starting back in January, and start working on the art work – and give you ideas so that you could create your own calendars with your kids. If you didn’t see the original post, it’s here.
Maybe you’ve been working on your amazing artwork all year right along with us, or maybe you’re just now getting started. The beautiful thing is, it’s still August. YOU HAVE TIME. If you haven’t started yet, TODAY is the day! It’s TIME!! If you’ve got your artwork ready, and you’re just waiting for the calendar printout I promised, it’s HERE! Click HERE to download your FREE 2016 printable calendar ready to print out and stick in those calendars. 
In a couple of weeks I’ll sit down and get to the nitty gritty of actually how I put them together. Because you’ll want to know the lessons I learned from my mistakes, I’m sure. 🙂
My challenge for myself this year has been that I did a bunch of art with Becca early in the year, and I just flat out haven’t been brave with Grayson really yet. So in the next few weeks, I’m going to bring out some of our favorite art painting techniques and let Grayson try them! So for those of you with Baby Bees, you’re about to see this mama get really brave… It’s Toddler Painting Time in the Hinnant House! My goal is to have enough artwork to make every third month a collage of Grayson’s art. Next year we’ll start in January with both of them and do every other month in the calendar as work from each child. This year Becca will be a lot more involved in making the collages, too. I’m really excited about starting on them – I’ve gotten a few of them started with her over the course of time, but haven’t fully finished any of them. This is such a fun project, and I’m excited about planning an art time into our “school” day each day – for both kids.
Here are links to some of our favorite “Fun with Art” ideas that we’ll be revisiting in the next few weeks with Grayson:
Painting With Cars
Kitchen Brush Flowers
An Invitation to Scrape
Plus check back here next Friday for a super fun idea for Toddler Bees AND Big Butterflies that uses those millions of toilet paper rolls you throw away every week!!
Butterbees and Bumbleflies 
…I’m not sure where you want us to stick the artwork on the downloaded calendar… can we see the one you did last year?
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The artwork from the month before goes on the back- I’m going to do a detailed set up post in a couple of weeks. Just work on the art for now. Did you see the post from January? It shows pictures of our collages. You’ll scan the collages and print them on a color printer, then attach to the calendar blanks and laminate. (Is the short version)
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