My wife is great at Christmas gifts. She does it the right way by putting time and thought into each gift. Over the years she has perfected the annual gift for our parents and grandparents: a personalized calendar.
This gift works perfectly for our talents and hobbies. My wife’s talent is scrapbooking. Thanks to her years as a high school yearbook editor, she has a great eye for page layout. My hobby (I can’t quite call it a talent) is taking photos.
Here’s how the process works:
- Throughout the year she reminds me to take good photos during family gatherings.
- My wife selects the best photos of my kids and our nieces/nephews.
- My wife arranges the photos in calendar project in iPhoto.
- I order the calendars and have them shipped directly to our parents and grandparents.
This year I decided to kick up the calendar a notch by adding birthdays and anniversaries. Of course I could have easily typed those into the calendar right in iPhoto…but then I’d have to do it every year. Like any thoughtful (and slightly lazy) man, I found a way to automate this for years to come. This is how:
- I created a birthday calendar (one for each side of the family) in Google Calendar.
- Each birthday and anniversary is an all-day event that repeats annually.
- I subscribed to those Google calendars in my Mac’s iCal application.
- I updated the gift calendar setting in iPhoto to import the desired calendars.
It worked perfectly. Of course I could have skipped Google Calendar all together and just done the birthday calendars right in iCal, but I use Google Calendar for everything else so I wanted those calendars in the same spot.
Image source: Google
