Amazon is sold out of the Tolkien calendar.
The Frazetta calendar is OK, but not great.
I am not a fan of Boris Vallejo and Julie Bell.
None of the Norman Rockwell calendars are good this year.
Grumpy Cat is not as good as previous years.
The Dilbert calendar is disappointing.
The Far Side calendar has one good picture, but no information on the other 11 months.
The Cthulhu calendar has one good picture, but no information on the other 11 months.
Taxidermy Disasters is funny, but I don’t know if I want to look at those for a whole year.
There’s an Ansel Adams national parks calendar that we order every year. Are we that fond of black and white landscapes? No, but it has the biggest squares of any (tasteful) calendar we’ve found.
Then we write in activities/errands with our 12-pack of ultra-fine Sharpies:
Seahawks Green for Mom; Teal for Dad (I love football but I’m a bigger fan of Pantone 321), kids are AC/DC Black, Toy Machine Red, and Packers Yellow. Holidays are pink, birthdays are tan, and church is red for some reason.
I’m a fan of the Dumb Runner calendar with motivational messages such as “you’re stronger than you think, but probably not by much,” or “try to forget your many, many failures.” And it’s a small business (one guy, so about as small as you can get), which are getting slammed this year.
But I’m a runner and have a questionable sense of humor, so this might have limited appeal.
I get the Ansel Adams wall calendar every year, too…for sort of the same reason. While I do like Adams’ photography, the selling point is being able to read the dates from across the room.
I also get a moon phase calendar every year. Celestial Products has a couple of neat types on Amazon.
For years I would get the Demotivator calendar and hang it on the wall behind my desk at work. My co-workers loved them and everyone would get a good laugh each month. Then one year, a vendor’s “engagement leader” complained to my boss about it and I had to take it down. Way to demotivate everyone!
'99? Why not '37? I used to scour antique stores for old calendars, keeping a list with me of which years correspond to the upcoming year. Not easy with leap year in there.
Of course, pre-internet this took some math (now, not so much), and one reason I did it was to give myself a reason to stop in small towns and prowl old musty antique stores (while my wife would be wasting her time in some well-lit store that didn’t smell like a basement).
My brother is a fairly talented photographer. Every year he makes and gifts calendars that look back at the previous year. I’m actually looking forward to seeing this year’s effort.
Cat Lovers Against the Bomb calendar is ‘da bomb’-check it out. Really about peace, justice, inclusion, irreverence and a big beautiful kitty on every page. Non-profit, all proceeds to peace and justice initiatives. There’s a Dog version too and a LGBTQ Cat Lovers version. RebelCal phone app is $1.99 and a different view every day.
They are very well done and esthetically pleasing-at least one good thing about your day. The site makes it very easy to send as gifts also. Hard to go wrong with artful cats or dogs.
Started many years ago by Nebraskans For Peace, when The Bomb was something to worry about, especially since a million of us lived down the road from the Strategic Air Command.
