Magnetic Calendar

My three-year-old D has an early obsession with letters and numbers. I've often made little countdown calendars to events like Gramma's visit, or trips to see Opa and Oma, or moving out of our house.

It doesn't surprised me that he now asks me every morning to tell him the season, the month, the day and the date.  I had been eyeing this magnetic calendar from Melissa & Doug for awhile now, but hadn't bought it simply because we were selling our house and didn't need to add to our clutter.

Then, one day I was at one of my favorite craft stores, The Flower Factory, and saw this magnetic perpetual calendar for $5. 

It doesn't quite fit with our transitional/modern/toddler aesthetic, but I knew I could make it work. After I got home, I found a similar one online for, gulp, $80! Since then, I've found others for a more reasonable price at Pat Catan's and Michaels. Funny aside, when I bought this, the cashier said, he thought it was discounted because no one could figure out how to use it! 

After I brought it home, I realized that I didn't want to use magnets to cover up the numbers and words. Since I was working around a snowstorm and sleeping toddler, I looked around to see what I could do. I had a few old magnets on the frig, so I cut them into windows.

I needed to cover up the verbage from the magnets. I tried D's finger paint, but it was translucent. The only other thing I had on hand was glitter glue.

That did the trick.

I still had to do something with the right side to make it more kid-friendly. Plus, I wanted to incorporate the seasons.

Hello Modge Podge.

I made a quick seasons page in power point using four pictures of my son in the different seasons and using a background from the program. I printed it on photo paper.

It was still missing something, so I added the border using felt leaves I bought from the Target dollar bin years ago. I knew I'd find a use for them eventually.

I used a strip of scrapbook paper for the header because the photo was a little short. Then I used some chip board letters I had picked up at Hobby Lobby for another project to add "Seasons."

I made this very sad (temporary) arrow to indicate the season until I find something I like better. 

If I were more organized, I would have kept track of the cost of this project. But since, other than buying the magnetic calendar for $5, I used things I already had on hand, I'm going to say this cost me $5. And my son loves it!