Birthday calendar

 Are you that person? You know the one - the one that remembers nobody's birthday? Welcome to the club...

Trying to rectify my family's unacceptable behaviour, I put together a perpetual birthday calendar. Writing the birthdays in a book or on a calendar didn’t help, so I tried something else. A shelf in our kitchen with a monthly reminder of the birthdays and a daily reminder of the date, and it seems to work.

How I did it

Starting with the shelf, I used an offcut piece of beech for my shelf. I rounded the two front corners, in the event someone slides down the wall and into the shelf. On top, I used a router to add a groove. It's a nice way to keep the month board and birthday list on top. For the hanging part, I used picture hooks.  My router does not work on thin pieces, therefore I used a drill and chisel to sink the picture hooks. They should be flush or deeper for a shelf to hang flush to the wall.


For the month I used MDF placemats board. We had leftovers from our wedding. My toddler assisted with an illustration and I cut paper lettering to stick on top.

The list of birthdays I printed out month by month. I chose a jumbo picture frame and just change the birthdays each month. I find this a practical way to do it as it allows me to update should I need to.

For the day blocks, I got MDF cubes from my local laser cutting shop. To this I added numbers cut from paper. For one block, you need 0 through 5. For the other; 0,1, 2, 6, 7, 8. You notice that 9 is missing. The 6 doubles as 9, so look for a font where the two numbers do not differ.


Shopping list

-Beach - 560x35x20 mm
-Picture hooks
-MDF board - 250x300x3 mm (one for each month)
-MDF cubes - 40x40x40 mm (two)
-Jumbo picture frame
-Paper




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