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{Guest Post} Dutch Birthday Calendars

ByShannah Coe Published: Updated:

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Howdy!  I hope you are enjoying all the guest posts we’ve had so far.  There has been some seriously amazing content from awesome bloggers so far and the rest of the month is FILLED with even more.  This week is birthday week at the Just Us Four house which means it is the perfect time for Jen to share her Dutch birthday calendars with you all.

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Hi there! I’m Jen from de Jong Dream House. I’m super happy to be guest blogging here at Just Us Four. (Thanks for inviting me over to your cyber home, Shannah!)

A little about me. I’m a sort-crunchy mama who blogs about green living, DIY décor, recipes, sewing, organization, raising our future rocket scientist, and our life as a Dutch-American family. My hubby Niels and I started our blog just over two years ago when we started building our dream home: one that was as energy-efficient, earth-friendly, and universally-designed  as we could afford. Our early posts document the journey from dream to reality. Since we’ve moved in, I’m blogged about things like how to keep track of missing socks, organizing with tension rods, how to make homemade (sort of) healthy Nutella, and my adventures in sewing.

As I write this, I’m still a little jet-lagged from our family’s nearly month-long visit to the Netherlands, where all of my husband’s family lives. It’s been 2.5 years since our last visit, so what we lack in frequency, we try to make up in duration!

Because we get back to the Netherlands so infrequently, we tend to stock up on a lot of our favorite things when we are there. There’s one thing I like to stock up on that is uniquely Dutch, brilliant, and just the thing to share with you by way of introducing you to my love of organization, my attempts to reduce our use of paper, and my appreciation of Dutch culture. I’m  talking about the verjaardagskalendar, pronounced ver-YAR-digh-CAL-en-der

A verjaardagskalendar is a perpetual birthday and anniversary calendar. (Dutch lesson of the day: verjaardag = birthday). Instead of filling out birthdays and anniversaries on a new calendar every year, this perpetual calender has lines and dates, but no days of the week. Pretty smart, right?

Now, here’s the brilliant part. I’ve been in many Dutch homes, and the birthday calender is always found in the same place. It’s not the kitchen, or by the computer or office area, as I might have guessed. Nope, it’s in the main floor bathroom. Every.single.time. (Because most houses in the Netherlands are built up rather than out, the main floor usually has only one bathroom, right by the front door).

One of the fun things about marrying someone from a different culture is discovering those things that seem so ordinary to one, while being rather surprising to the other. When I asked Niels why the calendar is in the bathroom he shrugged his shoulders and said that it’s the one room in the house that’s used every day, and when you are there, you usually have a moment to sit and think. (Clearly, we had this conversation in our pre-child days!)

We have added a verjaardagkalendar to our powder room, with a little note inviting friends and family to add their information.

In a few weeks, our son will be starting pre-K, and his world will start to include friends from school. We brought home a special birthday calendar for his bathroom.

Now that D is potty trained, he has little book shelf  doesn’t need to quite so many books to entertain him while he’s taking care of business.
So, if you don’t happen to live in the Netherlands, or have family there to visit, how can you get your hands on your own birthday calendar? Fortunately, Amazon has started to carry a few, like this sea glass-themed birthday calendar (<—affiliate link). If you have a lot of time on your hands, you can make something like Alissa at Crafty Endeavor’s bottle cap birthday calendar. Another option is to make a trendy chalkboard birthday calendar like my friend Lauren at The Thinking Closet. A little-known gift lurking in your Microsoft Word program is a selection of birthday calendars. When you open a new document, search the online templates for “birthday calendar.” As I write this, there are three options.
Or, as a special gift to you, I have created a custom birthday calendar for you.
You can download this pdf  for your personal use, print on card stock, and add your own 4×6 photos, like this:
Add birthdays and anniversaries. If known, I like to add the year, as well.
I blurred the names of the innocent.
Punch a hole, add a ring, and you are ready to go!
If the bathroom seems like a strange place for your calendar, consider another area you see every day, like the frig.
A big thanks to Shannah for letting me take over her blog today. I’m rolling out the welcome mat for all of you to come visit me at the de Jong Dream House. And if you really like what you see, you can follow us on Facebook, Pinterest, Blog Lovin’ and/or Twitter.
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Awesome idea right?!   Thanks so much Jen for sharing this idea AND printable with my readers.
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2 Comments

  1. Yay! Loved that I unknowingly happed upon a Dutch bathroom tradition with my DIY Birthday & Anniversary Calendar! And thanks for the link love, Jen. Such a fantastic project! (And printable.)

    Reply

    1. Isn’t it super fun when you find out something you did was party a of a larger tradition in a foreign land? I had no idea creating calendars like this was a Dutch tradition! Good thing we have Jen to help us out 🙂

      Reply