Well, you know how it is. I put all these images into Shutterfly, and they let you add a photo in every day of the year plus those empty boxes at the start and end of the month, plus add your own text. I spent an enjoyable few hours (I might check my computer history for how long this actually was) basically looking at my dog and was so enamoured that I would have liked to buy the calendar. It was not discounting very much. I think Christmas is the only time that Shutterfly is at capacity and doesn't have to give good deals. One calendar chock full of my dog was a little more than $40 altogether. This is comparable to the upper range price of the planners I would have already bought if their spiral hole spacing was correct, so very reasonable, but high enough that I would be willing to wait past January 1st to see if it would come down.
While I was waiting I made a second calendar. This was making my Shutterfly cart show a price of $70+ but also a banner saying that I needed $16 more dollars to reach their free shipping threshold of $79. That is close to my whole planner budget for the year so there is no way I would spend it, even though they had a picture of my dog on his gotcha day.
The planner budget is not really about money, but more of a limit on how much energy I am putting into procuring. I felt that leaving this open ended up until and past New Year's Eve was going to take too much mental energy. I started looking for when they went on sale the last couple years so I could set a reminder and stop thinking about it. Instead, I found that you can buy them on Groupon for the price of a regular drugstore calendar. (And I found that these really don't have a baseline price. Sometimes they are free with shipping. The lowest price besides free was $8.) This was not difficult but a little legwork with declining "offers" and entering info and going from site to site. So I paid $25 to groupon and $13 to shutterfly. This meant I spent almost the amount of the original price tag but for three calendars.
They (Shutterfly specifically, but also online shops) make it so confusing. I had to ask myself what it was worth to me and stick to it.
I also was inconsistent at using my wall calendar this year even when I really needed to, so I am hoping one that is so sweet will be helpful. My current job has been different locations and hours every day, and I am in a weekly filofax whereas I need monthly to keep everything in mind, so I had to draw a little chart of days and dates in my jotter so I'd have it. Actually I guess I still will but can transfer the info to a more permanent form when I get home each day.
Who wouldn't look forward to California Statehood if they got to see 1 old chihuahua.
