Footprint calendar {101 Days of Christmas}

As I was searching for footprint ideas for this year’s calendar, I couldn’t help but laugh. It would seem that most of the ideas on Pinterest are either made by adults with tiny feet or children with exceptional artistry.

Needless to say, our footprints are less about a perfectly cute work of art and more about capturing a snapshot of our kids’ growth in a fun way. They’re messy and imperfect, but we giggled our way through them and our 5-year-old has asked me every day when we can make some more!

Note: Footprint calendars are really best for 2 and 3 year old’s. You can make it work with an older child with the horizontal designs (flag, bus, etc.), but a 5-year-old’s footprint is too big vertically for the calendar templates. That said, you could make a cute footprint book instead if you still want to go that route!

Click here to download or print your calendar template.

Then browse through this list of ideas, each with a picture and description, to choose the ones you’ll use for your calendar:

Angel (footprint)  Apple Apple Tree Bald Eagle Bee Bird (footprint) Boat (footprint)  Bunny (footprint)  Bus Bus (footprint)  Butterfly Candy Cane Butterfly & Caterpillar Chick Crab Fall Tree Fish Flag (footprint)  Flowers (footprint)  Ghost (footprint)  Heart Heart (fingerprints) Heart (footprint)  Jack-O-Lantern Kite Ladybug (footprint)  Leprechaun Native American Penguin (footprint) Reindeer (footprint) Santa Shamrock Snowflake Snowmen Spider Strawberry Sun Sunflower Turkey Tulip Umbrella

If your calendar includes handprints, grab one of the handprint poems for the front page of your calendar. There’s space at the bottom for you to add names and the date!

A few tips from our experience:

Have your children wear smocks or old clothes. Clip hair back away from face, roll up pants and sleeves. There’s beauty in imperfection, so don’t worry about smudges or other “mistakes”. We usually do only one or two different designs at a time rather than trying to work through all 12 pages at once.  Washing hands or feet in between each one gets a little tiresome! When using multiple colors, it’s always easier if you let the bottom layer dry first, but it’s not necessary for most of these. Have fun!

Projects from the archives:

Join us as we celebrate 101 Days of Christmas with new DIY projects, gift ideas, traditions and more every day from now through Christmas!

Mandi Ehman is the blogger behind Life Your Way. She and her husband have four beautiful girls plus one baby boy, and together they live, work and homeschool on a little slice of heaven in wild, wonderful West Virginia. Mandi loves coffee, chocolate, easy meals, beautiful things and minimalist spaces.

Meet the 101 Days of Christmas sponsors:

Plant Therapy Essential Oils: 100% pure, undiluted oils you can trust at a price you can afford
King Arthur Flour's Baker's Hotline: free professional help with any holiday baking challenge
World Vision Gift Catalog: share a full life with children in need by giving unique, life-changing gifts
Life Your Way Christmas Shop: get your 2014 Christmas planner today

Footprint calendar {101 Days of Christmas}

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