Creating a Command Center: Dry Erase Family Calendar

After sprucing up our hanging mail organizer, I was motivated to continue working on our command center. About six years ago, I bought a dry erase calendar board to keep track of my appointments, special holidays, etc. When the Mister and I moved in together, that same dry erase calendar became our family calendar. When he makes plans, he puts them on the calendar so I know when he'll be busy or when to schedule other plans and vice versa. It works very well, but the board is starting to warp and it's color scheme of pink and green just doesn't match our home. Instead of going out and buying a new one, I scoured Pinterest looking for some ideas to make my own. Here is some of the inspiration I found:

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I love the idea of using paint chips to make a calendar because it's completely customizable and relatively cheap! I decided to use this concept to make our new family calendar.

I wanted the calendar to be a decent size but not so large that it took up our whole desk space. I also wasn't looking to spend a ton of money, so I stopped by Salvation Army to see if I could find a cheap frame. I found this beauty for $4.99!

You should have seen the Mister's face when I walked in the door all excited with this. He was petrified I"d be hanging it up in the house.

I sanded the frame down and painted it a dark brown color to blend in with the rest of the house. I've used this paint on several other projects in the house so it matched nicely. 

I grabbed a piece of black poster board at the dollar store for $.69 and cut it to size. Then I stopped at Lowe's and picked up some paint chips. I gathered together colors that were already being used in the house or colors that we hope to bring in in the future so that the calendar would blend in. It will be centrally located in the house in the home office area so I wanted it to easily match. 

I cut the paint chips down to 2x2 inch squares and arranged them in a random pattern. 

Once I was happy with the pattern, I adhered the squares to the poster board with scrapbook adhesive. I used some of the scrap pieces to make day of the week spots and overlapped a few to create a place to write the month. 

I love how this project turned out. It blends in well in it's new home and works perfectly. I decided to leave it setting on the counter top for now because I'm contemplating adding some sort of color or pattern to the wood panel wall in this space but that project must wait for now. 

For just $5.68, we have a beautiful and custom dry erase calendar that will help keep our family organized and on schedule!

How do you keep track of your family's schedule? Have you used paint chips to create a custom piece in your home?