5 Reasons to Personalize a Photo Calendar

Move over generic kitten and puppy calendars, there’s a better way to keep track of all your most important life events, activities and appointments while also showcasing your favourite photos: a fully personalized photo calendar!

While we’ve been offering personalized photo calendars for years, you’ll now have even more options than ever, thanks to our newly launched sizes for centre coil bound calendars. They are now available in 6”x6”, 8”x8”, 10”x10”, 14”x11” and 12”x12” (as well as a premium 12”x12”) and come ready-to-hang. Turnaround time on these centre coil bound calendars is 5 to 7 business days.

All of our calendars also now offer the option to type in special dates on each month as well as personalize those dates with a chosen image. They also have different templates you can use to personalize each month with multiple images – the perfect solution for when you can’t choose just one photo. Our calendars are also available in both English and French. And don’t forget – all of our calendars can be customized to start on any month!

There are lots of reasons to personalize your own photo calendars, but here are our top 5:

1. It Will Keep Your Family Organized

Keeping track of a whole family’s worth of schedules is a tall order. Get a jump start by personalizing your calendar with all the important family events and special dates you know will be coming up over the next year. That could include everything from family members’ birthdays to holidays and important school dates – even Taco Tuesdays and family games nights!

Feature photos of your family from the previous year, corresponding to each month; think family vacation photos during the summer months, Halloween costume photos for October, a family Christmas photo for December, etc. It’s a good excuse to dust off your hard drive and go through the pictures you took last year. If you have a family pet, don’t forget to include a few cute photos of them too!

2. It Makes A Romantic Anniversary Gift

Coming up with a creative and thoughtful anniversary gift each year can be tough. This year, gift them something extra special: a calendar personalized with photos of the two of you. You’ll be able to hand pick photos to be featured for each month, plus we recommend adding a special message and photo to your anniversary date. You can also include some special surprises each month by adding text to certain days, like ‘date night’ or ‘I’ll cook you dinner/do the dishes’ that your partner can look forward to throughout the year.

3. It Makes a Thoughtful Birthday Gift

Make a calendar that’s all about them for their birthday! Pick your favourite photos with them to feature, and of course make sure to add a special note on their birthday date (and even add a photo).

If you’re celebrating your baby’s first birthday, a ‘baby’s first year’ calendar would make a sweet and sentimental gift to give to family members. Choose photos from throughout their first year to show how fast they’ve grown over the months!

4. It’s a Great Keepsake for Grandparents

Grandparents love a good keepsake. Surprise them with a calendar, personalized with precious photos of their grandchildren. You can add each grandkid’s birthday to the calendar too, so they’ll always remember.

If you have old print photos of your grandparents, you could also feature some of those photos in the calendar too for them to reminisce over. If you need some help digitizing old photos in bulk, check out our Photo Scanning Box Service.

5. It Can Double as a Way to Feature Your Child’s Artwork

Our photo calendars can be functional pieces of art! Save space on your fridge by having your favourite artwork by your kids all in one place. Just take your child’s artwork, scan it, and personalize your calendar with the digital image files. When you flip the calendar each month, you’ll get to enjoy a new drawing by your talented little Picassos! You could even commission them to create special drawings for their birthdays and other important family events, which can be added as images to individual dates on your calendar.

 

Get started with creating your own personalized calendar online, or you can visit us in-store to use our kiosks (and get a little help from our LDExperts if needed). You can also download our London Drugs Photolab App, available for iOS and Android to order easily from your smartphone or tablet on-the-go!

4 Tips to Clear the Clutter after the Holidays

The most wonderful time of the year is officially over, and if you’re like most of us, you probably have more than a few things that need to be tidied up, de-cluttered, and put away. But getting your life back to normal doesn’t have to be anywhere near as stressful as last-minute gift shopping.

Our clutter clearing hints below will help you make the transition from holiday season to clean-up without losing the joyful glow cultivated over the last few weeks.

Box it up for Charity

Some say Boxing Day originated in the UK, as the day when the collection boxes for the poor were opened, and distributed. Other origin stories have it that Boxing Day was the day working people collected gratuities or acknowledgements of service for the past year in the form of ‘Christmas Boxes.’ Either way, you can use the spirit of Boxing Day to take a look around your home and see what can be boxed up and sent to charity. And while you’re in the dark corners of closets you haven’t seen in years, a little organization can’t hurt either. This will make room for all the shiny new goodies from Christmas and give you a fresh start to the New Year while helping out someone in need. A true win-win situation.

Send Your Christmas Tree into the Wild

If you have a backyard, why not consider digging a spot for a temporary home for your much appreciated Christmas tree? After the lights are taken down, simply plant your tree outside. The tree will give small wildlife a nice warm place to nest up among the needles during the winter. Once spring or summer hits, the tree will likely have dried out enough to have a bonfire with it for a fun Christmas in July celebration (festive outfits and eggnog milkshakes encouraged).

An Egg-cellent Idea for Your Egg Cartons

Make sure to save all the egg cartons from your Christmas baking. If they have long been recycled, throw a post-holiday brunch to get some new cartons to save. The small pockets meant for the eggs make great protective storage for delicate ornaments and can be labelled accordingly for decorating next year.

Start a Relationship with Clips

Get ready to meet your new best friend – binder clips. Yes, you heard that right. These humble little office supplies come in very handy for keeping your entire home tidy, but there are some great tips that you can use right away for post-holiday organization.

  • Freezer overflowing with turkey leftovers? Free up space and bring hard-to-see items to the front by clipping bags underneath the wire shelf.
  • Clip the ends of wrapping paper rolls together to keep them from unrolling and getting wrinkled in the cupboard.
  • Create a fun and casual photo display of all of your holiday memories by clipping them together lengthwise in an easy-to-hang chain, string them onto a ribbon for a horizontal display, or use thumbtacks to pin them up in whatever configuration you like.

We hope these hacks save you some stress as you wind down the holiday season. We wish you joy in the New Year from our London Drugs family to yours.

3 Kid-Friendly Life Hacks for Back to School

Back to School Kids Backpacks Organized London Drugs

It’s that time of year again…the kids are heading back to school! It won’t be long before the chaos sets in (hello messy backpacks and busy mornings!), so we’ve compiled some smart kid-friendly ideas to start the new school year right—with less stress for parents. Here are three life hacks for staying organized and keeping your kids on time for school!

1. Keep your kids’ school backpacks organized

Are important things getting lost in your kids’ backpacks? It happens—especially with the little ones. Try creating a ‘post office’ and ‘bank’ to keep supplies safe! This life hack for back to school will eliminate any crumpled notices or lost money for field trips. Safe supplies, happy parents!

2. Speed up your kids’ morning routine

Trouble getting your kids to do their tasks and to get them out the door in the mornings? Make things fun and encourage them to tackle tasks with speed. Here’s one clever (and tasty) trick for kids to complete their morning chores. Perfect for those end-of-summer days—and your kids will thank you!

3. Use colour-coding to organize your kids’ notebooks

Do your children need some help keeping their school notebooks organized? If they’re in a rush to class, sometimes it’s hard to remember which subject is in which duotang, so they grab them all. Use this quick and easy trick to colour-code math, english, and science! Now they can find the notebook they need in their backpack—fast. Simple, easy, organized!


Are you looking for school supplies or other back to school essentials? You can find everything your children need at London Drugs in-store and online!

Tangled Necklaces While Travelling? We Take Care of That.

If you are heading on a trip this year, pack up your makeup and jewelry like a pro. Prevent a tangled mess of necklaces using only a couple of drinking straws, and save yourself the frustration of untangling them all when you arrive at your destination!

  1. Start with an untangled necklace.
  2. Take a regular drinking straw.
  3. Thread each necklace through the straw (or slit the straw and slide the chain in).
  4. For shorter necklaces, cut the straw to length.
  5. Pack them up, and you’re ready to go!

Find all of your travel needs from London Drugs in-store and online, and know that we’ve got you covered with our #LDSolutions videos.


Need other great tips and tricks to make life easier? Check out more of our helpful LD Solutions Videos on YouTube or individually here on the London Drugs Blog: