Presidential Kin Calendar Project

So my first pan-family Xmas gift with a genealogy theme.  I have traced my mother's side of the family back along an number of lines to primarily New England colonists of the 17th century.  Of course, 9 out of 10 times I hit a road block before I get that far but I've been lucky in that early Michigan residents came primarily from old New England colonist families who gradually drifted westward from CT and MA to western Massachusetts, Vermont and/or upstate New York and then followed the opening of the Erie Canal to Michigan.  

Several of my ancestors, such as the parents of colonial immigrant Mary Lawrence, were the ancestors of Americans much more famous than I such as President Taft.  Thanks to the work of Gary Boyd Roberts of the New England Historic and Genealogical Society in his book "Ancestors of American Presidents," one can easily check to see if any one's ancestors were also an ancestor to American Presidents.

I've been immersed in researching my family tree for 15 years and I wanted to share this with my family who shared my ancestry.  How to make it interesting though....So I decided I would create a calendar annually that highlighted a particular them in our ancestry.  As I've uncovered 12 US President with which we are distant cousins thanks to Robert's book cited above, it was the perfect debut subject matter.  Thus, for each year, I created a chart along with some info about that president, who shares a common ancestor with either of my mother's maternal grandparents. 

Above, is October which features William Howard Taft.  The two columns on the right display the lines of descent from our common ancestor to my great grandparents (left column) and the descent to President Taft (right column).  I used this same template for each President.  The image was created in Powerpoint as I don't know how to use any other graphics program.  The resulting page was then turned into a jpg image.  

Once I completed these and a cover, I uploaded them to Snapfish which created 20 calendars for me for $10 per calendar.  The quality is very high and the pages nearly card stock.  One could certainly do this cheaper elsewhere but I wanted this to look professional (to the extent possible).  

I also enlisted my great aunt Carol to compile the birthdays of my family members and I added them into the dates on the calendar - occasionally adding pictures I have obtained of generations long gone like my Great Grandmother who is featured on her birthday, Oct. 30th.  The image is a little off in color as the carpeting is an olive green color in real life but you get the idea.

Here is the final product.  I used one of Snapfish's templates and altered the background from deep red to navy blue, each month.

If this doesn't capture my family's attention then nothing will.

Let me know what you think.