gift guide: 2019 calendars for a fresh start.

A 100-percent recyclable weekly planner for getting you through 52 weeks of plans and/or a perpetual calendar for putting to use year after year.

12 months of letter-pressed good cheer (including a print inspired by yours truly) and/or a tree-free planner with paper made from recycled stone.

A wall calendar sized for the whole family and/or a simple calendar for ticking off the days. (PS. If you’d like to take a trick from our family book, we use the uncoated pages for watercolor paintings as we rip off the months.)

An unbound calendar with a double life as a note pad and/or a handbound planner, covered in cloth.

I’ve said before, and no doubt I’ll say again, that I love the pen to paper ritual of crossing off tasks and checking off days. A calendar, to me, it about hopefulness, opportunity, and good luck. Sure: It’s also about deadlines, and obligations, and lists of things to do, but looked at from the sunnyside, all that is just an abundance of possibility, anyway.

Calendars, like socks, get a bad rap as far as gift giving goes, but I’m a perennial fan of both. Practical, hopeful, and, I do declare, personal indeed! Knowing how someone prefers their calendars (like their socks) requires a degree of intimacy and a certain depth of knowledge. (Not any old thing will do!)

In case any of you are inspired to treat yourselves—or those you love—as we close out another year, here are a few favorite calendars for record-keeping and plan-making. What’s more precious than that?