I'm not sure how it happened but somehow it's March 1st. At the beginning of each month to get my creative juices flowing I have two random/fun traditions.

1) I change my desktop wallpaper. There are numerous resources for finding new and creative desktops but I'm partial to Smashing Magazine's monthly calendar desktops. Each month various designers submit their artwork/photography with an incorporated calendar for that month. Here is March's edition.

My current background:

2) My second random tradition is to print off a list of this month's fun/off-the-wall holidays. You may have seen various people posting on Facebook or Twitter "hey have you heard today is National Donut Day?". I love these silly holidays, so I like to have them all in one place. I think the extremely random holidays make for good social media content, or resident event planning, or just a fun conversation piece.

Here are some of the holiday's I have highlighted for March:

2: Namesake Day - perhaps your resident's would like to know how your property got it's name.
3: I Want You to Be Happy Day
4: Courageous Follower Day
8: International Working Women's Day - would be a perfect day to do a blog post about the women on your onsite team
9: Organize Your Home Office Day - this would be a great day to pull some resources to share on organizing small spaces
10: International Day of Awesomeness
13: Good Samaritan Involvement Day - why not organize a meetup for your residents to carpool to a near by non-profit to volunteer for a few hours on this Saturday
15: Napping Day: aka the Monday after daylight savings
18: Companies that Care Day - do your residents know what you're doing as a company to give back?
21: Memory Day - if you have a Facebook fan page, I think this would be a great day to ask your residents to post their favorite memories of living in your apartment or even post photos of these memories.
25: Letting Go of Stuff Day - many non-profits are happy to come pick up donations. This would be a great time to have your residents collect all their unused items to donate to a charity.
26: Make Up Your Own Holiday Day - what if a holiday was named after your community? What would the theme of your holiday be?
27: Education and Sharing Day

You might get a few ideas reading over the entire list of March holidays.

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Elysa Rice is an Emerging Media Consultant with Ellipse Communications, Multifamily Website & Software development company based out of Dallas, TX. Elysa recently spoke at NAA Student Housing Conference on Marketing to Gen Y.