Anniversary Attempt At Art

Well, at least I can say I can handle alliteration. Artsy craftsy stuff, not so much. But it's the worst part of dreary,grey, cold winter and I need to do something to spruce up the place, AND it was our anniversary and I thought doing a little something to remind ourselves of where we came from and why we got on the Crazy Train in the first place couldn't hurt. So I headed out to Old Time Pottery and got a whole mess o' white frames and a pretty candle thing. (This seems to be my default decorating move: get some candles!!) Here we are at step 1:

Step 2: Find some cute pictures of us being all lovey. This was difficult because, well, first off, we ain't that cute. Second, since Jack was born, it's pretty much either picture of me and Jack or Mike and Jack. Third, because Mike is the primary photo taker, more than any of the previous options, our pictures tend to be cool angles on barns or old cars or trees in the mist. But, I found some, scanned them, and took 'em to Target to get them made into the right sized. Went to Jo Anns for some pretty paper, found a poem and a little quote that had the right vibe, and did 'em up as cute as I could. Here's step 2:

The poem is by Percy Shelley and was on our wedding invitation. It's called "Love's Philosophy." I'm not so happy with how the quote turned out. It was supposed to have a whole lot more of the lighter far background paper showing, to make a bigger contrast, but I messed up the dimensions. And then was just too tired to really care about fixing it. One of these days....

So, then I got 'em all fixed up and wrapped up and gave them to Mike on our anniversary. The finished lot:


He was stricken with the very cute panicked husband expression of "Oh crap, it's our anniversary, I don't have anything, and the next few weeks of my life are going to suuuuuuuck." (For the record, he wasn't supposed to as we were heading out on an anniversary trip, but he was sure for a while that it was one of those famous woman-traps of, "oh honey, you don't have to get me anything" which men think mean "oh honey, you don't have to get me anything" and women all know means, "if you really love me, you will ignore what I am saying now and get me something perfect and extravagant and if you DON'T it will simply be more proof that you are a neanderthal.")