October 25, 2011

Happy Birthday, Supermom!

Happy birthday and happy 2nd wedding anniversary to the wife! Yes, I purposely planned our wedding date to coincide with her birthday to make life simpler for me. Only one date to remember and only one present required!

For Jessie’s surprise, I decided to make two scrapbook pages for her and the baby. I find that presents which are handmade and personalized carry more of a meaning than buying some random trinkets at Tiffany’s. Plus, it’s a heck of a lot cheaper.

Back when I was still teaching in the States, a fellow teacher turned author, Tanya Michelle, got me into scrapbooking. I highly recommend buying her book, The President Looks like Me. I’m not sure why pictures of my daughter and I reading our favorite book are not up on the website yet, but I’m confident this problem will be resolved the next time I check. (That was a not-so-subtle hint directed at you, Tanya Michelle.)

Anyway, I like being crafty, so scrapbooking was a good fit for me. I even took some classes and earned a “degree” in scrapbooking. Proud of my achievement, I included this degree as an accomplishment in my job resume, thinking recruiters might be impressed by it, thus giving me a better shot at negotiating a higher salary. Alas, the need for well-educated scrapbookers seems to be few and far between.

Making these scrapbook pages for the wife proved to be a challenge. Obviously, I couldn’t make them at home and I couldn’t run out and buy supplies whenever I felt like it. There was a lot of deception and smoke and mirrors involved in making sure the wife didn’t know what was going on.

While the designs are simplistic in nature, the process and effort to pull this whole thing off will probably never be fully appreciated by the wife. After all, she only gets to see the finished product, not what went into making it.

There was the whole planning and design process. Rough drafts that were made only to be scrapped a few days later. Blisters from doing so much cutting. Trips to the hypermarket next to work during lunch break to buy extra paper, and trips to various stores to find the elusive shadow box. Then there were the countless supplies I purchased only to be returned because they weren’t what I needed. The list goes on and on.


All I’m saying is that I better get some good lovin’ after this!



1 comment:

  1. how convenient to have the BD & Wedding @ the same day~ good lesson to other men....

    ReplyDelete