Let me be clear. When it comes to gifts for my husband, I shot myself in the foot on our very first Christmas as boyfriend/girlfriend back in 2002. I cross-stitched his favorite football team’s logo onto a piece of fleece and turned it into a blanket for him. Extremely thoughtful, fairly creative (since I had to figure out how to get a pattern made out of the logo), and a bit time consuming. It took me a while to do it.
But here’s the thing. Try topping that! We weren’t even married yet (that would happen about 5 years later), and there were so many gift giving events to come. I’d really done myself a disservice by giving him something so awesome that early in our relationship.
I’ve had a few shining moments over the years, really. I found a Pinterest idea that involved string nail art, and made a painted plank with nails in the shape of our home state and a heart in the middle for his home town. One Valentines Day, I cut out all the cities in our history from an Atlas, and put them all in a picture frame.
But this year, I found a few great ideas on Pinterest, that instantly went into my private Gifts board so that I could find them later. One of them really caught my eye: Open When…
Open When envelopes have instances or situations written on the outside: Open when… You need a reminder of all the things I love about you. Open when… we’re fighting. Open when… you’re imagining our future. Etc.
I loved this idea, and thought that MM would as well, because he enjoys thoughtful gifts much more than material ones.
I did more research on it, as all I got from the original pin was a picture of one envelope, and found about 4 other situations that could be used. That’s not enough! I stumbled onto a site with a whole lot of ideas, mainly for those that are deployed overseas. I ended up with 17 topics.
I then thought about how many of these I would want to do. First, I thought that 365 was a good number. One for each day. Then I realized that I wouldn’t just have to write on 365 envelopes, I’d have to come up with 365 envelopes worth of content. 🙂 That’s a bit too much pressure to put on myself. I tried dividing that in half, and still, it was a bit much. So, I settled on 91, just about a quarter of the days of the year.
Next, I created a spreadsheet (I know, I’ve turned this really creative, thoughtful gift into nerdy work), with all of the topics I’d decided on, and used it to figure out how many of each topic would be created.
And because I just work this way, I used the spreadsheet to type out the messages I would write for each topic. In this way, I made sure that I wasn’t repeating myself, and I gave myself a fair amount of time to really be thoughtful about what I was trying to say. So, over the course of a couple weeks, I would think of something, go into that spreadsheet, and type out my message.
Now, onto execution. I realized a bit into writing my messages, that using a full 8.5×11 piece of paper wasn’t really going to work. Some of my messages were pretty short. So instead, I decided to go the route of blank cards. Joann’s was my source, and I ended up with their DCWV Box of Cards in Black and White.
I spent some time filling out each of the cards with my messages, put the topic on the front of the envelope, and then decorated the envelope with fun little pictures or symbols. I’m especially proud of the plane. 🙂
Now I needed to figure out how to package these things in such a way that they wouldn’t end up in a bag forgotten. Back to Joann’s I went, this time, to try to find a box. A pretty box wouldn’t work, becuase it was going to end up in the man cave. So I found a wooden CD crate. The cards fit in sideways, which isn’t ideal, but worked for my purpose.
I wrapped groups of 20 or so in ribbon, and then placed them in the box, which I had used a paint marker to label. And the final result is this:
I am insanely proud of this project, and I can’t wait to give it to him this weekend! Typically, when I finish a project, I go tell him right away, but I can’t do it this time, and it’s killing me! 🙂
Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone!