Three Years in the Making

My husband and I just celebrated our first wedding anniversary and third anniversary together on Thursday. Since our first anniversary as a couple, we have been taking a picture every year. The next year, we take a picture holding the previous year's picture. Now that we're three years in, it's starting to come together nicely!

My advice to anyone who decides to do this is to start with a larger picture! An 8x10 starts to look really small after a couple years. I didn't want to change it now, though, because I like consistency.I'm very pleased with it, though. Each year I put the new picture into the frame and move the old picture to an album.

On our first anniversary as a couple, my then-fiancé and I wrote letters to each other. Then, without reading them, we put them in the middle of a little bottle of rocks to be opened on our first anniversary as a married couple.

Two years later, it was so much fun to see what we predicted our lives would be like! There were also some very sweet words in those letters, and I definitely teared up a bit. I'm going to keep the contents of those letters private, but here's a picture of the little jar next to our tradition photo.

We chose not to save the top tier of our wedding cake, like many couples do. Something about eating year-old frozen cake didn't sound at all appealing to either of us (not knocking those who do it! I just barely like cake as it is). Instead, we went to the same bakery and the same cake decorator made us a scaled-down version of our wedding cake. It was absolutely perfect! She even made us a tiny, dark chocolate cake topper! That was a nice touch since we were so busy at our wedding that we forgot all about the cake topper...

All in all it was an incredible first wedding anniversary. Reece and I went to Branson and had a lot of fun. I am so lucky to have such an amazing man in my life, and look forward to the many years we have ahead of us!

Paper Anniversary

My first wedding anniversary is coming up, which is traditionally the Paper Anniversary. I have a few idea about what I'd like to get for my hubby, but that's a post for another day. Until then, I'd like to share the gift I made him for Valentine's Day that could easily be reworked for a first anniversary gift.

This was an incredibly easy craft requiring a deck of cards, Mod Podge, a hole punch, binder rings, and some decorations! The hardest part was narrowing down my list to 52 things!

This craft was not my idea. I used the tutorial and template provided by Wives Unscripted. There's another great tutorial at this website.

The first step is making a list of all the things you love about the person you're making the gift for. If you are having trouble coming up with items, several people have posted theirs online if you need some inspiration.

You can use any deck of cards, but I chose one with really lovely artwork that I knew my husband would appreciate (he did, he wants another pack to play with). Cutting out all the individual squares took some time, especially since I somehow fail at using a paper cutter. I made a template to punch out the holes with using one of the instruction cards for the deck and attached all the cards together with binder rings. I added some embellishments to the "cover" and voila!

Overall it was very easy and inexpensive to make, and I'm very pleased with the end result! My husband loved it too, which is the most important part. What did you get for your Paper Anniversary?

Artist Trading Cards

Thanks to my lovely pen pal Erica, I have discovered Artist Trading Cards! I've really enjoyed making them and trading them with people all around the world. Mine have been mostly mixed-media using water color paints, stamps, and found objects. I've been participating in swaps on ATCs for All, which has been a lot of fun! Here are some of the cards I've made so far:

Let me know what you think! Or if anyone who might read this likes to trade, drop me a line or find me on the ATC site I linked above. Have a great week, everyone!