Bearing Gifts

This year, those who had August birthdays ended up celebrating in September. It didn't happen all at once. At first it was Jill's birthday that was postponed a couple of weeks and then both Grammy's and Jill's were postponed another week and then, well it was going to be with Emma's birthday and then Emma's birthday was postponed. Whew!

This year, I was especially looking forward to the gift giving because I had made the gifts and it is enjoyable to give a hand-made gift.

Well, somewhat 'hand' made. But, first we have to go back in time. Back to when Grammy and I painted Emma's room.

Grammy had dropped by work before coming over and brought over a beautiful yellow rose that wasn't going to make it over the weekend if it stayed at work.

Guess who left her flower at our house.

Since we weren't going to be seeing Grammy soon, I took a few pictures to capture its beauty and began to think of ways to give Grammy her flower back. And when the petals started to fall of the real flower, I had to turn to a more figurative way.

I can't find the link any more, but I saw a Mother's day gift that inspired me to take the pictures of the flower and turn it into a gift. So I searched for quotes about mothers and I started to work on fixing the flaws in the picture.

This is the first time I've tried to touch up a picture, other than fixing red eyes in shutterfly or acne with picnic.com. I'm sure I'm not doing it the most efficient way, but I loved the wayt it turned out!

And the resulting flower looked good enough to be framed! I was quite pleased.

With that down, the next step was formatting the text and making a fake reflection. Now Justin can attest to the care that went into making the perfect reflection. I made many many test 4x6 pictures to see if I liked this one or that one. Each week I'd print them out at Costco or Target and Justin and I would look and compare. It was nice to have Justin's help in deciding the perfect reflection for the final print.

The quote reads 'Most of all the other beautiful things in life come by twos and threes, by dozens and hundreds. Plenty of roses, stars, sunsets, rainbows, brothers and sisters, aunts and cousins, comrades and friends - but only one mother in the whole world.' ~Kate Douglas Wiggin

I love how it turned out.

Someday I want to open a little Etsy shop and sell some prints. Someday.

It is better to give than to receive ~ proverb

Betre is to yive than to take ~ Gower in Confessio Amantis

‘Herb, you know the old saying: “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”’
‘What, presents?’
‘No, advice.’
2001 Washington Times 2 July B9 (Herb & Jamaal comic strip)