valentine's day goodness

One of my friends tweeted the other day: "One thing I don't get is when couples get each other clothes or electronics for valentines day/anniversaries.  That's not what it's about people!"

It's so true.  Some people think that Valentine's Day is a made-up holiday, and honestly, sometimes I can't help but agree with them.  We forget the meaning of it sometimes and it's easier to buy our other half something generic rather than put some time and effort into something really great.

So about two weeks ago, I realized I didn't really have anything to give to Roger.  I sort of already knew that I wanted to go the crafty-route and make him something sweet, but I really had no ideas.  So, like any other person would, I went to Pinterest.

I quickly found an idea for a year of pre-planned, prepaid dates-- one date for each month.  I believe the idea originated here by Shannon but I also liked some of the dates that I found here by Laura.  I honestly googled the topic for two straight hours and looked at so many blogs, but Laura's was the one that I found most memorable.

I started to plan out the whole project and started looking around for date ideas.  Then I ran into a problem. Remember this little thing called Optometry School that my boyfriend is applying to by the end of this month??  Yeah.  Right.  Hopefully we won't be in this area by the end of the summer, so I didn't really want to plan and pay for dates that we will hopefully never have the time to use.

So I decided to only go with seven date envelopes.  That was enough for February - August and then, I guess, when we see where we are, we'll go from there.

Most people I found put all of their dates into a labeled manila envelope and put them into a "date basket."  I liked how Allie took kind of a different spin on it and crafted the heck out of her basket and each blank white envelope.

I really wanted to make this special and unique, and I didn't really like the whole manila envelope concept of it all.  I thought it would be fun to decorate the envelope in a way that might give him a little clue about what we were doing that month before he actually got to open it.

As I was rifling through all of my craft supplies, I found something.

You might remember how I crafted up a little envelope to hold the Sabres tickets I planned on buying Roger for his birthday.  I fell in love with the idea of using these vellum envelopes again.

Since they're translucent, I could put my clues inside the envelope instead of on top of the envelope.  So here's what I did:

• Folded a standard 8.5 x 11" paper so that it fit inside the envelope
• Put my clues/any money needed on the front of the envelope so that they're visible when sealed
• Put the description of the date and any other supporting documents that would otherwise give away the date inside the folded sheet of paper

I loved this because it was sort of like scrapbooking (which I'm way behind on, by the way).

For now, I'm just going to post pictures of the covers of each envelope, so that Roger doesn't see the contents of the envelope in case he were to get on here and check my blog.  However, I promise I will come back and link this post to each new blog post and vice versa so that it'll be easy to check back and keep track of each date as it goes on :)

February:

March:

April:

May:

June:

July:

August:

Annnnnddd the final product all wrapped up:

I just wrapped it up with twine and put a little washi tape garland on it.  I also used a small doily to sort of cover up the note that explained what the gift was all about and why I made it for him.  And because I'm a sucker for mini clothespins and my favorite aqua sparkly ribbon (seriously though, that ribbon has made the cut in 8 of my 60 Instagram photos), I had to embellish a little with that.

And that's it.  All done.  It was pretty easy.  Once I got my ideas and supplies together, it didn't take long at all, and it's such a sweet and sentimental gift.  I really hope he likes it and appreciates it as much as I appreciate everything he does for me.

As promised, here's where I'll link to future posts:

February: Midnight Bowling

March: Get A Clue

April: Couples Painting Class

May

June

July

August

:)