long time coming

I've finally gotten my camera back so I can finally post about Steve's birthday! I'll start off with his gift. Steve is really hard to buy gifts for. I am pretty good at buying him clothes but other than that, I am usually at a loss. Since this was his big thirtieth I wanted to make sure it was something special. I thought of a few things we had talked about getting or him wanting and decided I would let him choose which of the three he wanted. Now my only problem was figuring out a way to wrap these momentary intangible things. First, I took apart an envelope I had and traced the shape onto three different pieces of scrapbook paper and cut them out. Using my bone folder I folded the four sides so they would close up nicely.



I had some old card stock lying around from our Christmas postcards so I drew each gift option (3 fruit trees, a kindle, a home brew kit), carved it out, and glued a piece of origami paper to the back. These were then glued to the envelopes.



They were all closed up, each tied with a ribbon...



...and bundled together with these wonderful paperclips. (he chose the home brew kit, by the way)



The second little gift I made for him was a birthday button. I had seen this birthday boy badge on a blog somewhere (I'm sorry I don't remember which one!!) and thought to myself "I can make something similar." So I did. Steve bought me a little wood burning kit for Christmas and this was the first time it was put to use. ($20 at Michael's) It definitely took a lot of practice. For the writing I simply printed the text on paper, colored the back with pencil, laid it on top of the wood circle and traced the text. It transferred to the wood so I could easily burn it. You could use carbon paper if you have some but this works if you don't.



I had some scrap felt lying around, so I cut them into little petals and laid them out in a pattern I liked. I hot glued around the edge of the petals and stuck the circle on top. I also glued a piece of felt on the back to secure it all and finished it off with a pin.



It was so great to see Steve wear this all day, all around LA. He was such a good sport. His birthday party was a success with homemade tacos, delicious treats, ladder golf, and an outdoor screening of The Big Lebowski complete with horchata White Russians. The absolute BEST part of the whole birthday celebration was a custom pinata we had made of Steve's head. It was so great to see everyone's reaction and to watch the real Steve knock down pinata Steve.