Finding that perfect gift

Each year I try to find an ornament for all of the girls (including my wife) that fits with something at least half way notable from the preceding year. I'm not sure why I started this tradition, it seemed like a good idea at the time. This is the only gift that I really sweat about as it takes a lot of leg work trying to find the right ornament. That said, the effort is worth it; each year when we decorate the tree the girls look fondly back on these small symbols of yesteryear.

My wife is probably the hardest to find the right ornament for. My daughters are always into something new and usually it's not too hard to find something appropriate. As they get older and get past the Disney princess phase, it will become more difficult. But for my wife its difficult just coming up with the appropriate theme, let alone an ornament to match that theme. Sometimes I have had to be somewhat clever (e.g. finding a mini Clue board game ornament the year she wrote a murder mystery play put on by our church).

This year the theme was her new book. Finding the right ornament was going to be tough. One year I did the Snoopy at a typewriter ornament, but what to do this year? I finally had to resort to making it myself. This was especially apt as one portion of her book was about making gifts for people using a small budget.

I measured her book and reduced the dimensions down about one third and cut a piece of wood to that size on my table saw. If I had thickness planer I would have used that, but I don't. My father-in-law has one, but I was trying to do this without her realizing I was up to something. Anyway, I painted this small block of wood white. For the cover, I took three of her books (we have plenty lying around the house waiting to be sold. If you want one, we'd love to sell you one), and placed them on our scanner so that I could recreate the cover in one image. Since my wife does plenty of scrapbooking, I was able to find a ribbon that matched the colors on the cover of her book. How fortuitous. I affixed that to the spine of the block with double sided tape and glued the cover on with a spray adhesive. I had to be careful not to over spray it and saturate the paper. I actually made two of these. The first I didn't paint the wood completely, and overdid the spray. Good thing I didn't wait until the last minute.

Needless to say, I think this ornament was one of her favorite gifts this year. Whew!