An art journal as a present

So like twenty hundred other people, I made a journal for my Significant Other. It was our anniversary on Saturday - we've been married for five years now (holy shit) and been together for ten years. An entire decade. We've been together for about two-fifths of my life. Wow. Anyway. I made a journal for him. It is a bunch of reasons why I love him in it...



This is what I started off with. It was a style supplement that fell out of a magazine. Lovely sturdy outside pages. I sanded and gessoed them. I forgot to take photos of the outside once I'd done them, but on the cover I put a picture of us.



First pages. I've covered up his name. Vintage map used on the right.



The Red Dwarf picture is from last year's calendar and the picture on the right is from one of his computing magazines that I did have permission to cut up, lol.



The glitter writing was SO hard to do and even now I think it looks awful. The page on the right says "I love you because you call me stupid names" and I wrote some of the stupid names down, but I've covered them up because they are a bit vomit-inducing.



The left hand page was definitely trial and error. It says "I love you because you let me get a cat even though you don't like cats... and because you are a good cat daddy!"



More computing magazine images on the left. Pictures I had saved on the right. Which he is lucky to receive.



The right hand page says "I love you because you love me and all that I am. I share myself with you... thank you". The word circled is 'them'.



The left hand page says "I love you because you married me!" and the right hand page has another photo of us on it. I added a sticker to this that says "Here's to the next decade!"



This is how I wrapped it. I wrote his name on one of the heart post-its and stuck it on with stickers.

He was a little overcome when I gave it to him, I think. I'm not really sure he knew what to say, but he liked it!

Happy anniversary to us!

This time five years ago I was at my parents' house with one of my bridesmaids, really ridiculously nervous about my wedding the next day. This time ten years ago I was probably talking to Himself online, trying to work up the courage to ask him out. I did. We got married five years to the day after we started going out and now, ten years later, we have been together for what feels like forever.

Happy anniversary sweetie; I love you so much; I do not know my life without you.

We're going back to the hotel we got married in to spend the night, and we're going out for curry. Sounds idyllic :)

Two wedding photos, clearly. And one of us taken in February 2009, we both look amazing here! Ha ha.

Solstice

I was talking on a Yahoogroup about how it's really light in the evenings here at the moment. I'm in Northern England and even at 11pm it isn't fully dark. I love it - I suffer from S.A.D. and I find it motivating to have it light in the evenings - it keeps me active for longer.

This time last year we had relatives over from Florida, my mum's cousin Daphne and her wonderfully named husband Charlie Brown, and they were saying how novel it was that it stayed light and how jealous they were. I would be jealous of their sunshine and pool, but there we go!

Here are some photos from 10pm - yes, ten at night - on June 21st, Summer Solstice.

I think it's so beautiful :)

Yesterday's mail

Yesterday's mail was just so colourful I had to take a photo. A candy swap from Swapbot - I got lemon sweets and hard candy things with chocolate in the middle, a letter from Lauren all covered in pretty with Katherine Hepburn stamps! and a letter from my friend Nathaniel on very sweet paper :)