Still excited!

Hi guys! First of all, again, thank you, thank you, thank you for the awesome time at the workshop. I really learned a lot and had a great time. I really hope to get to do it again next year! I'm still really excited about the special occasion gift concept, and have already begun work in making it a reality. My concept was to create a dream chest for my husband's and my first anniversary that would have two sections: "Dreams" and "Come True." It would contain Christmas ornaments that I've made to represent dreams that we've already accomplished together, and the ones that we have for our future together. This would become a tradition for our family to create new ornaments/dreams together as our lives progress, and as they come true the compartment that they would be kept in would change. My husband will really like the idea of having a family centered activity for a tradition and much less of a focus on gifts, because the commercialization of Christmas really bothers him. I decided to change the container from a chest that would most likely be put away, to a display style case that could be hung in our home all year round. My husband is a glazier and could build the physical case for me with nice glass doors, this way he can be involved in making the gift for me too. The rest would still be kept as a surprise, and I plan to also use his work's resources to sandblast the imagery I've planned as a border on the glass. It will feature a roller coaster theme with the two of us in our cart together on this "ride" of life. It will hold the ornaments on either shelves or hooks, I have to see which is more practical still. I've begun work on one of the ornaments representing our wedding, as just the two of us in a romantic bent over kiss. I sketched another of us in Cinderella's coach (we were married at Disney) which I may create as well. Other ornaments I plan to make are for our graduation together from high school (where we met), film reels representing our love for movies and our job at the movie theatre together in high school, a book that can open to read the poem that he wrote for me that was published. And for future dreams of ours I plan to make one representing all of the places we've been and would like to go, one for my diploma from Ringling, "the yellow house" represents our dream house, something to represent his desire to go into and study for ministry, as well as a little oven that opens with a bun inside it for when we decide to have our first child. So sorry for the long run on sentences, and explanation, but it's pretty involved! I love challenges like this though! ^_^ Anyhow, thanks again, and I'll definitely be posting updates and results! Our anniversary is June 10th, so I suppose that's my deadline!

Jessica Willett