Birthiversary: My Gift for Rick

I wanted to make something for Rick for our anniversary, and I wanted to use pretty much exclusively supplies that we already had. And though I'm not, by nature, the most ooey-gooey romantic person (it's something I'm working on), it is our anniversary, and it is kind of a big deal, so I wanted it to be something sweet and sentimental for my sweet and sentimental husband (remember these love letters?). Here's what resulted:

Here are the details:

{1} The frames are from yard sales and are all roughly 14"x16"; each print itself is about 7"x9".

{2} I made them in this fancy program called Microsoft Word by inserting a rectangle in the size that the print needed to be then filling it with a text box. There is probably another way to size prints in Word...but that worked just fine for me. :)

{3} The lyrics are typed in Piron Stencil v.2 and Sketch Block (downloaded for free from this website and this website).

{4} They're all printed on vellum and, right now, matted on plain white paper. I can change out the paper for a color depending on where we end up hanging them--I'm planning on the bedroom, but we'll see.

{5} The two longer excerpts start in size 20-22 font and get progressively larger.

As for the lyrics I used, the first one is an excerpt from a song that Rick actually wrote for me a couple of years into our dating. Here's a close-up of the fonts I used (Piron Stencil v.2 and Sketch Block):

The second one is my version of a lyric from one of my favorite movies ever: Enchanted. Yes, I am that 25 year old who can sing along to every movie from The Little Mermaid to Mulan AND knows which movies "Why do we even have that lever?" and "I'm a damsel. I'm in distress. I can handle it." and "You're not a lady; you're nothin' but a sister!" are from. (Do I have any fellow Disney nerds who also know?)

Anyway, in the movie, (if you've never had the pleasure of seeing Enchanted--and if you haven't, you must go out and rent it right now, or I might be forced to re-enact the entire thing for you on this blog, and Rick would roll his eyes more than once about that) Giselle has just been lovingly rescued from a malicious troll by Prince Edward, and he sings "You were made..." and she sings "...to finish your duet." Obviously I couldn't put "You were made to finish your duet" in the frame, so I had to tweak it a little.

Aaaaaand the third one is an excerpt from the song we danced to at our wedding: "May I Have This Dance", sung by Scott Krippayne.

So there's my romantic anniversary present. Rick really liked them, and I think I may have even seen a little tearing up, though that is not confirmed. These work for us because music as actually a pretty big part of our lives, and always has been. Both of my parents are music teachers, I was raised on musical theater (we have several home movies of me singing songs from Les Mis, Nunsense, Godspell...), and I was in chorus and marching band and played the French horn from 4th grade to (sort of) this day. Rick has been playing the piano since he got one of those toy keyboards as a wee one and has been playing at church since he was 8. So music is important to us, making these prints all the more special. :)

What are your special songs?