happily ever now

I truly intend to write about things besides love and kindness. My head is filled with tales of mystery, stories of adventure, and legends of the past.  When I start typing, however, my fingers get all excited about the love stories and, quite simply, ruin whatever else I was planning to write.

Okay, okay, now and again I get to draw silly pictures and make jokes.  More often than not, however, I’m writing about love, friendship, and the kindness of strangers.  Maybe I’ll break the habit, but today was filled with too much goodness to be a starting point.  Perhaps next week I will get to the action-packed sci-fi adventures.

As for today, Jon played hookie from work so we could take a color-drive, visit the zoo, and have dinner at my favorite rooftop restaurant.  When we got home, my sweet friends had decorated the apartment with birthday surprises – it was some kind of wonderful.

My brother-in-law and my aunt have birthdays this week, and so I spent the early morning (before the color-drive) making birthday cards and envelopes.  The envelopes were a fun project because I made them out of wrapping paper and mod-podge.  If you’re wanting to try a fun twist on the classic greeting card, here are the steps:

Pick a wrapping paper, a card (any size) and grab some mod-podge:
Place the greeting card in the center of the wrapping paper, just like you’re planning to wrap a present:

Pull the bottom of the wrapping paper over the center of the card and make a solid crease:
Wrap the sides of the wrapping paper over over the back of the card:

Cut the wrapping paper where at the top of the greeting card.  Use mod-podge to glue the wrapping paper covering the right and left sides of the greeting card to the wrapping paper that you pulled over the center of the card.  It should look like this:

Cut excess wrapping paper form the top of the card:

Fold the top of the wrapping paper into a triangle:
Tape the triangle over the back of the card:
Front of the card (mine is being hand-delivered, but you could also put the address here):

I made a simple card to go inside:

Just a regular ‘happy birthday’ stamp with white ink on red paper:
Here are some outtakes from my day with Jon.