Creative Miscellany: Valentines (really long post)

This year was the 20th anniversary of my 1st date with my husband. He's really difficult to buy for, and nothing really jumped out and shouted This is it! This is perfect for Valentine's Day! But then I got the utterly mad idea to make him 20 valentines. Why mad? Because I got the idea late Friday morning, February 6th. That left me with only part of Friday and Monday to work on them, because he'd be home on the weekend, and I wanted to mail them to his office as a surprise.

I called Mom in a bit of a panic, and asked if I couldn't get enough done on Friday, could I buzz down there for the weekend. Which is what I ended up doing. Turns out that when our daughter was getting off the bus at a quarter to 3, his truck was behind the bus! Meanwhile, I am wildly pitching random art supplies in a large box, flipping it closed when he walked in the door, then resuming when he vanished into his office. I told him that I was going to help Mom with some bookkeeping, as she'd gotten behind (that was true, she was behind), if that was OK. Predictably, he said that was no problem, making the lie even more uncomfortable.

A 2-hour drive, and many errands later (Mom doesn't like to have to run into town after dark by herself), I was unloading all my crap on the dining room table, my art studio for the next 36 hours (or so). Dad was Not Amused when he saw it all (and it wasn't even all out of the box!). but he didn't grumble too much, and I did clear everything away when we ate, of course. I was up until 11pm that night, up at 6ish, back at it by 8 and working until 1am Sunday, stopping only to eat. I finished up after 4 hours of sleep later Sunday morning. (Took me a week to recover from my sleep deprivation and stress to get them done.)

ANYWAY, here's the 21 valentines (the pack of cards had an extra, so I used it to symbolize the Valentine's Day yet to come).