Wednesday, February 11, 2015

DIY Valentine Greeting

Gosh, I am SO excited that I just had to share this with you. I love serendipity and this is certainly it.  First of all though, let me just say that things have not been all rosy at the old O-P abode. Mr. O-P spent Christmas in the ICU and New Year's in a rehab facility as the result of the ravages of chemotherapy that he was undergoing for bladder cancer, that put him into renal failure. His cancer diagnosis came last August, following fairly closely upon, first a hip replacement, and then a knee replacement. As if this isn’t enough, and, trust me, it IS, he lost both his younger sister and older brother during the holidays. The mister is 20 years my senior (he was my college professor, scandalous, I know), so this has been pretty rough on him. As caregiver, it hasn't been peachy for me either.
Why am I excited, you ask (if you haven't hanged yourself by now)? Because Mr. O-P will be released on Valentine's Day and I have just come up with a wonderfully clever Valentine idea that I know will make him smile. The mister is one of those guys (and, really, aren't they all?) who struggles to throw anything away. While he's been gone I have been doing a bit of, ahem, organizing. In the doing, I discovered a plastic bag that contained hinges from the shutters on our former house, an American Victorian farmhouse that was built in 1892. The shutters had been ripped off during a tornado, the hinges scattered everywhere. He collected them and saved them in a bag. 
I'm not sure what gave me the idea, but I wanted to use them in a table setting somehow. While I was ruminating, the phrase you unhinge me popped into my head. So, I took a photo of our shutters, edited it to remove all color, added the text and a couple of hearts, printed out four on white cardstock, cut them out, and placed a card at each place setting along with one of our antique hinges. 
A cute, original idea that cost me nothing, and is guaranteed to give the mister a smile. The process of this was very cathartic for me, and took me back to the good old (and I do mean OLD!) days when kids used to make cards for Valentine's Day. 
Hope this helps to get your card-making juices flowing.

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3 comments:

La Table De Nana said...

Whys are some years..just the worse ever? And why do they seem to last for more years?
Our hope has to remain strong in knowing that all of a sudden things will turn around and we will be stronger..
I wish your husband.. full recovery..happy peaceful days :)
And you too.
Your previous home is aso pretty.
Happy Valentine's day to you both..
PS my husband is 13 years older and was one of my bosses at work during college..

crisdsanchez said...

I think these are wonderful. I love most anything red.

The Summer Kitchen Girls said...

That is the cutest card....truly! Bet he really will get a chuckle out of it...so glad he will be coming home ~ it's always nice to "get back to normal" (whatever that means lol!!)