The Gift of Paper

Paper is such a random thing, dontcha think? It constitutes so many things though: money, calendars, books, checks, postcards, etc.
When I first found out that the traditional first anniversary gift was paper, I immediately went to Sir Dan and said 'screw this, lets do the modern version.' Sir Dan decided that we do both... I went for it, I mean how hard could it be?!
For me... it was freakin hard!!! The only thing I could think of was pictures and money. Both are meaningless in our marriage (except money but I hate money so that wasn't gonna work). I had this idea that I'd do a picture slideshowey schpeel and burn it onto a DVD (metal) and put it in a (paper) cover. BAM! Nicole is the bomb.
Yea that didn't work out! I got bored and it was a pain trying to find special events that happened except for holidays. Bye bye picture show.
We decided to exchange gifts sometime soon after we got back from Costa Rica. Before was just too complicated and my slideshow was slideshowing. During our adventures,  I randomly got this amazeballs idea of a custom calendar. Each month would represent something we did during that month of our first year together- and it'd go from this June to next June! I got super excited about it.
The day after we got back, and between loads of traveling laundry (the worst laundry if there can be anything worse), I headed to our favorite custom site Cafepress  and started building away.
It was relatively easy to do, the hardest part was picking out the pictures for each month cause I have a billion pictures per day!! I requested for 3-4 day shipping so it'd be here by Thursday or Friday. Well they were wrong on that, and I got it Tuesday, wasn't here and requested it for Wednesday via an awesome note to Mister UPS man.

But it came Tuesday night  (even tho I think I wrote that for Wednesday, scheduled post)! I didn't even wrap it I was super excited. You can imagine what I looked like to Sir Dan who didn't know why I was jumping and squeeling like pig in the mud.
I finally stopped squeeling and opened up the box- now I hadn't seen the final product at all,  except for the cover... so it was as much a surprise for him as it was for me. And it came out FREAKIN AMAZING!!!!! I couldn't have imagined it any better!!! And it was great to see what we did over the course of our first year.

Sir Dan opening it for the first time

The cover

This was for August- our trip to Wildwood

the last picture- from Costa Rica

And it combines both paper and metal- most of it is paper,  but the binding is metal! Clever aren't I?!
Little did I know, Sir Dan had my gift as well... well one of two. It was a love letter about our first year. And most of you don't know this, but Sir Dan is the most romantic, best writer I've ever read... so this is just what I wanted.

I started tearing up and then he told me  my second gift: A blueprint of our eventual house... no it's not being built but he's kept all the details I've  told him about it and is making it a blueprint. He knows just how to make me weak at the knees!
So there you have it! How we interpreted the gift of paper/metal.
What did you and your husby do for your first anniversary gifts? Leave a comment below- I wanna hear all about it :)
Monday I talk about the next couple days in Costa Rica!!!