Chet's and My Christmas and Birthday Presents

Chet and I both have January birthdays, which actually comes in handy if there is something we specifically want that's too pricey for JUST a Christmas or JUST a birthday present.

This Christmas/birthday Chet wanted a mountain bike. He bought a great used one on eBay with his money.

This year I wanted a cordless vacuum.

It's the materialistic light of my life.

(I don't have a picture of Chet's bike. I'll have to snap one when I finally get around to taking a picture of our garage shelving project.)

After pooling our gifted funds, we had some money left over for Chet to get some accessories for his bike, and I was able to complete a picture wall in our house. Here is the picture wall when it was still in the planning stages:

The sideways pictures were a little creepy, but I wanted to make sure I liked the frame layout before buying the (not cheap) map prints I had my eye on.

The finished product:

The pictures of the kids are pretty silly, but super recent, so that's good. I always order from Mpix, preferably when they are having a sale. They do great work, and their prices are relatively low. I plan to update the kids' pictures each year (stay tuned to find out if it actually happens!).

The right-hand column are maps of each of the cities the kids were born...
Sydney...Jacksonville (FL)
Lorelei...Biloxi (MS)
Ford...Gulfport (MS)
Ruthie...Alexandria (VA)

I lucked out that Lorelei and Ford happened to be born in different hospitals a town apart, because that wasn't at all the plan.

I mostly love the picture wall because I was able to use frames I already had on hand -- the last thing on earth we need is another picture frame to enter this house (or a blanket -- we've got loads of blankets too).

Chet's hollering at me to come watch TV now...